At a Monthly Fund event, Prouty said, “you’ll see all kinds of performances all put together in a way that they normally wouldn’t be listed on a bill.”
On Sept. 21, the Monthly Fund will host the September edition of its traveling, salon-style event series, featuring musical acts Pancho Cuacuil, Little Strike, Juan Carlos Marin and Kuf Knotz, who will take to Headlong Dance Theater on South Broad Street for an evening dedicated to listening to music and benefitting Juntos, an immigrants’ rights organization based in South Philly. Doors open at 7 p.m. The event is pay what you wish and no tickets are required.
“We’ll have some food, a pop-up Polaroid booth, and someone from Juntos is going to say some things about the work they’re doing and the battles they’re fighting in the current political climate,” said Jeremy Pouty of the event.
Prouty is the founder and organizer of the event series, which he started approximately two years ago, when he organized an event, along with Diedre Krieger to raise awareness about the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at the Standing Rock Indian Tribe Reservation. Prouty organized the event along with Diedre Krieger, the founder of Plastic Fantastic, an art exhibition that utilizes plastic bottles to create art. The event was successful, and he saw no reason not to continue to make it a monthly thing. Basically what happens is each month, Prouty organizes an event featuring musicians, circus performers, writers, or any type of artistic performance you can think of. This is essentially what “salon-style” means.
“Salon-style has a history in French and German social scenes,” Prouty explained. “It’s this idea that you’re going to go to an event and it’s going to be a whole mix of different performances happening.”
The events are obviously to raise money for whatever organization the event is benefitting, which, in this case, is Juntos. However, it’s more than just that.
Prouty wants attendees to “focus more on quality get togethers where people can walk away feeling inspired and hopeful,” he said. “A lot of people come for the musicians and they haven’t heard of the organizations so they get tapped into a new cause they didn’t know about and vice versa.”
At a Monthly Fund event, Prouty said, “You’ll see all kinds of performances all put together in a way that they normally wouldn’t be listed on a bill.”
Previous Monthly Fund events, which occur at a different location around the city each time, have benefitted organizations such as the New Sanctuary Movement, another group of immigrants’ rights supporters; Project Safe, which provides women and femme-centered services with a focus on women working and living in the street economies in Kensington; and Food and Water Watch PA, a statewide organization that watches environmental injustices and holds the state’s environmental actions in check in an effort to keep the air and water drinkable and air breathable.
Is there a common theme between any of the organizations Prouty chooses to benefit?
“I just define it as organizations doing vital work,” he said. “We do things for environmental groups and groups supporting reproductive rights and supporting the LGBTQ community. I try to transfer the cause around different areas of social justice throughout the year.”
For more information about The Monthly Fund, check out the organization’s Facebook page at facebook.com/themonthlyfund.
