FIRSTWORKS
After careful consideration for the well-being of our creative community both near and far, our PVDFest team announced this week the decision to indefinitely postpone PVDFest.
Festivals are in FirstWorks’ DNA – since our beginnings as a one-night festival of the arts on New Year’s Eve, to the celebrations in Kennedy Plaza, to the multi-stage creative showcase that is PVDFest. Festivals create access, joy, and gather us all together. We look forward to filling the streets and the stages with music, dance, and happiness.
Meantime, we are doubling down on our commitment to strengthen the cultural fabric of our community through live arts. Partnership and innovation – a constant since our founding in 2004 – are propelling new ways to connect you to the arts. Last month, FirstWorks launched a new Virtual Learning Series in partnership with the extraordinary, mission-driven media company, Steer. FirstWorks’ family of artists are specially creating remote learning experiences for our students and teachers!
We are exploring ways to share the power of performance with our audiences as well. In that spirit, and in honor of PVDFest, we share with you a unique perspective on aerial artists Bandaloop, created by Providence filmmaker Kelly Riley.
Bandaloopers are part of the FirstWorks family, having ignited our imaginations when they turned a 28-story building into a dance floor back in 2012 and again at PVDFest 2017 with a spectacular world-premiere featuring Rhode Island’s spoken word poet Christopher Johnson.
Seeing Kelly’s gorgeous documentary storytelling astonishes me all over again!
We promise to keep re-imagining and re-inventing. While live programming is suspended, FirstWorks is excited to embrace you all virtually, charting new territory in arts and ideas.
We are grateful for your continued support! Together we can lift Rhode Island through the arts.
Kathleen Pletcher
Founder and Executive Artistic Director, FirstWorks