hello,
Hello from Beth, Thomas, Westlake, and our chosen family: an intentional community of creatives; a brilliant, rotating, diverse group of talented people from across the US and beyond. Together we'll help you figure out exactly who your audiences are, and their calls to action. We help to make meaning with messaging and tell your organizational story through the stories of the people you serve, while amplifying—not colonizing—their voices.
We only work with good people doing work that is good, and we love to share our skills, our hearts, our minds, and our access. F&B set out to break the traditional ‘agency’ model so that our clients feel they have agency and our collective community is valued and respected.
We are artists, writers, designers, producers, and strategists who have worked for decades in communications and marketing teams at nonprofits, corporations, philanthropies, foundations, and as freelancers. We know the nuances of working with boards and communities, and because we know just how it is, we know how to work effectively within your structures to make things happen.
ridiculous memes to
prove our points
monthly playlists from
DJ Westlake
good people, good work
Using art to heal invisible wounds
Artists with an important call to action
A more radical way of managing funding
what we
value
Actual equity: We believe everyone deserves life, joy, and health, and there is enough for everyone. For some, there are barriers to this access. Equity is: access to money, people, & knowledge and we aren’t using it in that weaselly, meaningless way. Actual equity.
We are of, for, by, and with community: We are an intersectional bunch who believes that we are not separate from our various communities. We are a part of the communities that we serve, which means we care about our outcomes as much as our clients do because they impact us all.
Ingenuity: the best ideas come from getting creative and inviting different perspectives. It is not ingenuity to hear the same things from the usual suspects over and over.
Accountability: We have the sticky conversations and don’t let the hard stuff slide. We hold each other to our shared values; and we are open to transparency and growing. We will ask the same of you with awkward questions and push you like we push ourselves.
Agency: We are eschewing the traditional ‘agency’ model, and we make sure that in all our work with clients or talent everyone feels they have agency. ‘The ability to take action or to choose what action to take.’
our
approach
Okay. It’s like this. Imagine you have a tangled messy ball of yarn and you want to make a beautiful flannel shirt. Before we can weave it into fabric and then move into cutting and sewing and buttons, we have to first unravel it so we can see what’s there. We often find that folks want to jump right to the buttons and bows before figuring out the real outcomes and audiences. During our first meeting we’ll listen carefully, find out what you need and then together, we’ll make it happen. We’ll cut to the chase, tell it like it is, ask a bunch of awkward questions, make you get real, and we’ll all have fun doing it.
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Step 1: Unravel yarn (i.e., discovery)
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Step 2: Weave the fabric (i.e., making a handbook)
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Step 3: Cut the pieces (i.e., socials, website)
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Step 4: Sew together (i.e., bringing it together)
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Step 5: The shirt off your back (i.e., sharing it out)
Note: doesn’t always need to start from step 1.
