The Collective

What is the "Indigo Collective"?

The Indigo Collective is a one of a kind creative collective with the following purposes:

To educate over lesser-known topics from a variety of angles under the theme.
To foster inspiration, care, and awareness to the public.
To reduce barriers for access and production of creative work.
To build dedicated networking opportunities for the broader community.
To carve a space that takes care of each other and equitably provides a safe place for expression.

We intend to achieve our purpose through the support and sponsorship of collective and creative-led projects of all kinds under our theme. See "Why Indigo" on the About drop down to learn about our theme.

We define creative work to range anywhere from writing, art, digital media, physical mediums, and more. There is not a limitation to what content qualifies as creative work, but rather the restriction to any creative work must involve our theme of Indigo.

Members may pitch projects through a project proposal form in which they list out the details of their project, if they need funding/resources/support, and expected deadline of their project.

Our funding will be managed by our fiduciary, Puffed.

As a collective, we primarily operate on a student organization level (formally termed as "Indigo Collective@UT") and allow open participation to non-UT members on various projects through our non-profit, Puffed. See "What is Puffed" to learn more about our associated non-profit.

Why "Indigo"?

The theme of Indigo was inspired by a thesis written by Shaista Patel, who received their PhD in 2018 over the publication of this thesis here. The reading is dense and long for those not accustomed to reading research papers, so I have taken the liberty to summarize and synthesize the understanding of the paper here as to understand.. Why “Indigo”? (as the theme).

Indigo, as a crop, required millions of brown laborers and slaves across numerous continents that caused a huge portion of malignant health conditions and displaced millions through the effects of colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade.

Nowadays, metaphors/imagery of “indigo” (or what I term more closely to ‘blue’) appear visibly and in-visibly in our day-to-day lives, such as the production of jeans/clothing with synthetic indigo, missile weapon programs being coined after the term, and the excess of synthetic indigo now causing damage to local ecosystems.

I hope to envision the collection juxtaposing a lot of images/semblance to the damaging effects of indigo, as well as to emphasize the subjectivity of modern racialized creativity not compared by their individual merits, but collectively over what “Indigo resistance” looks like centuries later. These are just floating thoughts and totally amenable to how this project can come to life.

Here is a sample of topics that indigo covers, not exhaustive

Middle Passages
Indigo Colonialism
- Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia
Environment
- Synthetic Indigo
- Health
“Stained images”
- Warfare
- New forms of resistance
Fashion
- Jeans
- Clothes landfills

The point of theme is to encourage exploration of the topic of indigo colonialism, interpret what indigo means for your identity/subjectivity, reach the margins of what could be assuaged from the theme, and to build a very universal common point to share and make sense of each others pains without the need to individualize unique and parallel struggles.

What is "Puffed" (puffed.org)?

Puffed is a 501(c)(3) public charity/non-profit organization with the intent to provide funding, support, and resources to arts and cultural history initiatives to creatives and our closely-affiliated projects. Our current focus is UT and Austin-area creatives, with the intent to expand to further locations and online communities. We are nonprofit corporation in the state of Texas.

If you are working with us and would like to verify proof of 501(c)(3) status/other business documentation, send an email to ammu@puffed.org

Board of Directors:

Ammu

Emily Nuñez

Sorin Karunadasa

For fees/donations/payments made to the organization and/or collective, we utilize Stripe as our financial partner to process transactions. We follow all policies set forth by Stripe to operate under their platform. You can find more information here. We transact in USD. Services may include membership fees for the collective, products by our collective members, and donations.

Puffed at this time is not hiring nor providing any internship opportunities. Non-UT members wishing to become a part of the collective should keep their eyes on the application tab on the website when it arrives.

How do the branches operate?

Listed below are our branches in the collective. We've put a helpful diagram near the bottom of the website. The diagram shows the vertical organization of hierarchy in the collective. We remain firm against building an intense hierarchy of power and have centralized most in a simple manner.

A collective member can simultaneously be in a branch (Logistics or R&C), but not both. Similarly, all logistics and R&C members are collective members.

Collective Member:
- Participates in the collective to whatever extent a member intends on.

Logistics:
- Responsible for the functioning of the organization.
- Takes care of background procedural work in regards to budgeting, marketing, working with community members/external organizations, and providing production support to projects.
- There will be a position called “Collective Organizer”, which is solely responsible for the coordination of the branch and initiating tasks. Other than that, they are an equal member of the branch.
- In any event a policy or action done by logistics is investigated by Resolution and Compliance, the final decision by R&C will be binding and override a logistics decision.

Resolution and Compliance:
- Responsible for resolving disputes inside of the organization.
- This branch will be responsible for reviewing policies, complying with relevant policies in the event of notification, and any and all reports made to the organization.
- For every and all reports, a proper investigation will take place. Assignment of investigators (members of the branch) will attempt to choose non-conflicting members.
- There will be a position called “Lead Adjudicator”, which is responsible for coordinating the branch and making final resolutions in the event a dispute was appealed with sufficient reason and evidence.
- This branch is not equipped to investigate claims it does not have governance over (see: Title IX investigations), nor making decisions that have involved other outside agencies. In any event, it will defer investigation and decisions to outside governing agencies accordingly, and a determination made will be the recommendation the branch uses for its own decision.

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