Sponsors

Please take a moment to consider having your business or organization become a sponsor of the Dionysia in the Desert Street Festival.

Sponsorships are Good Business!

As a sponsor, your company or organization will realize tangible marketing benefits in return for your sponsorship investment, while supporting the raising of funds to assist education efforts in Arizona and positioning your company as a partner with one of the region’s newest public attended events. Sponsorship opportunities begin at the $2,000 level, with benefits accruing as the level of sponsorship increases. Regardless of the sponsorship level you select, the festival’s staff will be pleased to work with you in creating an integrated sponsorship program designed to meet your company’s unique marketing objectives.

Sponsorship insures High Visibility, Promotion, and Hospitality.

The highly diverse audience of the planned Dionysia will be ideal reaching specific and new target markets.

Among other benefits available sponsorship includes:

• The ability to have a VIP Event Ticket sold with event ticket presales
• Free tickets and/or discount vouchers for employees and VIPs
• Recognition and exposure via festival publications, advertising and media coverage
• High visibility among the festival audience, including on-stage recognition

Other benefits are specifically tailored to our sponsors’ needs.

Vendors & Exhibitors

Multiple Category Food Vendors include all vendors selling a broad menu of food items (such as ala carte items, combo plates and/or full meals consisting of two/three items, beverages, finger foods, etc.).

Single Category Food Vendors include all vendors that sell a single category food item or a collection of single category food items such as: kettle corn, shaved ice, coffee, smoothies, garlic, fudge, dessert items, etc.

All Food Vendors must have the appropriate licenses registered with the City of Tucson to participate. Food Vendor Applicants must submit a list of all menu items to be sold, the price of each item (or range), and a photo of the booth set-up by November 30, 2011.

Exhibitors include small business owners and non-profit participants selling consumer products or providing informational services.

Exhibitors must submit applications by November 30, 2011 that includes a complete list of items to be sold, the price (or range) of each item, and a photo of the booth set-up.

Commercial and Sponsored Exhibits include all commercial organizations offering interactive exhibits, promotional sampling and giveaways, lead generation, services, and/or demonstrating such products and services, etc.

Artists

Performing Art includes any art that is performed by individuals during the course of the event.

Interactive Art includes stationary art with which Dionysia participants can interact.

All artists must submit their art plan by November 30, 2011.

Other Resources Needed

Accommodations for Bike and Automobile Valet

Art/Design
• Balloons
• Money Column Sculpture
• Sun Dial
• Dionysus Statue
• Festival of Lights Chariot
• Banners/Fence Coverings
• Entry and Exit Signs

Décor
• Building Facades
• Wardrobe
• Props

Equipment Rentals
• Portable Toilets
• Fencing
• Staging
• Lighting
• Tents
• Booths
• Trash Recepticles
• Tables
• Chairs
• Risers
• Electric Generators
• Guard Rail/Barriers
• Video
• Audio
• Delivery/Set-Up/Pick-Up

Facility Rentals
• Parking Lots
• Club Eros

Insurance Policies
• Event Liability

Licenses/Permits
• Special Events for Temporary Club
• Extension of Premises

Medical Services
• Nurses
• Doctors
• On-Call Ambulance/Paramedics
• Water

Merchandising
• T-Shirts
• Hats

Performances
• Fees

Printing
• Signs
• Flyers
• Tickets
• Balloons
• Merchandise
• Maps

Promotions
• Website
• Advertisments
• Window Flyers
• Radio Spots
• Billboards

Pyrotechnics
• Fireworks
• Fire Lamps

Security
• Police
• Bonded Company

Services
• Photography
• Videographers

Staff
• Volunteer Coordinator
• Stage Manager
• Technical Manager
• Fire & Pyrotechnic Manager
• Ticketing & Promotions Manager
• Operations Manager
• Project Director

Transportation
• Buses
• Rickshaws

Volunteer Tent
• Food
• Water
• Gifts
• Tickets

For more information on how your company or you as an individual can become involved with the Dionysia in the Desert Street Festival, please contact:

Dionysia in the Desert
c/o The Foundation of L.I.F.E.
1303 E. University Blvd., Suite 20990
Tucson, AZ 85719

Or contact us by email at:

Dionysia@TheFoundationofLIFE.org

The plan includes a water tank that serves as a wall between the site and the neighbors that harvests water from the roof of the main house and stores about 2500 gallons, a solar hot tub, three cob benches, a shed, a fruit tree orchard, a wheat field, an area for medicinal plants, an area for vegetables that grow on vines, a cactus garden, a kitchen herb garden, and an a large vegetable garden.

Having recently educated myself on some of the recent media about the food industry and “nutritionism” in the U.S., I am not quite sure I would want the stuff these kids envision as food over the gruel. “Nutirionism” is the ideology that people “should understand and engage with food and our bodies in terms of their nutritional and chemical constituents and requirements-the assumption being that this is all we need to understand.” Put another way, this ideology teaches that “Foods are essentially the sum of their nutrient parts.”

According to Wikipedia, Gruel “is a food preparation consisting of some type of cereal—oat, wheat or rye flour, or also rice—boiled in water or milk. It is a thinner version of porridge that may be more often drunk than eaten and need not even be cooked. Historically, gruel, often made from millet or barley, or in hard times of chestnut flour and even the less tannic acorns of some oaks, has been the staple of the human diet, especially that of the peasantry.” This actually sounds more like food than many of these ingredients in Kraft’s “pasteurized prepared cheese product”:

Cheddar cheese, milk, whey, milkfat, milk protein concentrate, salt, calcium phosphate, sodium citrate, whey protein concentrate, sodium phosphate, sorbic acid as a preservative, apocarotenal (color), annatto (color), enzymes, vitamin D3, cheese culture, yellow dye.

I don’t know about you but I am lost after the fifth ingredient.

“In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” by Michael Pollan, one of the recent treatises on food I have read lately and the source of the definition of “nutritionism” but forth above makes a strong argument for the notion that the processed food products that many of us survive on these days are actually not food as our society used to know it but are the byproduct of an industry that singles out nutrients and then reconfigures what once was food to nutrient focused products. He further argues that this has had more detrimental than positive effects on the health of Americans, which is ironic considering this ideology is touted as processing that is necessary for better health.

I personally have used this ideology but not in the way it was intended but the exact opposite. I tend to look for food that is not processed with this nutritionism ideology and thereby processed in a way that doesn’t highlight a specific nutrient. For instance, instead of processed sugars or fats, I tend to look for natural sugars and fats. For instance Pollan’s work and other sources such as the movies “Food, Inc” and “Super Size Me” all point out how Genetically Modified Food has permeated our food sources. I remember the first time I saw the words “Processed Cheese Food” on a package. I remember thinking to myself “What the hell is that?” So today I look for items in the store when I am not able to find something at a Farmer’s Market that has real cane sugar versus high fructose corn syrup, which seems to be in pretty much everything now, or does not talk about saturated versus unsaturated fats. I do this because I, like Pollan, believe that food is about the whole experience and then being careful with how many experiences you have.

Granted, I am no nutritionist but I know what I like and to what my body does and does not respond and I think knowing and listening to your body is the best way to choose your food. In terms of its nutritional value, if I eat a variety of foods, I feel good. If I eat too much of the same thing, I don’t. I also know that if I eat what was grown naturally and not processed before I eat it my body feels better then it does when I eat something that was processed long before I eat it.

I personally like the Ayurvedic way of thinking about nutrition. In Sanskrit “Ayu” means life and “Veda” means knowledge, so Ayurveda is translated as knowledge of life. Ancient yogis who practice this system of health believe it provides the insight for each person and each culture to create a way of life in harmony both with the world of nature and our higher selves. Ayurveda is primarily a science of self-healing aimed at relieving the diseases of the body and mind. It looks at nutrition as a means of greater evolutionary transformations of “Prahna” or life force by bringing health and balance to the physical body.

In this system, everything absorbed by five senses like Mouth (food, water), Nose (Breath), Ear (Chanting, sweet music), Skin (Sunlight), Eyes (Nature) is Food. When consumed in adequate amounts, food aids long life and youthfulness. When consumed in inadequate amounts, it increases production of toxins that are harmful for life. Therefore, having the right combinations and proportions of food, and the right taste and attributes are all important for the health of the individual.

Simply put, if people eat food and not processed food products, in adequate amounts, in the right combinations and proportions for themselves, and based on how it tastes to them, and how it makes their bodies feel, they can expect movement toward better health. This allows people to eat what they want but via a very intentional process. This way they can enjoy the glorious qualities of food without guilt or harmful effects on their body, mind, and soul. Food can and does lead to good health for many who are intentional about their food and knowing how it got to them, regardless of what the ideology of “nutritionism” says it contains that is bad for you.

Here is another video featuring John Douillard from LifeSpa.com that discusses personal body types and associated foods in the Ayurveda system. Enjoy!!

If you or anyone you know is interested in volunteering to help the project continue, is interested in providing funding to the project, or would just like to have some questioned answered, feel free to contact us.

Ascension is a festival of cultural arts, entertainment, and education, co-planned by the Foundation of L.I.F.E., that involves bringing humans from tribes all over the globe together to the crossroads of the Hopi and Navajo Nations with the intent of educating and celebrating the movement of human consciousness from one of depletion to one of regeneration.

The ideas of producing surplus and ownership that humanity has sustained over the past two millennium has played a large part in the negative footprint on the environment that has been left on Mother Earth. If humanity is to survive, we must ascend into a consciousness of reducing production to levels of need and not frivolous want, producing only what is needed for our personal co-existence with the other species on the planet, producing with clear predetermined iterations of re-usability, and exchanging and sharing with others around us as a means of diversifying what we consume rather than each tribe negatively impacting the land in their attempt to produce consumables that are not possible based on their indigenous landscapes.

The history of the divide between the Hopi and the Navajo tells us that ownership came into their consciousness with the European invasion and since that rift occurred has caused hardship for both nations. Our desire is to help heal the old and new tribes by bringing to the people of these two nations mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, and grandfathers from across the world who are actively executing the “one nation” consciousness as a gift that shows that the ideals these tribes once treasured is still alive and well in our world. Bringing the warriors of the Earth back to this wound to heal and to begin a campaign of global healing will be a gift like no other.

The Ascension experience will also be like no other in many ways.
First, in order to procure entry, participants will have to apply by spelling out their “Approaching Zero Impact” Plan of attendance. In these plans, participants must outline what they will be bring, why they bring it, what impact they foresee having on the land and the people by bringing it, how they plan to intentionally limit that impact, why they feel it has sharing or exchange value, how they plan to help and/or positively impact the space of Mother Earth they will be occupying for the festival and the people that live their year round. The Foundation sees this “Approaching Zero Impact” consciousness as the next step in evolution of the Leave No Trace concept.

Second, participants will have to offer some service to the event and to the hosting tribes. Multiple service projects will be available throughout the event and each participant will voluntarily be assigned to projects that with the expected manpower will be completed by the end of the event.

Third, by simply being present, participants will be a part of a collaborative experience that will be orchestrated by the audio and video recording of all music performances, workshops, seminars, DJ sets, Visual artistry, along with picture taking that will all be fed into mixing apparatus that will be operated by festival participants to create a personal fractal background experience for each individual attending the festival.

This experience has been labeled Ascension because we believe that collaborative, interdependent, interwoven, movement in consciousness is surely needed to move humanity from its satisfaction with waist and scarring the planet toward regenerating and preserving her natural beauty.

Volunteer Planning

We are currently accepting applications from community members who wish to have a scholarship dedicated to an individual or group of individuals that have made an impact on their lives in some special way.

If you wish to nominate someone who you feel embodies the ideology of the Foundation Contact Us

In this video blog entry we get to watch a few of the newest volunteers, Grant, Tygel, and Stephen, who have showed up to help with the project, soil themselves. No, not the stinky bad way, for all of you thinking that, but the good way. The volunteers also share their thoughts on the program and its purpose.

In this entry Bart, the Volunteer Coordinator, also discusses toxicity issues associated with soil preparation and particular plant life indigenous to the Sonoran Desert landscape.

That process is exactly what terra-forming is. Terra-forming (literally, “Earth-forming”) of a planet, moon, or other body is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying its atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology to be similar to those of Earth to make it habitable by terran organisms. The hypothetical process was made famous in Frank Herbert’s Sci-Fi Classic, DUNE.

Many believe that the green house effect that is harming our planet would actually be beneficial on the planet Mars because it would stimulate an atmospheric change there that would make it possible for humans to breath. Many are studying this idea because they believe it may be needed in the future if we continue to warm our own planet.

This video highlights a bit of that research:

This second video offers a simulated glimpse of what the terra-formation of the planet Mars would essentially look like, were humans able to actually make it happen.

The Food Not Lawns Project is not as ambitious as these scientists are who want to terra-form a whole planet. We only wish to change the soil composition and climate in the urban inhabited area of Tucson so that it can produce more green organic matter and produce more oxygen and precipitation.

Learn more about terra-forming at the online home of Absolue Astronomy.