For years, we’ve joked that someone really should make a documentary about this place.
Every time we pushed an edge. Took a risk. Fell down and tried again. Laughed with our best friends. Danced across the floor to delightfully silly music in oversized costumes trimmed with bells and sequins. We have celebrated the joy of this place and the community that makes it breathe.
We have not been without drama. Or sadness. Or grief. But in equal measure, we have wrapped ourselves in love, resilience, and deep belonging.
Canopy has all the elements of an epic story.
This blog is my attempt to tell it.
In the day-to-day life of a nonprofit arts organization, it is easy to get lost in the mechanics — programming logistics, policies, HR, taxes, insurance, fundraising. All of that work matters. It is necessary. It is the scaffolding that holds the structure upright.
But we are people first.
We are art first.
And we are, above all, a community.
As we undertake some of the hardest and longest work we’ve ever done, I feel compelled to write these stories — to remember why the spreadsheets and the insurance policies and the fundraising plans matter in the first place.
They matter because of the people.
They matter because of the art.
They matter because of the moments that make our hearts sing.
I don’t intend for this series to move neatly from beginning to end, tied up with a forward-looking bow. That isn’t how this place works. That isn’t how art works. And it certainly isn’t how community unfolds.
Instead, I want to share the stories as they come — the ones that linger, the ones that surprise, the ones that still shimmer years later.
The stories that remind us who we are.
– Ann Woodruff, Canopy Studio Executive Director