Vision:
Create a unified national blues dance organization that is uniquely equipped to provide premier events, foster positive scene growth, help the community develop their knowledge and skills, and promote blues dance across the globe.
Mission:
We aim to inspire and nurture growth at the local level and see that fruit reach and expand at every level. We will work towards 1) actively seeding ideas; 2) developing resources to see them flourish; 3) cultivating people who can manage projects focused on the “collective work”. We will be the change we wish to see while encouraging and supporting others to do the same.
- Create a repository and regular stream of resources and content for community members to continue their education and personal development.
- Through concerted marketing nationwide, we will attempt to ease the burden on local organizers by raising awareness of this dance.
- Our development programs will be designed to create capable instructors, DJs, and historians from all income levels, demographics, and walks of life.
- Through research projects, we will record and preserve the history of blues-idiom dances for our current and future generations.
- We will connect our organization with the pulse of the national blues music scene and help foster better relationships between local dance scenes and their local music societies.
Short Term Goals (1-3 years)
- Develop a full-fledged media team to craft stories, products, and regular content aimed at educating the world on blues dancing.
- Will need to versed or teachable on modern marketing, developing online brands, and creating content on a variety of platforms (videos, articles, communicating the brand through different social media platforms)
- Showcase how we develop our processes, use our work as the content, be comfortable with transparency.
- As the team develops, look at rolling or hiring members into full-time positions to teach and develop the modern marketing apparatuses in different scenes.
- Become competitive in the social media space, to showcase to other dance organizations and leaders, how paramount success in the online space has become.
- Recruit enthusiastic people from multiple walks of life to participate in a variety of critical roles.
- These people could range from retired or less active organizers who want something new to chew on, the young and inexperienced, or just those willing and able to serve. Being an ace in a particular skill isn’t necessarily required. We are looking for the trainable and those eager to humbly learn.
- Create residency and small workshop opportunities within the Git Gud event structure and aim primarily for scenes with minimal access to blues instruction to help plant blues in new cities/locales.
- Create our own cadre of instructors who were not previously established big names. This doesn’t mean we stop hiring established instructors. On the contrary, we will be enlisting their help to make this happen. We want to create a framework that lets us develop a systematic approach to identifying and training new instructors across the globe while providing stability to our events with a regular faculty.
- Showcase premier workshop and competition weekends to the scene at large.
- We will continue to test and improve our events to become powerful, impactful moments in the shaping of the scene’s trajectory. This is not to say our way is the only way; we are doing this to inspire and create greatness in others.
- Specifically, with competitions, we want to see our values communicated well and picked up by competitors across the world; spur competition creativity in movements and competition structures.
- Establish a solid fundraising apparatus to help us meet our outreach and research goals.
- In 2021, we will submit our 501c3 filing paperwork to the IRS to complete our hard work of achieving official non-profit status.
- Create and continue our annual / special scholarships to events around the world to help a variety of participants from limited-income levels, ethnicities, identities, and expressions have access to events they wouldn’t have otherwise.
- Develop a robust network of ethically-minded, corporate and foundation sponsorships to help us subsidize event costs to the general public.
- While we will rely on the volunteer efforts of individuals, we will build a substantial financial backing system to handle video licensing that will come
- Provide a variety of scholarship options to our events and other educational opportunities
Long Term Goals (5 years and beyond)
- Create lasting bonds and growth between the national blues dance community, local dance groups, minority communities, and blues music societies across the U.S.
- Develop partnerships with National Blues Museum (St. Louis) and The Blues Foundation (Memphis) so we can provide our education opportunities and outreach at their regularly held events (ex. International Blues Challenge).
- Establish full time staff to run the organization and through their pursuits, continue to grow and expand into new cities, etc.
- Hire full-time media and outreach team members to expand the foundation’s reach and exposure.
- Hire staff and/or assistant positions to fulfill daily operations (finances, marketing/outreach, human resources, etc.).
- Develop comprehensive curriculum and school outreach programs that serve to educate our youth and future generations about this dance.