SUPPORT FAFSWAG ARTS COLLECTIVE
SUPPORT FAFSWAG ARTS COLLECTIVE
Consider making a donation to support FAFSWAG, simply clicking the DONATE button.
This donations portal is traditionally used for our seasonal fundraising campaigns, however we leave it open all year round for folks who wish to support the work we do. FAFSWAG has 10 artists, activists and cultural leaders, however the collective work is held by only two voluntary staff, Cofounders tanu Gago and Pati Tyrell, and our international producer Elyssia Wilson Heti.
The work we do is not always financially supported through a singular source, but rather a series of resources. We utilise and access a series of diverse financial systems, such as contestable funding, revenue from our studio and ecommerce platforms, crowd funding and community partnership and corporate sponsorship. Together these strands help to fund the work we do.
Many of our flagship projects such as ALTERATION (touring Exhibition), the Fāle Sā / Sacred House (Touring Cultural Ceremony & Digital Exhibition) and DIASPORA RENDERED (Curated Queer Indigenous Film Programme) are delivered under a sustainability strategy, that is informed by our collective work with the circular economy principles of the Lunbung, created by arts collective Ruangrupa for Documenta15.
As a Queer Indigenous Arts Collective from the Moana, FAFSWAG recognises our social responsibility to our cultural traditions, the environment and the social context of the Pasifika Diaspora from within Aotearoa. It has taken us a number of years to develop systems that allow us to operate in an Indigenous framework of respect, reciprocity and kindness.
For us this framework is held by three key pillars. Re-indigenising customary practice, cultural archiving through digital storytelling, Uplifting Queer experiences and world views, and a commitment to succession through the sharing of knowledge, networks and opportunities. This final pillar is driven by community practice.
Furthermore, our work within the contemporary arts is committed to a Queer Circular Economy. In the arts this is an approach to artistic creation rooted in minimizing environmental impact. It champions the maximization of resource value and the reduction of waste to align artistic practices with planetary ecological limits. Fundamentally, it's a pledge to sustainable artistry that acknowledges and addresses art's environmental footprint.
While FAFSWAG has a number of modes of production, we are foremostly a group of intimate friends with shared lived experience as Queer Indigenous peoples from the Moana. We are not a dance group, a ballroom house, a social service provider, or purely a form of artistic output. We are storytellers, cultural navigators and sometimes, messy human beings.
