What We Do

We believe strongly in the power of creative engagement as a catalyst for social change.

Collective Purpose

BOUNDS is a student driven collective rooted in collaborative artistic experiences. As a collective, we strive to provide access for Bennington College student artists, writers, performers, activists and thinkers to collaborate and iterate through symbolic community engagement and to support them administratively along the way. Our actions to promote awareness of our causes and concerns become partnerships with community members and intergenerational mentors. Our initiatives highlight that, in sharing and nurturing our work, we can become catalysts for community led change. Stronger individual artists mean stronger communities.

Challenge

How can emerging artists, patrons and communities engage with issues creatively together?

Our Mission

As artists in action, we want to deconstruct the current box model. We want to create a dynamic entity. Something unrooted. Projects that can present themselves spontaneously and nimbly. A rendering that confronts a spectrum of access issues. One that can infiltrate the community. A vehicle for both visual and performance artists. A portal with limitless iterations. I want to move the scene to the audience.

BOUNDScollective CAPA

Through our dynamic and collective initiative, we reimagine the model of what cultural exchange systems can look like for emerging artists, their patrons, audiences and support networks. Each project is an intentional collaboration formed specifically by a Bennington College Student with a community partner. Through proximity and inspiration, we mentor the student holistically and comprehensively in order to strengthen their creative agenda. Regular collaborative projects are arranged throughout the year in communities around the world.

The students who participate in BOUNDScollective are active within their program of studies at Bennington College Fall through Spring. Our projects and exhibitions are organized concurrently with a student’s planned program of studies.

“A culture, while it is being lived, is always in part unknown, in part unrealized. The making of community is always an exploration, for consciousness cannot precede creation, and there is no formulation for unknown experience. A good community, a living culture, will, because of this, not only make room for but actively encourage all and any who can contribute to the advance in consciousness which is the common need. Wherever we have started from, we need to listen to others who have started from a different position.”