Making the Connections, Part 5
The history of Southwestern Pennsylvania has always been one of a people looking forward with a creative and industrious spirit - from the founding of Fort Pitt 250 years ago, to the medical and technological breakthroughs of the 21st Century. When the Allegheny Conference on Community Development began planning to celebrate the region’s 250th anniversary this year, the organization knew it had to do so with that same forward-looking spirit.
The Conference charged a committee of regional representatives with a mission: To build a program that would actively engage the people of Southwestern Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh 250. Community Connections was developed to create relationships, provide community engagement opportunities, and spur regional pride through an innovative grantmaking model that ultimately funded 100 projects across 14 counties of Southwestern Pennsylvania.
Community Connections engaged the citizens of Southwestern Pennsylvania in a pioneering process to create, streamline, and invest $1 million in a diverse array of community projects. Each month in Making the Connections, we’ll take a closer look at the story behind Community Connections.
Meet and Greet: Community Connections events are more than just a good time
When over 300 community leaders from around the Southwestern Pennsylvania region came together at the top of the Regional Enterprise Tower in Downtown Pittsburgh last December, it was more than just a chance to celebrate the distribution of $1 million in Community Connections grants. It was a part of the process. All-too-rarely in the region’s history has such a breadth of agents from the government, non-profit, community, business and media sectors come together in one place. And just as Community Connections has turned grantmaking and fundraising into means of producing new relationships, the press launch of Community Connections became an opportunity to catalyze connections within the region.
So it should come as no surprise, then, that when The Sprout Fund hosts Hothouse 2008 - its sixth-annual fundraising benefit slash “live annual report” - the event will prove to be more than “just” party of the summer.
Held each year in a different, unique site within the city of Pittsburgh - often in locations undergoing radical shifts in status - Hothouse serves to showcase the projects assisted by The Sprout Fund over the past year. With the region’s eyes focused on Pittsburgh 250, this year’s event will feature approximately 25 Regional and Allegheny Grassroots Community Connections projects, as well as another 25 of The Sprout Fund’s other grant recipients, throughout the upper floors of the Union Trust Building in Pittsburgh’s ever-changing Downtown. But as much as it is an opportunity for the public to learn about, and enjoy, the work of Sprout-related projects, Hothouse can also prove to be yet another means to connect the community leaders and citizens of our region. With that in mind, according to Community Connections Program Coordinator Dustin Stiver, Sprout mapped out the various exhibition and performance spaces being used in the Union Trust Building in a way that has proven catalytic to project collaboration.
“We hoped that, by placing projects with similar or complementary goals in the same space, we would help propagate an exchange of ideas and the building of new relationships,” says Stiver. “It’s really an extension of what we’ve done with Community Connections events in the past - such as the ideation sessions and community decisionmaking forums, where people with similar goals for the region met to create new ideas through collaborative thinking. It’s using the process of Community Connections to facilitate the meshing of ideas from different people and places.”
One example is the so-called “green room,” in which three different Sprout-funded projects approach the challenge of utilizing Pittsburgh’s vacant lots in new, environmentally proactive ways. Engage Pittsburgh award recipient GTECH - Growth Through Energy and Community Health - is a CMU spinoff project seeking to utilize vacant urban spaces with new “green economy” strategies. Meanwhile, Seed Award recipient Grow Pittsburgh, a partnership with Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, approaches vacant land with an urban-farming strategy. And Community Connections Grassroots-grant recipients New Sun Rising, creators of the Millvale Public Library project, is looking to build the Grant Avenue Pocket Park - an urban green space along Millvale’s main drag.
“Our exhibit will show visitors the many options they have for dealing with blighted, abandoned land in their community and the different strategies and outcomes people are using throughout the city,” says New Sun Rising’s Brian Wolovich.
“Hothouse is an opportunity for projects across Sprout’s network to learn about one another’s efforts,” says Stiver. “And perhaps, at the end of the night, new partnerships will be born. Already, it appears that GTECH and New Sun Rising - two projects that had not previously interacted - will collaborate in the future.”
The Sprout Fund’s sixth annual Hothouse event is set for Saturday, August 23, 2008 from 7pm-midnight on the upper floors of The Union Trust Building in Downtown Pittsburgh. Attracting more than 2,000 party guests in 2007 and 2006, Hothouse is an opportunity for a wide cross-section of business and social circles to come together in support of The Sprout Fund, its mission and its many funded projects. In addition to all the meeting and mingling, Hothouse features live music, enthralling performances, a magnificent silent auction, and Pittsburgh’s best food and drink. Tickets for the event are available online and at the door.
Visit www.hothouse.sproutfund.org to learn more event details, see pictures of past years, and purchase tickets.
VIP Admission includes a reception from 7:00pm to 9:00pm catered by big Catering, Sprout goodie bag with Hothouse T-Shirt, complimentary valet parking, and admission to main party (sold for $150)
General Admission includes the main party from 9:00pm to 12:00am, complimentary food from Pittsburgh favorites, and complimentary beer, wine, and spirits (sold for $40 in advance/$50 at the door/$25 college students)
All proceeds benefit The Sprout Fund.
