The 30th anniversary is traditionally known as the pearl anniversary, and that’s fitting when it comes to Brolly Arts. The nonprofit, which supports arts organizations and independent artists through forums of collaboration and experimentation, was founded by Amy MacDonald, the Kimball Art Cen ter’s former education and artistic director, three decades ago, and it is still a gem in the community. To celebrate, Brolly Arts invites the public to a free evening of art, music and story that starts at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday at Twig Media Lab, 949 Quayle Ave., in Salt Lake City. “The night will start with a mingle, and there will be a food truck, the Drum Bus and hip-hop dancers,” MacDonald said. “Then we’ll wind up indoors at 7 p.m. for a program.” The program will feature media compilation that covers the Brolly Arts past 30 years, dancing by SB Dance to music performed live by the award-winning chamber music group, The Ahn Trio, and a sneak preview of a new project centered on the Great Salt Lake, according to MacDonald. “This is open to the public, and it’s free, but we do ask people to RSVP,” she said. “We won’t turn people away, but if seats are filled, they’ll have to stand.” To RSVP, visit brollyarts.org. MacDonald planted the Brolly Arts seed in 1995. “We did a needs assessment of what was happening at that time in the community,” she said. “Utah was losing a lot of talented and independent artists because all the funding was going to established educational institutions, companies and programming entities.” MacDonald looked into those needs and started to understand more, and she decided to form the nonprofit to support those artists. The organization’s name is symbolic because brolly is the British word for umbrella, and MacDonald envisioned the nonprofit working as an umbrella to support independent artists and arts organizations.  “Our programs are run on a needs basis of what needs attention and what needs to be addressed,” she said. “So, we’re nimble, and we can shift and be proactive.” Still, the nonprofit keeps artists in the forefront. “That was a growing lesson,” MacDonald said. “We started first with dance because I was a professional modern dancer. But I had to learn other mediums than dance.” One of the first big projects Brolly Arts established was a choreographer lab at Snowbird Resort. Kimberly Avery, the executive director of the now defunct Snowbird Institute for the Arts and Humanities, asked MacDonald to present the idea for the process-oriented lab. “I was at the head of the table and introduced the idea, and there was dead silence,” MacDonald remembered. “I thought, ‘Oh, no. They didn’t like it.” Then Gainor L. Bennett, a member of the Snowbird Institute’s Board of Directors, stood up and said, “Let’s do it.” A choreographer lab at Snowbird Resort in the mid 1990s is one of the first projects overseen by Brolly Arts, a nonprofit that supports independent artists, founded by Amy MacDonald, the Kimball Art Center’s former education and artistic director. The lab was made possible through a partnership with the Snowbird Institute for the Arts and Humanities. Credit: Photo courtesy of Amy MacDonald “After one year of hosting the choreographers lab, (Brolly Arts) got our name on the national map for artistic process and mentorship,” MacDonald said. “We brought in one of the nation’s most acclaimed choreographers and mentors, Doris Rudko, and she was instrumental in helping artists launch their voices choreographically and formatively.” That board meeting presentation taught MacDonald to never underestimate the power one person can have on initiating change. “That always gave me courage when I took on new projects or initiated new ideas,” she said. Some of those ideas came from collaborations. “In 2008 when we brought 48 artists and 48 businesses together to create the Sugar House Art Walk,” she said. “We were able to get Utah’s first Creative Community Grant for that and recognition from the National Endowment for the Arts for that.” The art walk reinvigorated the area, which, at the time, was “pretty decimated,” MacDonald said. “What’s wonderful is that art walk still continues today,” she said. Another big collaboration took Brolly Arts into racial- and social-justice work.  “I was teaching at Westminster (University in Salt Lake City), when I cofounded a track in the Masters of Community Leadership program — arts, cultures and community,” she said. “The idea is to give tools to community leaders they can use in their practice, and I helped them with creative skills.” A woman in one of those classes asked MacDonald to be her capstone advisor. “She was Black African-American and experienced a great deal of discrimination in her work,” MacDonald said. “The more we explored that, the more we realized the discrimination is much bigger because Utah has only a 1.8% Black population.” The result was a social change project and the “Beloved Community Project” film. “That took stories of Black changemakers in Utah, who maintained hope through come what may to bring about changes,” MacDonald said.  The project is ongoing, and during one year 23,000 students and 1,800 teachers in Utah saw the film, according to MacDonald. “We also did a project with a corporation who experienced a lot of discrimination in the company,” she said. “It was multi-disciplined with live performance, dance, the film and discussion, and afterwards, many employees told us they had a lot of work to do.” Bridge Over Barriers was another social-change project that ran from 2005-12, MacDonald said. “It came about when an interstate pass divided neighborhoods on the west side,” she said. “Artists were asked to create mosaic columns that represented the 16 communities, and depict Father Time and Mother Earth under the overpass.” Brolly Arts Founder Amy MacDonald, left, stands with artists Matt Monsoon, Brooklyn Ottens and Jessie Thomas, during a 2024 restoration project of the Bridge Over Barriers murals in Salt Lake City. Brolly Arts, a nonprofit that supports arts organizations and independent artists through forums of collaboration and experimentation, turns 30 this year. Credit: Photo courtesy of Amy MacDonald The project took three years to complete, and in 2024, MacDonald was asked to oversee the  renovation of the murals. “They gave me carte blanche of who I could work with, and we worked with three artists who lived in the area,” she said. Brolly Arts continued to expand and dove into efforts to help save the Great Salt Lake in 2022 with a project called “Illusion of Abundance.” “It started out with a performative piece with verifiable narrative and choreography and was so successful that we thought we should make a documentary,” MacDonald said. “I got a call from a friend who was part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, and we went to coffee, who said, ‘If you really want to help the Great Salt Lake, you have to understand all the systems that affect it.’”  MacDonald took a plunge into the research. “I found two things that showed up consistently,” she said.  The first was any time Utah makes decisions around natural resources, there are never experts, advocates or Indigenous voices at the table. “When I found that out, I knew I needed to include Indigenous voices in the film,” she said. “We spent two years developing relationships with eight different tribes and getting their elders’ blessings.” The second thing MacDonald found was you don’t end a project like “Illusion of Abundance” with doom and gloom. “It just doesn’t work to do that,” she said. “So since, I’m a Jane Goodall fan, and she has a comment that ‘Hope is all about action,’ I knew we had to show some hope to believe that something better can happen to bring about change. So that’s what we did.” “Illusion of Abundance,” which was seen nationally, won awards and invited people to take part in saving the Great Salt Lake, spawned another project, which is just getting started, MacDonald said. “Going through that whole experience, I began to understand that farmers get a bad rap about water usage,” she said. “So, I began to think if we really understand the interconnectedness of water, land and the food we eat.” That line of thinking led MacDonald to the idea of pairing artists with farmers for a new experience of learning, called “Stories Carried by Water,” which is part of a bigger project, “A Quest to Save Great Salt Lake.” “Right now I’m working with a farmer, an Indigenous gardner and paired artists,” she said. “This piece won’t be done until after the harvest, so we’re going to tease the launch of this during our celebration and conduct a brief discussion about why this is so important. We’re heavy into that right now because the lake is in crisis, and there are a lot of things happening in Utah right now.” In addition to this tease, Saturday’s celebration will feature the Ahn Trio. “Brolly Arts had this program called Independent Voices in 2002, and I brought in the Ahn Trio,” MacDonald said. “We did a huge event at Kingsbury Hall and invited dancers from all over Utah. That was so special, and I became good friends with the trio.” As MacDonald thought more about doing a 30-year celebration, she decided to bring in people who made the 30 years possible. So she called cellist Maria Ahn to see if they were interested.” “She said, ‘There’s no decision. We’re coming,’” MacDonald said.  Ahn is flying in from Italy, and her sister and the trio’s pianist, Lucia, is flying in from New York as is violinist Frank Brock, according to MacDonald. “Zach has written a newly commissioned piece called ‘Common Ground’ for the 30th anniversary, so it will be a world premiere,” she said. The Ahn Trio will also collaborate with SB Dance, a unique, independent dance company founded by Stephen Brown, MacDonald said. “Stephen, who was part of one of our inaugural artist development programs, is choreographing a new work that will be accompanied by the Ahn Trio’s piece ‘Time Lapse’ by Michael Hyman,” she said.  The 30th anniversary celebration would not have been possible if it weren’t for the people Brolly Arts has worked with over the decades. “I am honored that they are showing up in waves for this,” she said. “Twin Media Lab, who I’ve worked with for 12 years, has offered their space. The Drum Bus was part of our 2013 Question Mark project and the hip-hop dancers are from our racial- and social-justice work.” Regardless of the statewide and international recognition, MacDonald, a recipient of Utah’s Lifetime Cultural Career Achievement Award in 2022, still reflects on her work at the Kimball Art Center from 2014 to 2017. “I started as education director in 2014 and became artistic director in 2015, where I oversaw exhibits and education,” she said. During that time, MacDonald provided overarching creative visioning, leadership, programming and cultural infrastructure development that included changing reactive exhibitions programming to proactive planning to innovate shows and interactive experiences to meet needs and interests of a wide array of community demographics. She also created, wrote and planned curriculum for Elementary Visual Arts (EVA), Young Artists Academy (YAA) and Academic Resources for Teachers and Students (ARTS) at the Kimball Art Center, as well as help start the Monster Drawing Rally with the Arts Council of Park City Summit County’s then-executive director, Hadley Dynak, in 2017.  “It was an awesome tenure at the Kimball where I got to know the Park City community,” she said. “After I got married and moved up here, I wanted to meet and understand the community creatively, physically and otherwise. Because community understanding, community conversation and dialog is incredibly important. My mantra is anything that I do has to be of, by and for the communities we work with, regardless if it’s not my opinion.” As MacDonald reflects about those years in Park City and the three decades with Brolly Arts, she cites relationship building as the main underlining reward of working with both organizations. “I look back on 30 years, we have all those amazing people and entities who helped steer the course,” she said. “It’s about having trusted partners, trusted artists and community members you can work with and get honest feedback. And it’s so rewarding to see someone experiencing one of the artist-development programs, participating in one of the needs-based programs and watching them blossom and grow with their own things and methodology.”  Brolly Arts 30th Anniversary Celebration When: 5:30 p.m. Saturday Where: Twig Media Lab, 949 Quayle Ave., Salt Lake City Cost: Free RSVP: tinyurl.com/3fs7s542 Web: brollyarts.org The post Brolly Arts celebrates 30th years of supporting independent artists appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less