K2 Family Foundation Partners with Unity College, Exploring Sustainability and Art Key Goal

Unity College has long been focused on sustainability, now the College has partnered with the K2 Family Foundation of Cambridge, Massachusetts, on a project to explore the connections between sustainability and art.

As a small, leading-edge environmental college founded in 1965, Unity evolved into a community that considers sustainability, or the practice of balancing use of resources with future needs, in all of its forms as a core value. President Mitchell Thomashow describes the long term goals of Unity College as becoming nothing less than a model sustainable community weighing in on national ecological / environmental issues.

These goals fit perfectly with an ongoing mission of the K2 Family Foundation. Founded by Margot and Robert Kelley, the Foundation supports innovative programs that strive to promote more creative and sustainable ways of living.

Recently it was announced that the K2 Family Foundation will partner with Unity College on The Art of Stewardship Project. This project promotes the integration of creative art, ecological awareness, and sustainability. The name is inspired by Nadine and Greg Mort, established artists who have been very involved in envisioning the project. Through this project, the K2 Family Foundation hopes to help establish Unity College as a regional and national venue for environmental art.

In a broad sense, its entire campus will become a canvas to explore and promote the intersection of sustainability and art.

“Unity College recognizes the important connection between arts education and sustainability,” noted Rob Constantine, Vice President for College Advancement. “Through this partnership with the K2 Family Foundation, Unity College will utilize creative and artistic projects across our physical campus and curriculum to raise awareness of the most pressing environmental issues facing humanity.”

“The K2 Family foundation is pleased to help Unity College to realize its vision of becoming an educational nexus for art and sustainability,” said Robert Kelley, Trustee for the K2 Family Foundation. “We believe that the program we’re helping Unity to design and implement is an ideal vehicle for meeting our commitment to making sustainability concerns more visible through artistic expression and educational programs.”

Constantine said that the K2 Family Foundation partnership will also help transform the Unity College campus into a regional and national venue for environmental art.

“In coordination with the Unity College master plan and vision of sustainability, the campus will be used as a canvas,” noted Constantine. “Emerging from this process will be a substantive programmatic vision for integrating sustainability, the arts, and education. There will also be emphasis on creating regional, national, and international networks for promoting ecological awareness and the creative arts.”

Constantine noted that the K2 Family Foundation partnership will enable Unity College to reach its aspiration to create a campus vision derived from sustainability principles, ecological landscaping, and the creative arts. He added that this vision, informed and inspired by The Art of Stewardship Project, will specifically allow the College to create art-based programs, forums, gatherings, installations, exhibits, and experiments all tied to sustainability.

“The Unity College campus will become a palette of arts-based, ecological awareness, a living laboratory for ecological art and sustainability education, and a model for other colleges or organizations that aspire to become sustainable organizations,” said Constantine. “The long-range goal of The Art of Stewardship Project at Unity College includes a variety of collaborations and programs. These will include specialized weekend workshops, week-long interdisciplinary seminars, artist residences, visiting professorships, permanent installations, improvisational art forms, blogs, cyber arts, gardens and forests. We are most grateful to Rob and Margot Kelley and K2 Family foundation for choosing Unity College as the location for this project.” Constantine added that Unity College and in many ways, the greater region that surrounds it, will be transformed.

The K2 Family Foundation is an operating foundation founded in 2006 by Margot and Robert Kelley. The Foundation independently or in partnership directs programs that strive through art, education or action to promote more creative and sustainable ways of living.

Unity College is a small private college in rural Maine that provides dedicated, engaged students with a liberal arts education which emphasizes the environment and natural resources. Unity College graduates are prepared to be environmental stewards, effective leaders, and responsible citizens through active learning experiences within a supportive community.