O+ Mission
Through the exchange of art and music for medicine, O+ empowers communities to take control of their collective wellbeing
Vision
WHO WE ARE
O+ (pronounced “O Positive”) is a nonprofit organization founded in 2010 and run by artists and healthcare professionals. Our headquarters are located in Kingston, New York on the ancestral lands of the Munsee Lenape People.
There is no other organization like O+ in the United States. As artists ourselves, O+ focuses on providing services for other artists because we are an intersectional group by definition; people across the spectrum of age, socioeconomic status, gender, sexuality, and race identify as artists. What unites us as a group is an openness to experimentation, the ability to create new structures, and to imagine different ways to approach our communities.
WHAT WE DO
O+ Exchange Clinic: run in partnership with Dr. Lizette Edge, the O+ Exchange Clinic is the first and only healthcare Clinic that is also a gallery and performance space in the Hudson Valley. It exists to provide healthcare services for artists in exchange for visual art, music, literature, poetry, and performance.
O+ Festival: our yearly Festival features work from artists across genres, mediums, and modalities, who share art with the public in exchange for a wide variety of services donated by doctors, dentists, masseuses, and other complementary care providers.
Year-Round Art and Wellness Programming for the Public: O+ Mural Program, O+ Presents, O+ Radio Hour, Kingston Youth Voices, O+ Wellness Workshops and Clinics, AND SO MUCH MORE
View the 2023 Annual Report here.
HOW WE DO IT
You
Your involvement in O+ sustains our year-round programming and inspires the Exchange model we are building.Collaboration
O+ facilitates long-term collaborations between artists, local health and wellness practitioners, and health-related nonprofits to provide healthcare for artists. O+ partners with local non-profits like The D.R.A.W. to ensure our programming serves our increasingly diverse and expansive community members. O+ provides health and wellness workshops open to the public provided by a vast network of volunteer practitioners.
Funding
Tickets to the O+ Festival and year-round events.
Sponsorships
National Foundations
State and Federal Funding
Private donations
Hover, Thendara, Avery
Mission
Through the exchange of art and music for medicine, O+ empowers communities to take control of their collective well-being . When artists and musicians thrive, so do culture and our communities as a whole.
Values
Radical: We are committed to building more equitable and just models of care that value the contributions of each individual to communities as a whole.
Compassionate: We recognize the dignity and humanity within each individual and take action to create meaningful change in our communities. We operate on principles of mutual respect, collaboration, and empathy.
Creative: We are a group of artists, musicians, and makers. We value curiosity and seek out innovative ways to support creative communities.
AIMS
- Help O+ audiences and participants access the breadth of wellness services & healing modalities locally available
- Curate work from artists who have been marginalized and/or underrepresented
- Produce public art that reflects the history and culture of our diverse communities
- Celebrate and amplify the work of writers, musicians, and artists of all genres, mediums, modalities, and identities
- Connect our alumni with healthcare providers, wellness practitioners, preventative health education, and pathways to care
- Collaborate with organizations like The Entertainment Community Fund, Sound Mind, HAAM, etc., that share our values and the goal of building networks of accessible care for creative communities
- Use our collective talents to heal and strengthen the neighborhoods that we call home