1. Firefly Open House THIS SUNDAY! 2. SFTY3rd 3. Burner Exchange Art Grant Submissions DUE TONIGHT 4. Scholarship Ticket deadline lifted, apply now! 5. Submit Firefly Ticket Artwork 6. New Leadership Roles at Sanctuary! Sign up Today! 7. DPW Volunteers, Join The Mailing List 8. Kids' Art Grants 9. "Just the Tip" ---------- 1. All Fireflies, Virgins and Veterans - Our annual Open House is this Sunday. What is the Open House?? It’s an informal meet and greet and kind of the unofficial start to the Firefly season. Various board members, the conduct committee, event leads, and core leads will all be on hand to meet you and help point you in the direction(s) you need to make sure you have an excellent Firefly. We’ll have information about the various cores that help make Firefly function as well as ways to sign up for shifts (we all volunteer for shifts during the event). Come tell us about your theme camp or your art project! Come ask us what you can do to become more involved. 5-9 PM this Sunday (May 1st) at the Dilboy VFW Post in Davis Square (371 Summer St, Somerville, MA 02144). Come by after Somerville Open Studios!! https://www.fireflyartscollective.org/news/firefly-open-house/ Hope to see plenty of new and old faces! ---------- 2. SFTY3rd The 3rd annual SFTY3rd will be held on May 13-15 in Scarborough, Maine for any Firefly that is interested in volunteering for a Firefly Safety Core (Medical, Rangers, Sanctuary, Fire and FAST volunteers.) SFTY3rd is a training/social weekend and an awesome opportunity for Safety Core volunteers to get involved, learn about working together in incidents and emergencies and meet other Safety Core volunteers. For more information: https://www.fireflyartscollective.org/participate/join-a-core/sfty3rd/ ---------- 3. Burner Exchange Art Grant Submissions are DUE Monday 4/25 at midnight, EDT! The *Burner Exchange (BEX) Grants *are for art that has *already appeared* either at a regional burn event or Burning Man and showcases the local flavor of its origin. Grant money is intended to be applied to maintenance / improvements and shipping costs to Vermont. BEX Grants are awarded for up to $1000. Schedule: March 28th: BEX grant applications open *April 25th: BEX grant applications due* *May 2nd: BEX Grants awarded* Submissions this year will be handled through the Firefly Art Grants Web Portal. If you signed up in 2015 your accounts are no longer active, so* please sign up again*. For even more information, please visit the following web page: Firefly Art Grants Overview. Feel free to reach out with any questions to: grants@fireflyartscollective.org. ---------- 4. Scholarship Ticket deadline lifted--apply now! The Board has decided that rather than having a hard deadline (which has passed) for scholarship tickets, we will keep the program open until either we issue the maximum number we have allocated this year, or until we get so close to Firefly that we don't have time to review them anymore. That's probably a week or so before Firefly, to be determined later. Get your applications in now! https://www.fireflyartscollective.org/firefly/tickets/scholarship-tickets/ ---------- 5. Submit Firefly Ticket Artwork! The skinny: Please submit your artwork to FFTicketArt@fireflyartscollective.org The DEADLINE: May 22 2016. Tickets should be 4x3" and contain the words "Firefly" and "June 29 - July 4, 2016". High quality PDF or JPEG, 600+ dpi and CMYK color preferred, if possible. For the past two years we were able to use ARTifacts submissions as an extra source of great ticket artwork. With the announced changes in the registration and ARTifacts format this year, we are going back to requiring that all ticket artwork submissions are sent in directly to FFTicketArt@fireflyartscollective.org. More information, such as the submission deadline, will be announced shortly. One particularly exciting aspect of making tickets out of ARTifacts was that we were able to use so many "physical", non-digitally created pieces. Ticketing Core volunteers have scanned some great drawings, paintings and all sorts of other hand-made objects that looked great printed - last year there was even one super sleek metal piece! We'd like to keep this trend going. So if you have a design that you'd rather submit in a physical form - please contact us at the address above. And we'll arrange obtaining it from you, and scanning and turning it into a printable ticket face. Please note the deadline (May 22, by the end of the day). We are planning to get it all done early this year! ---------- 6. New Leadership Roles at Sanctuary! Sign up Today! Sanctuary is looking for folks with backgrounds in psychiatric support to help make a better Sanctuary for all those looking for a safe and non-judgemental space during Firefly. These include: - Medical Liason - You'll ensure Sanctuary people are trainied properly on WHEN to call for medical support and how - Sexual Assault Liason - You'll ensure Sanctuary support folks are trained properly for supporting folks that may have gone through a sexually related trauma - Peer Advocacy Liason - You make sure folks going through complex scenarios have what they need - Psychiatric Liason - You'll make sure emotionally drained and struggling Fireflies have the support they need - Sanctuary Infrastructure - Make Sanctuary beautiful, manage inventory, ensure we leave no trace, and confirm power requirements are met - Sanctuary Training Coordinator - We have 3 trainings that begin in March, and many folks involved. You'll help make sure everyone gets signed off on the all the needed materials. Learn more here: https://www.fireflyartscollective.org/participate/join-a-core/sanctuary/ Interested? Email us at sanctuary@fireflyartscollective.org ---------- 7. DPW Volunteers, Join The Mailing List! Would you like to help build and maintain Firefly's critical infrastructure? Need a good excuse to spend every weekend in June up in Vermont? Feel like you just don't sweat enough when you volunteer for other cores? Then join the Department of Public Works! Learn about what we do here: https://www.fireflyartscollective.org/participate/join-a-core/dpw/ If you want to contribute to the DPW, join our mailing list. We'll send out an email in early May with details on the Work Weekends in June and how to sign up for them. More DPW opportunities will follow, but we won't spam you, so keep an eye out. Subscribe yourself to the mailing list here: https://lists.fireflyartscollective.org/listinfo/firefly-dpw-allcom We look forward to putting you to work. Cheers! ---------- 8. Kids' Art Grants This is for all you Fireflies who are bringing kids younger than 16 to the event. While we give out a bunch of art grants here at Firefly HQ to help make the woods and the field even more amazing, those are all seemingly targeted towards adults. While out in San Francisco last week for Burning Man's Global Leadership Conference, I ended up talking to one of Utah's Element 11 organizers and she was telling me how they have an art grant program for kids. Well, huh, I thought, maybe we should have one as well. So, now we have! I would like to personally award four separate grants of $25 to children under the age of 16 who are coming to Firefly to make art with. Please work with your child and then send me their proposal and a brief statement about why art is important to them and the four winners will each receive $25 to make their art happen at the Firefly event this year. So, send a brief description of what your child wants to do, and why art is important to them to ruuskado@yahoo.com by midnight on May 6th. The winners will be notified by May 12th. That's it, nice and simple. Good Luck! Doug NOTE: This is not an official Firefly program, it is just something that I thought would be a fun idea. ---------- 9. "Just the Tip" by Wendy WTF Not everyone who carries a radio is a Ranger <https://www.fireflyartscollective.org/participate/join-a-core/rangers/>, but all Rangers carry radios.