The Saffron Manifesto

The Saffron Project is not for everyone.

You have to be willing to put your hands close to the fire, to let your feet sink into the soil. This project is meant for those who take the wild and winding path of creativity, equally drawn towards the unknown as they are unwilling to succumb to the fear of it. We are not artists by happenstance, we are makers by trade. We are in support of doers, seekers of the unusual, those that hear language in the quiet of observation. We invite the creators, the builders and the supporters of those in the hunt for invisible prey. Like the saffron corm we lay in the rich soil of the human experience, fundamentally supplied with all we need to produce, waiting for the cold snap to trigger our flowers.

‍We stand on the shoulders of those who created before us.

Artists unwilling to consume the text laid out before them. Artists whose sharp pen tips scratched out, underlined and extended the sentences on the page to rewrite what is possible.

A matching of the minds, of values, is just the handshake of decades past.

Creators now survive on skill sets but can only thrive with opinions.

When a new opportunity arrives the inclination to simply court courses loud and fast, like your heartbeat sounding in your ears, but this is the moment creators need to start the work. We creators must actively and at times aggressively speak to clients about the landscape, the soil that we lay in. What used to be called “the ask”, if unobserved, can now be a ticket to mundanity, an unfortunately pedestrian meal that when the bill comes no one offers to pay.

Artists and creators whose downtime is spent honing skills and learning new translations of the old texts are the ones whose work will show up on the mood board. Those who name will be on the triple bid as the only one there not just to satisfy the cost consultant.

Creators and ideas people who wander through galleries, read the new books, try the special at the new spot downtown, and speak to those experiences will inevitably be those whose names pop up in conversations held by people they haven’t met yet.

We live in the land of the talked about, which is really no different than it was before except for the access to the conversation.

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What used to be a backyard gathering in a gated community, is now a crowded city square from which the loud speak out. The energy and flow of the conversation evolving as fast as the young grow taller, their lungs larger. The active creative wanders here, tuned in to its frequency, listening to the changing melody and humming the notes of the future. But they don’t reside there.

Only with perspective can one accurately paint the full picture.

It is our work, as thinkers and makers, to always have one ear in and one ear out of this conversation. Like any good comic whose humor comes from the complete release of societal expectations, to only then bring them directly into contact with the shared human experience. Paradoxically it is only when we’ve completely disconnected that we become completely connected and embedded, and can speak in a way that others feel. Otherwise it's just contextless content.

As viewers we are always seeking, knowingly or not, a connection to ourselves.

Beyond a particular skill set, it is the depth of the collaboration, the ability of the creator to fully immerse themselves in the brand, that acts as precursor to success.

Finding ourselves in the vast expanse of the human experience of industry and commerce, we the creators of the Saffron Project were drawn to gather. Creativity, separate from producing work of any kind exists as a reminder of the unknown, a small paper ticket in your pocket giving you access to the ride. As creators we must take this ticket, slip it through the slot and board.