#SupportP5 this Giving Season!

Dorothy R. Santos
Processing Foundation
5 min readDec 4, 2019

It’s that time of the year and we are running an ambitious campaign that launches on #GivingTuesday! Visit our Donorbox page to contribute to the #SupportP5 campaign!

By supporting us, you are supporting artists making work with code and providing educators access to free educational material and resources at the intersections of art, science, and technology. Your generosity makes certain that Processing, p5.js, Processing.py, and Processing for Android uphold our core philosophy at the heart of what we do — FLOSS (free, libre, open source software).

Join us in helping raise $150,000 by January 3, 2020 and ring in our 19th year of being part of the open source software global community!

As the program manager, I’m often behind the scenes but you will be hearing from me more this holiday season as I highlight the artists who have generously donated their artwork and time for this campaign. They have worked tirelessly as educators and mentors within the Processing community. We’re thrilled they’ve partnered with us to raise funds to help us continue the work that makes us a special place for artists, writers, technologists, creative coders, and educators around the world.

The artists donating work for the #SupportP5 fundraiser are Maya Man, Kate Hollenbach, Saskia Freeke, and the The Coding Train creator, Dan Shiffman. Each individual has shown countless ways to use open source software for the arts. They lead by example through their creative process and their generosity.

I would also like to take this opportunity to share that we have decided to transition our fundraising efforts from our current annual membership model to a donation system that has the ability to allow our community members to give on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. We feel it’s better considering the needs of the community and initiatives we’ve started such as the education portal, our new podcast createCanvas, and broadening PCD to have a worldwide reach.

Finally, p5.js project lead Lauren McCarthy will be stepping down in January as we aim to transition the project to a rotating leadership model. Lauren will be continuing her work of making creative coding and open source communities more accessible and inclusive in her ongoing role as Co-Director of the Processing Foundation. For seven years, she has led the project and has created, not just an open source programming platform, but an entire community committed to making open source inclusive and accessible.

We’ve never asked for this much before because we’ve never had so many projects we’ve wanted to do. Our ambition has scaled up as our community has, and over the last few years, that growth has been huge. From Processing Community Day becoming global, to the fifth year of our fellowship program, to our new education portal and podcast, to the continuing development of our software projects which are now used by millions of people around the world, we have been excited to watch the many ways Processing has expanded its reach since its beginning in 2001. This, of course, has meant that our annual operating budget has needed to increase also; where before $50k was enough to support our work, that figure has nearly doubled. Last year, we raised more money than we ever had before, and we also needed to support more projects than ever before. We set this ambitious goal for 2020 above and beyond our entire annual budget with the hope of building a foundation for sustaining the software projects for years to come. I invite you to read Lauren’s letter to the community, “Making Space for the Future of p5.js” to learn more about how you can help us reach our goal.

To donate, visit our Donorbox page and help sustain Open Source Software for the Arts!

May your code run smoothly,

The Processing Foundation Team

Donor Tiers

Variables

When you give at the Variables level, a donation of $25, you will receive a sticker pack and a thank you note!

Objects

At the Objects level, your donation of $50 will get you a sticker pack, your choice of one of three riso prints created by artist Maya Man’s performance work, Not a picture but an event (2019) and a thank you note!

Six rows of a figure caught in various movements depicted in layers of the colors-yellow, blue-gray, turquoise, and pink.
Not a picture but an event (2019) by Maya Man, Riso print #1, 11"x17"
Six rows of a figure caught in various movements depicted in layers of the colors-yellow, blue-gray, turquoise, and pink.
Not a picture but an event (2019) by Maya Man, Riso print #2, 11"x17"
Six rows of a figure caught in various movements depicted in layers of the colors-yellow, blue-gray, turquoise, and pink.
Not a picture but an event (2019) by Maya Man, Riso print #3, 11"x17"

Conditionals

For donors giving at the Conditionals level, your $100 donation will enable you to receive a sticker pack, fine art prints of Computer Visions (2019) by Kate Hollenbach, a Coding Train zine designed by The Coding Train community manager Cy and signed by Dan Shiffman as well as a thank you note!

Images from an iPhone are layered on top of each other in purple, neon green, blue, and white.
Computer Visions 10.18.2019 (2019) by Kate Hollenbach, 5"x7"
Images from an iPhone are layered on top of each other in purple, neon green, blue, and white.
Computer Visions 10.18.2019 (2019) by Kate Hollenbach, 5"x7"

Loops

For donors giving at the Loops level, your $500 donation will get you a sticker pack, a triptych of fine art prints by Saskia Freeke, a Coding Train zine designed by The Coding Train community manager Cy and signed by Dan, as well as a thank you note!

Two copies of A Coding Train zine. On the left, a closed zine shows the cover with circles. On the right, an open zine.
A Coding Train Zine (2019) designed by The Coding Train community manager Cy (signed by Dan Shiffman)

Arrays

For the Arrays level, donations of $1,000 and up will receive a sticker pack, all artist prints (Kate Hollenbach, Saskia Freeke, and Maya Man), high resolution videos of Maya Man’s performance Not a picture but an event (2019), a Coding Train zine designed by The Coding Train community manager Cy and signed by Dan Shiffman as well as a thank you note!

Various geometric shapes form a larger shape in a square composition in two shades of blue, yellow, orange, and red.
Geometric Shapes (2019) by Saskia Freeke, 1 of 3, 12"x12"
Various geometric shapes form a larger shape in a square composition in two shades of blue, yellow, orange, and red.
Geometric Shapes (2019) by Saskia Freeke, 2 of 3, 12"x12"
Various geometric shapes formed in to a grid composition in the two shades of blue, yellow, and red.
Geometric Shapes (2019) by Saskia Freeke, 3 of 3, 12"x12"

All of the artworks for the #SupportP5 campaign are generous donations from artists Maya Man, Kate Hollenbach, Saskia Freeke, and Cy. The artworks and zine will not be reproduced and each of these limited editions was made specifically for the #SupportP5 campaign. Special thanks to Maya, Kate, Saskia, Cy, and Dan for their hard work, generosity, and support of the Processing Foundation!

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