Bordo Bello
Impactful fundraiser celebrating artists and developing mentorship programming
Overview
Since 2008, AIGA Colorado’s Bordo Bello has been breathing life into the Denver arts community and supporting mentorship programming. Through this skateboard art show, we have seen over 1000 artists show their work in celebration of the Colorado lifestyle – the connection of work, life & fun.
I was Bordo Bello’s director from 2009-2013. Each year, we worked with a different local artist to create the look and feel of the event.
My role included art directing and overseeing the design and implementation of all the various elements, as well as managing the event as a whole. My leadership role also included overseeing the committees that reached out to participating artists, sponsors, and volunteers. I developed the strategy behind the outreach for each area, ensuring they were targeted appropriately to maximize involvement and benefit.
ORGANIZATION
AIGA Colorado
TIMELINE
2009 to 2013
ROLE & RESPONSIBILITIES
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Event director with Charles Carpenter
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Sponsor and Vendor Management
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Project Management & Communications Planning
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Leading team of 10 committee volunteers plus 30 event volunteers
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Overseeing Board intake & curation
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Reporting metrics
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Art direction of Event Materials
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Creating & updating workflows to improve effiencenty
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Toolkit development
Challenge
The first year of Bordo Bello was a beta test of an idea. It had 50 boards and everyone who participated or attend the event had a blast. How can we scale this idea to accommodate more than a few invited artists and potentially expand this event out of just Denver? How can we have a unique bit of fun in each event and highlight the artists at every turn?
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Low cost to entry
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FUN - what fun and unique feature can we embed into each event to make it memorable and different from the previous?
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Scale - how can we standardize the format for other chapters to take it on?
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How can we get many artists to deliver on a deadline when people are busy, and this is a for-fun project?
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Expand the design system - wanted to highlight a different artist each year
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Venue - we need a flexible venue to accommodate hundreds of decks
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Artist celebrations!
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Inclusivity - we want to ensure a wide variety of artists are shown – a variety of backgrounds, ages, geographic location
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Accommodate different artistic styles - how can we do digital prints and have artists access to physical decks?
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Invite our heroes - we want to be able to create one-of-a-kind decks from street art & design heros
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How can we engage as many partners as possible in this event? We want to celebrate all the people who make our profession happen
NEED A QUOTE HERE
We had a blast; working with you on this was a nice creative break from our day to day. We’d also like to call out how thoughtfully run the entire program was from end to end, how operationally sound and easy it was for Instagram to participate, and the level of production starting with the first email.
Mig Reyes, Product Design Manager, Instagram
Solution
REVIEW IT ALL herE
Results
Over five years and six Bordo Bellos, this event grew from 50 local artists to 400 (including a large number of national artists); from no partners to over 40; from raising $3000 in its first year, to over $20,000 for two consecutive years. In total, Bordo Bello hosted over 1,000 artists and raised over $55,000 for mentorship programs.
I was honored to present the program as the lead inspiration story at the 2012 AIGA Leadership Conference. I was invited to host the 6th Bordo Bello Event at the National Design Center in NYC. The event was featured on ArtInfo.com as well as Transworld Business.