About

Empowering artistic communitIes

Beautiful culture comes from strong communities and strong communities create beautiful culture. We are a nonprofit that promotes the development of healthy communities through artistic collaboration – telling truthful narratives with positive impact.

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Community

Community art has been shown to be a powerful tool for drawing people together. A thriving community is marked by symbiosis, like the Three Musketeers: “all for one, and one for all.” Connections like this also build social capital within and between communities, empowering people to flourish.

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Support

Mass-produced media has resulted in a handful of millionaire artists, and millions of artists with barely a handful of cash. Beyond that, artists are notoriously unorganized. When Brevity gains experience, we build products, instruction, and tools to help other communities make art together.

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Inclusion

Inclusion means that everyone has a stake – regardless of race, sex, age, economic status, language, or life experience. Inclusion entails actual engagement and involvement in course plotting, steering, and artistic input. Representation in storytelling is wildly important. Everyone should be heard.

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History

In January 2015, five friends met at a coffee shop to talk about producing a Shakespeare play.

They didn’t have funding, professional experience, or materials, but they did have a strong sense of mutual trust, a love for creative storytelling, and a network of supportive friends. They called their new venture Brevity. Over the next few months, the community pulled together time and resources – memorizing lines, buying costumes, and sharing backyards for rehearsal and performance space. It was genuinely a community theater project in every way. Much Ado about Nothing was a culmination of borrowed fake plants, lawn furniture, and a set made of discarded furniture items. And it was a huge success.

We had unwittingly stumbled across something meaningful. We proved with our first show that a successful artistic production is more dependent on social capital than financial capital, that art can be communally driven rather than commercially driven.

Since then, Brevity has supported over ten productions, and expanded our scope to community art at large – not only theater. There are all kinds of valuable art forms and methods, but what really gets us excited is when groups of people work together, telling stories for people they care about.

Brevity Community Values

Community Expression

Theater has to be relational. It takes teamwork and the final product should express the values and relationships of the community. We meet people, learn from them, represent them, honor them, advocate for them. It’s not about self-expression – we’re in it for the whole community.

Artistic Storytelling

We don’t do art just for art’s sake. Stories have the power to bring people together in community to shape culture. We select stories that explore what it means to be human. The way we tell stories matters just as much as their content because good art impacts people deeply.

Optimism Culture

We expect people to grow. We expect to succeed. We expect to make the world a better place. Our focus is directed toward the good that we encounter, because attitude can make or break an entire production. Positivity is not naivete. Positivity is looking for what is best and pursuing it.

Collective Betterment

Brevity is an environment of growth. We support each other in our pursuit of excellence onstage and offstage. We want the people who join Brevity to leave with new skills and relationships. Imperfection isn’t a problem, it’s a chance to keep getting better.

“I’m really glad that Brevity’s been a part of me becoming who I am, growing up, and discovering what I love – finding people that I love. It’s been a really awesome journey. And I’m so glad to have met so many people along the way.”

Colleen Clauss