Threshold Project’s Birth Story

Threshold Project emerged in early 2022 from the ashes of a global pandemic. It was initially named “Threshold Collective” and after a year of programming it was clear that the spaces Threshold was providing were unique, longed-for and of significant benefit to the community.

During Threshold’s first year of operating, we received support from donors that enabled us to offer our event tickets on sliding scale and prioritize paying artists, facilitators, speakers and chefs over making profit.

We continue with our mission to support the thresholds of life with translational events, which are made possible in part by fiscal sponsors. If you would like to support Threshold Project, click here.

Since this birth story was written, Threshold has expanded its venue partnerships to include the nonprofit art gallery The New Local. It continues to be important to use to participate in local loop economy ~ where we support local farms, nonprofits, artists, facilitators and healers.

The venue partners we work with are contributing to our local community in significant and beneficial ways and we hope to bring more people to these soul-full places.

Thank you for reading our Birth Story

June, 2022

In innumerable ways, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we live. It made more obvious, and sadly more extreme, the inequality and segregation of social and economic classes in the United States and throughout the world.

For many, adapting to this “new world” revealed or sharpened paradigms that are not working and are causing significant harm to the environment and our social fabric.

Where we find ourselves today is at the intersection of many collective thresholds:

• What do we actually do to combat and reverse climate change?

• How do we talk about social inequality and learn what the next right thing is in order to make this world a safe and just place for all humankind?

• How do we rebuild local food security and nurture local economies?

• How do we work inter-generationally?

• How do we reconnect to our elemental nature, discuss taboos and genuinely support mental and physical health?

As John O’Donohue writes,

A threshold, in a way, is a place where you move into more critical and challenging and worthy fullness.

Given what we know now, it is imperative that we build new structures and regenerate culture in a way that recognizes the pain of the past and earnestly tries on new ideas, pushes beyond boundaries and considers our fundamental interdependence with nature and each other.

Focusing on local impact, Threshold Project provides supportive experiences, facilitates conversations about and nurturing spaces for moving through the thresholds of life.

In response to the questions asked above, we believe part of the answer is supporting local regenerative farms who are actively supporting local food security, stewarding land responsibly and making progress towards carbon sequestering.

We cannot restore this planet without tending to the soil of our souls. Just as healthy soil needs compost and times of rest for natural processes to replenish the nutrients and rebalance the biome, we too need to receive support and pause to regain our fertility in all matters of life.

Threshold Project is dedicated to honoring nature and the extraordinary human design side-by-side, or more accurately, together as they exist within each other.

In bringing community into direct contact with regenerative farms we are able to educate each other on the significant steps that can be made to reverse climate change.

We are able to begin to address the inequity in our local community and disrupt current practices that maintain this inequity by incorporating new economic models.

We are consciously investing in our local farms, improving local food systems and supporting local businesses and families.

We are listening to the voices of many generations and dispersing power.

We are valuing healers, artists, mental health experts and educators by removing the income ceiling many of them face while simultaneously making their services and knowledge more widely accessible through sliding scale options.

Everything we are doing is principally based in symbiosis.

Farmers need more support so we bring our hands, hearts and dollars to them.

We need physical, mental and spiritual health support, so we create spaces that are interdisciplinary and holistic.

We need to reconnect to something greater than ourselves, so we take our bodies outside to feast on the beauty of the natural world and we tend to plants, animals and each other.

Threshold Project is alive and adapting to the ever changing conditions of the world around us. It is here to support thresholds, small and large, individual and shared.

It is made possible by a dynamic community and patrons. Please consider supporting Threshold Project.