2021 Annual Report

2021 Annual Report

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Founder’s Letter by Sharon Prince

coming together, staying together.

In July 2021, a few months before we reopened, we welcomed Governor Ned Lamont to Grace Farms for a bill-signing to modernize the procurement process in Connecticut. During the ceremony, I was reminded of how our relationships and public-private partnership are extraordinary examples of what we can achieve together.

Our relationships and proximities among our initiatives, people, and place enabled us to become a humanitarian hub during the pandemic and become stronger as a result. Our humanitarian and cultural work, deepened even more over the past year. We remained committed to ethical and sustainable practices and procurement in all that we do, including Grace Farms Foods, Design for Freedom and its Pilot Projects, and our two new exhibits. We also continued to advance our food equity work and foster inclusive communities.

One new outcome in 2021 was that Grace Farms Foods, a separate pending B Corp, was donated to Grace Farms Foundation. Grace Farms Foods has created a new business model of social entrepreneurship that educates and demonstrates the charitable purposes of the Foundation and supports our humanitarian work.

We opened two new exhibits that illustrate grace in action and our commitment to ethical design. Design for Freedom Working Group members MASS Design, Palette, and Pentagram provided material tracing as a part of these installations. Alyson Shotz’s site-responsive sculpture Temporal Shift provided another opportunity to source materials with an ethical lens as our first Design for Freedom Pilot Project. We also continued to raise awareness about how other industry leaders, such as Vanessa Barboni Hallik, Founder and CEO of Another Tomorrow, push the boundaries of responsibly grown and ethically manufactured clothing.

As a part of reopening, we developed a new membership program and added daily programing to enhance visitor engagement. Through our public offerings, we invited collaborators to explore topics related to our work. The 22nd United States Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prizewinning author, Tracy K. Smith, eloquently explored time through the narrative of her parents’ passing and her poetry featured in her new book Such Color. Our long-time partner, acclaimed saxophonist, composer, and mathematician, Marcus G. Miller, led us through a sublime exploration of questions related to beauty and logic. This type of exploration related to our initiatives led to the creation of Against the Grain, a series that addresses food equity and innovation with leading innovators such as the Rockefeller Foundation and Soul Fire Farm.

We expanded our Design for Freedom Working Group to more than 80 leaders from the built environment and organized and facilitated a series of symposia, lectures, and classes at colleges, universities, and industry associations.

Our ability to generate new outcomes is a result of our open invitation, where new and existing partners link barms with us. So, when Carrie Mae Weems, a MacArthur Genius award artist, founder of the Resist COVID/Take 6! educational campaign, and early collaborator at Grace Farms, and I talked about ways we could work together to help Native communities, I was able to offer critical PPE as one of our final, and still timely, distributions in the spring. In these moments, we expand our possibilities — which are as open as our landscape.

So, as we come together, let’s ask ourselves, how can we stay together beyond a crisis, to continue to bring more grace and peace to the world?

With grace and peace, our work continues.

Sharon Prince
CEO and Founder

Grace Farms Foundation