GUIDING PRINCIPALS
Commitment to Care & Diversity:
Each decision made at Sudden Somethings is informed by a deep desire to promote empathy, kindness, and mutual respect. We prioritize equity and fair treatment for others in all aspects of our operations, whether that be a passing interaction or large-scale event. We extend this focus to our community by uplifting underrepresented voices and creating strong, enduring ties between people from a wide range of lived experiences.
Commitment to Criticality:
Each decision made at Sudden Somethings is informed by criticality. Our process involves a level of thoroughness and intimacy where research, discussion, and the context of the world around us synthesize to enable quality decision-making. We prioritize gaining knowledge and insight before making decisions, and respect indigenous knowledge-holders’ understandings of the world.
Commitment to Thoroughness:
We strive to do excellent, thorough work at Sudden Somethings by putting our best effort towards our tasks. We acknowledge that every individual’s life, body, and workflow are different. We are supportive in the ways in which people might experience a flexible, non-linear time frame that fits disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent bodies and minds. Our success as an organization relies on our team members’ successes. Here at Sudden Somethings, our support and communication for all team members helps facilitate this success.
OUR CORE INITIATIVES
Generating New Community Through Performance Settings:
Sudden Somethings’ Some Things From Nothing is an ad-hoc improvisation performance festival that brings improvisers from across the USA together, regardless of background or experience, to celebrate spontaneous expression within new communities. We strive to curate each performance group with immense care so that when performers are placed in surprise groupings, they can express themselves confidently and without worry. We provide this nomadic thirdspace, often in collaboration with historically important venues for improvisational creation, as an opportunity for cross-cultural and cross-communal pollination. Our festival regularly generates new collaborations between performers from radically different backgrounds by creating a national network of improvisers connected through our organization. This network is as impactful for us as we hope it is to our performers. We strive to always support our artists, even after their participation. This ranges from documentation to promotion, and beyond. All funds raised go towards festival participants’ travel, housing, and honorarium. We are completely transparent about funds raised and their disbursement to our artists and donors.
Community Outreach:
Sudden Somethings is community first, organization second. All of our organization members are artists, creatives, and community organizers. We take great pride in curating and collaborating on events beyond our festival to foster a creative home for others. This includes hosting and curating accessible, free community-based events. These events range from free concerts in public parks to workshops, often in collaboration with local organizations.
Fundraising:
As artists ourselves, we understand how volatile living circumstances, finances, and additional expenses may be. This is why we focus on fundraising campaigns and benefit events for artists in dire need due to emergency circumstances. Our most notable fundraiser was an all-day festival in which over 15 artistic groups performed to raise funds for artists affected by the Palisades Fire in Southern California.