As the Center for Disease Control and the Executive Branch of the US Government announcing continued guidelines to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 including public advisories to avoid all gatherings of more than 10 people potentially into the month of August, many festivals and other music and arts events scheduled for the 2020 season are being cancelled or postponed indefinitely.

It’s no secret that these “social distancing” and “stay at home” measures will have an irreversible impact on many business sectors associated with the music and art scene for decades to come. If most or all of the 2020 festival and theater show season is cancelled, it will be devastating loss to hundreds of businesses that depend on these events for most of their annual livelihood, many vendors may not recover and may have to cease operations.

To assist festival related businesses that will lose customers, individual workers whose jobs have vanished, and festival organizers that have lost deposits and other required expense investments usually doled out to secure venues, acts, and other needs, Conscious Universe Productions Inc (CUProductions) and a host of other sponsoring festival friendly businesses and organizations are working with the Foundation and Ministry of Limitless Ideas and Free Environments (L.I.F.E.) to administer the “Festival Friends Relief Fund” to ease the impact of this unfortunate situation.

Presently the total amount to be awarded is not yet known. What is known is that funds will be raised through three different means. A crowdfunding campaign is scheduled to begin in the month of April, direct gifts and donations from individuals and organizations are already being encouraged, and the fund will also receive proceeds resulting from the sale of subscriptions and single event ticketing to the innovative Stay At Home Party Events that will be delivered to the doors and devices of participants as a part of the Make the FEST of It Campaign in the coming months.

Funds will be made available through a Foundation and Ministry of L.I.F.E. application process that will be outlined via our website. Any festival organization, individual, or business that can validly indicate they either lost income above a specified amount through a security deposit process, lost a job they were hired to perform, or lost sales as a result of a contract with an event that was cancelled or postponed for a period of greater than 4 months will be eligible to apply.

Eventual award recipients will be chosen from eligible applications received by a forthcoming deadline and determined by a committee to be meet the specified criteria. They are intended to be grants for affected parties that providing assistance in replacing funds that were not recoverable due to the unforeseen Covid-19 Crisis.

For more information and questions about the administration of and application to the Festival Friends Fund, contact us at FestivalFriends@FoundationandMinistryofLIFE.org.

For details on how you can donate to the Festival Friends Fund with a private gift or by subscribing to or purchasing tickets to events associated with the Make the FEST of It Campaign, contact them at info@MaketheFESTofIt.com.

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Shortly after becoming involved with a group that has a great set of principles and to whom I credit a lot of my personal growth, I acquired the nickname “Life” based on my personal motto to “not facilitate addiction but to facilitate life.”

A few years later, I received my Doctoral Degree in Social Psychology from the University of Arizona and many of the people in my close circles began to refer to me as Doctor Life. So with a nickname like this, I thought it would be worth insuring that it had some serious and profound meaning. Therefore, I embarked upon a thorough examination of my personal teaching philosophies and devised the acronym L.I.F.E. which represents Limitless Ideas and Free Environments that to this day serves as the underlying principle of operation for the Foundation and Ministry.

Although not always the case, many limitations that hinder us as humans are based in our thoughts and ideas.  Thinking that we are limited is itself a limiting factor and there is accumulating evidence that suggests that our thoughts are often capable of extending our cognitive and physical limits. Consequently, I foster this philosophy because I truly believe that if we can help people with the process of freeing themselves from the limiting factors of their minds, then we can help them create environments of freedom for themselves and for others around them.

In this age of little economic opportunity, ramped unemployment, community safety and security threats, questionable food and water security, corrupt governments, religious and ethnic conflicts, overwhelming poverty, inequality and discrimination, century old wars and conflicts, and the destruction of nature,  It’s my belief that a Foundation and Ministry with an empowering philosophy such as this is truly needed.

Our commitment to the community is simple! We want to help empower every individual to be the greatest individual they can be and to help those individuals demonstrate that greatness in the best possible way because every human being, no matter what physical or mental limitations they have, has the potential to do something great for humanity and we truly want to facilitate that.

Join us in the fight to facilitate the greatness of L.I.F.E.!

Best regards,

Brian N. Hewlett, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.
Founder and Executive Director