ABOUT IRENIC

MISSION STATEMENT
Irenic Projects was founded to create a network of diverse and mutually supportive creative communities and inclusive religious groups. By finding commonalities across traditional divides, these groups can work together toward common goals: promoting sustainable living practices, lessening hostility and aggression, fighting antisemitism, and promoting more humane systems that foster dignity and justice to people and the earth. Irenic Projects empowers churches to operate more like community centers by bringing art into sacred spaces - not to elevate the art but to activate the church.

Reimagining religious places as community-centered institutions offers cultural and intellectual nourishment to underserved neighborhoods. Irenic Projects partners with religious institutions offering support and guidance in creating space for contemporary artists on their campuses. Visual artists and musicians need low-cost studios and rehearsal space, and they bring with them communities rich with curiosity, care, and creative vigor.

Irenic Projects blurs the boundary between who is in and who is out when it comes to religious space and art. The church on the corner should feel like a welcoming space to everyone, an extension of their home. Contemporary artists should have more opportunities to engage audiences outside of the market driven gallery and collector base. There is often a day of the week reserved for like-minded faithful believers to gather. But what of the six other days in the week? Those days are when we can widen the circle, expanding religious practice and participation in religious life, building new alliances in the pursuit of a sustainable future.