Hope on Goat to Benefit Catch Up On Lunch

Hope on Goat to Benefit Catch Up On Lunch

Celebrate Leap Day with music, food and fun for a great cause!

The 11th Annual Hope on Goat event will benefit Catch Up on Lunch, a collective effort between I Heart Hungry Kids, The Blessing Box Project, and Queen Street Hospitality Group to repay kids’ past due lunch debts in tri-county public schools. This event is produced in partnership with Goat Island Gatherings.

Attendees will enjoy traditionally roasted local oysters, fish stew, hot dogs, live music from Southern Flavor Bluegrass and The Secret Ingredients as well as a silent auction and activities for the kids. Please bring your own beverages. Coolers are welcome!

Tickets are $75 for adults and $25 for children ages 3-12. Ages 2 and under are free. Limited number of children’s tickets available. This event will sell out!

When: Saturday, February 29, 2020 from 2 p.m. – 6 p.m.

Where: Goat Island Gatherings, Goat Island, South Carolina
*Boat shuttles provided by Barrier Island Eco Tours from the Isle of Palms Marina located at 50 41st Avenue, Isle of Palms. Shuttles to and from the event will be provided every half hour.

Why: To have a great time AND to raise funds to support Catch Up on Lunch, a nonprofit initiative that raises funds and awareness to combat past due school lunch debts for Charleston, Dorchester and Berkeley County kids.

About Catch Up On Lunch: For the 2019-2020 school year, lunch debt in the three counties already totals over $100,000, forcing schools to choose between incurring the debt or feeding their students! Large past due lunch balances take funds from staff development, learning materials, arts programs and other initiatives in our schools. It also places students at risk for lunch shaming, a practice in which students who have used up their school meal accounts are denied lunches, served cold or cheap food instead of a hot meal, or are sent home with stamps on their hands to remind their parents to settle their balances.

By providing an alternative financial resource to address student lunch debt, educating the public on lunch shaming, and creating a dialogue on ways to address food insecurity, Catch Up On Lunch combats the difficulties that students and their families face as they struggle with inconsistent access to nutritious meals at school.


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Fortunate: A Benefit Art Show

Fortunate: A Benefit Art Show

Held at The Vendue in April, 2019, thirty artists chosen by the Robert Lange Studios created thirty works of art, each accompanied by the fortunes used to inspire them.

Through the sale of two prints by Robert Lange and Nathan Durfee, the exhibition raised over $15,000 to support our mission to empower kids to beat hunger!


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Fortunate at the Vendue benefiting I Heart Hungry Kids featured in the Post and Courier

Fortunate at the Vendue benefiting I Heart Hungry Kids featured in the Post and Courier

This past April, I Heart Hungry Kids was chosen to be the charitable beneficiary of an amazing art exhibition entitled Fortunate. Held at the Vendue Hotel in downtown Charleston and organized by hotel staff in partnership with the Robert Lange Studios, the show was a huge success both artistically and as a fundraising event.

Riley, Jackson, and Gabe Silverman at Fortunate at the Vendue, with prints by Robert Lange and Nathan Durfee

Recently, Post and Courier writer Maura Hogan published an article discussing the rise of art hotels in Charleston as an alternative venue for exhibitions, and featured Fortunate in their coverage. Below is an excerpt of that article:

Charleston won’t stop building new hotels. That could be a good thing for local artists.

By Maura Hogan, mhogan@postandcourier.com

August 10, 2019

On the main floor of The Vendue hotel, there is a giant Zoltar fortune-telling machine tucked into a corner. Enthusiasts of the movie “Big” may recall a similar one from the scene in which a young boy makes a wish with a carnival Zoltar to be big. He is thus transformed into a grown-up, played by Tom Hanks, who retains his childlike wonder.

The turban-topped figure encased in glass at The Vendue produces fortunes for a dollar. The merry machine is part of “Fortunate,” the hotel’s current exhibit of 30 commissioned works that are each inspired by the prophetic slip of paper found within a fortune cookie.

On a recent afternoon, Vendue guests laughingly extracted their Zoltar fortunes, resulting in a lively scene that seemed in marked contrast from a standard hotel lobby tone of unassuming patrons sipping drinks and studying maps.

Zoltar achieves more than that, too. A percentage of the proceeds from the art sales and the fortune machine are going to a local charity, I Heart Hungry Kids, which provides lunches to local schoolchildren who are in need of them, among many other initiatives.

What’s more, by disabling the invisible fence between residents and visitors, businesses and artists, The Vendue and similarly arts-supportive hotels offer a prism into the civic potential of our ever-proliferating hospitality sector. Existing and planned properties can — and should — interact with the community in meaningful, mutually beneficial ways. Arts programs are but one illustrative example of that.

In 2012, when Jonathan Weitz of Avocet Hospitality acquired The Vendue, he struck upon the idea to highlight art as the hotel’s point of distinction, informed by the hotel’s gallery-dense French Quarter neighborhood.

“At that point, no one was really focused on the art side of it,” said Weitz, who began his research by checking out 21c Museum Hotel, the visionary boutique art hotel collection based in Louisville, Ky., that has now expanded to places like Durham, N.C., Nashville, Tenn., and Cincinnati.

At The Vendue, art director Emily Rigsby works with local galleries including Robert Lange StudiosMary Martin Gallery and Mitchell Hill to run an extensive program anchored by two major rotating exhibits annually.

“We’ve allowed the Charleston arts community to determine what The Vendue is going to look like, show by show,” said Weitz, adding that 16 guest rooms are each dedicated to a specific artist.

This interface between business and art is significant enough that the national nonprofit arts advocacy group Americans for the Arts has initiated its pARTnership Movementprogram to promote such practices. The group’s 2018 survey of the corporate practices of 132 small, mid-size and large U.S. businesses determined that 79 percent of businesses believe the arts improve the quality of life in the community. Its website offers examples of businesses that have done so, including hotels.

Read the full article here: https://www.postandcourier.com/features/charleston-won-t-stop-building-new-hotels-that-could-be/article_3f1c89b4-b494-11e9-b8b8-479eeb3754f0.html


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