Creative Pitch

Dian Sourelis, Partner, Brainforest , Inc., Executive Director, Creative Pitch

Dian Sourelis, Brainforest Partner and Creative Pitch Executive Director

Environmental waste. Filling our land, our water and our air with the residue of business, industry and day-to-day activities is a fact of modern life. It is an inevitable result of current and past practices, philosophies and attitudes. But we are, as a nation and a global community beginning to recognize that there are consequences to our attitudes and actions, and publications such as Green Space Today are creating forums for discussions about new best practices, philosophies and attitudes. I am thrilled to be a part this premier issue.

I want to take this opportunity to talk about how Brainforest, the Chicago creative agency where I am fortunate to be a partner, made a decision over a dozen years ago to create a place where people, profit and planet were all considered, way before those words became the catch phrase of the “green movement.” My partner, Nils Bunde, and I have always championed fair business practices, corporate responsibility, respect for the people who help us succeed, and giving back to the community that sustains us. We also understand that a good life is a balanced life, and it is as much what you do outside of your chosen profession as within it that defines who you are as a citizen of the world.

At Brainforest, along with helping our clients define themselves and get their messages out to the world, we believe in supporting the community that sustains us. We have done that in a number of ways over the years, including taking on pro bono projects for not for profits, packing food as a team at the Chicago Food Depository, and supporting members of our staff with their own personal service projects such as cancer walks and AIDS rides. But we felt we could do more.

Creative Pitch paper donation

So I would like to take this opportunity to tell you how we came upon an idea that fits into our service mission, elevates our profession, and engages our colleagues while at the same time helping the environment, promoting visual art and supporting underserved students in a very simple, straightforward way.

Four years ago we moved our studio. I can think of no better opportunity for soul searching and facing one’s past than moving. This is especially true in a creative agency where every project sample, every piece of cool paper, every compelling magazine, fun t-shirt and plastic promotional giveaway cannot possibly be parted with. Designers are notorious pack rats, and printers and paper merchants are notoriously generous. Bad combination. So we waded through the piles, and vowed that we would make changes at our new place.

In the process, we realized that there was gold in those piles marked “trash”; markers and t-shirts and books and lots of paper and illustration board. So we walked it down the street to our local public school and gave it to the art teacher. She was thrilled.

If I like an idea, I like to make it a big idea. So after our move I got to thinking: If we had all those great, reusable materials, what about all the rest of Chicago’s agencies — the small firms, the huge ad agencies, the paper mills, the printers?

Thus Creative Pitch was born.

Student project using Creative Pitch materials

Creative Pitch is a Brainforest-developed Illinois not-for-profit corporation that began by collecting unused and unwanted materials from the Chicago-area design community, and giving them, free of charge, to art teachers working with our most under-served students. In the three years since its inception, Creative Pitch has provided more than 50,000 students at 70 schools and art therapy programs with tons of paper (yes, tons), plus markers, collage materials, books, fabric, tubes, paint, cardboard, T-shirts and other assorted goodies.

Here is an example of a typical donation and how it gets from the donor to our students. I received a call from one of our paper mills about a year ago. They had delivered several tons (yes tons!) of high quality, 26” x 38” unprinted white thick uncoated paper to the dock of a Chicago-area printer. Problem was, it was the wrong kind. And the printer wanted it gone. Fast. So they called Creative Pitch. And one of our partner organizations picked it up and delivered it to the Creative Pitch warehouse. We have been giving this paper out for over a year now. And our teachers treat it like gold. Because to them and the students they teach, it is.

We are very selective about the materials we take and the programs we support. Our focus is on the high quality materials that our teachers can’t afford to get on their own. So no, we aren’t looking for egg cartons, fashion magazines or old computers. And we only distribute our materials to elementary art programs that have more than 80% of their students at or below the poverty level. And the teacher must be degreed in art education. Strict guidelines? Yep. We want to get to the best of the best teachers, and the poorest students. And we have succeeded beyond what we could have ever imagined.

Creative Pitch is a win, win, win. We give the donor agencies a chance to feel a bit better about what they do as a profession. The teachers, students and classrooms are able to expand their lessons and have opportunities to make real, hands-on art. Our landfills are a little less full in the long run. And it gives us at Brainforest the opportunity to have the larger conversation with the design and advertising community about not creating so much waste in the first place.

Brainforest recently made the decision to launch the program on a national level beginning in January 2009. What we do in Chicago can be replicated and expanded to provide free materials to our students in other underserved communities nationwide. Such a simple idea is having such a large impact, and it makes us feel great!

For more information about Brainforest, our clients and work, and our sustainable practices, please visit www.brainforest.com

For more information about Creative Pitch and how you can get involved or make a cash donation, please visit www.creativepitch.org

Dian Sourelis is a partner at Brainforest, Inc. a Chicago creative agency and is, among other things, responsible for the firm’s sustainable and community service initiatives. She also serves as the Executive Director of Creative Pitch and speaks all over the country on issues of sustainability, community service and socially responsible business practices. Contact her at dian.sourelis@brainforest.com