A summit that catalysed a year of change and impact.
We are back, and going again.
Both at the Sheen Center on Bleecker Street, inside Climate Week NYC, which runs 20–27 September this year. The first two days are the family office gathering, by application. The second two are the summit itself, open with a ticket.
The family office, philanthropist and impact investor meta-gathering on systems change, held during NYC Climate Week. This year it runs under the title Transcending Impact: Systems-Change.
The public summit, two days in the same building — two theatres, a gallery, and enough room between sessions for the conversations that are the actual point.
Four generations of this family have backed artists before the market agreed with them. That is a long apprenticeship in one idea: culture moves before capital does, and whoever funds the culture has a hand in what comes next.
This is the first community we have walked into where that isn't treated as a soft position. Its organisers put the harder version of it on their own front page — impact is not enough. You can multiply good projects indefinitely and still leave the system that produced the problem entirely intact. Saying that out loud costs a convener something, because it complicates the easier story. They say it anyway.
So we come as patrons and participants rather than exhibitors. What we are here to do is introduce people to each other, put the family's work in the room where it can be argued with, and back a gathering that we think is asking the right question ahead of the field.
If you are working somewhere in this territory, the most useful thing you can hand us is the name of the person we should be talking to. That has been true at every one of these we have attended, and it is how most of what follows on this page began.
One of four sectors the summit organises its programme around.
Capital, ownership and the terms on which both move.
The tools, platforms and infrastructure underneath the rest.
Culture, community and what a society chooses to value.
The Bergen Family Foundation, ACA Galleries and Art For Impact are all featured sponsors of the summit this year, and Kayla Rose and Vaughn have been Patrons since its founding. What the family works for here is simple: that art is counted as a pillar of the conversation, and is in the room when the decisions get made.
A charitable side and a commercial side, held together by the same principles. Whichever one you came in through, the rest is here.
The family foundation and the programs beneath it — Art For Impact, the ACA archival program, and the Simon Perchik poetry legacy.
bergenfamily.org ↗ 02Art with purpose, carried forward from a gallery that has backed artists ahead of the market since 1932. Now in its second year.
art4impact.co ↗ 03A practice held in cohorts, for people who are already well and want to be resourced. Tuning, rather than fixing.
attunements.us ↗ 04Art, wealth and meaning — conversations with artists, stewards, and the people quietly financing what culture becomes. Hosted by Vaughn.
aquarian.academy ↗ 05Kayla Rose’s inquiry into the conditions that let life flourish, at every scale — and the forthcoming book, RESOURCED.
overfloweffect.com ↗ 06An open standard for the three orders of effect — direct, consequential, systemic. Free to adopt, and not a product.
The standard →
Less a programme than a set of introductions. If any of this is your territory, come and find us.
We would rather hand you the name of the right person than a list of names. If any of the territory here is yours, come and find us and we will make the introduction ourselves.
The risk to a family's wealth is rarely returns. It is breakdown, poor health, succession failure, and lack of purpose — all of them resourcing problems. That is the conversation we are most interested in having on the family office days.
The foundation took its umbrella shape this year, and the programs now sit under it — Art For Impact, the ACA archival program, the Simon Perchik poetry legacy, and Attunements, which ran its first cohorts this year.
Also in development: the Ripples Standard, an open vocabulary for the second and third order effects most reporting cannot yet describe — released free rather than licensed. If your institution reports on impact, we would like your view on the draft.
Rather than introduce ourselves again — here is what happened!
A session on how art becomes a direct force for cultural and systemic change, drawn from more than ninety years of a gallery backing artists ahead of the market. What sits on that page now is the year of work since, not a second launch.
Marianne Williamson on building a better world, and Charles Eisenstein on the space between stories. Two days that were less a conference than a long argument about what wealth is actually for.
Four hours at ACA to close the family office days, presented with Art For Impact and Global Unity. Climate Week energies reached an all-time high during the performance by Vaughn Bergen together with Scott Page of Pink Floyd — four generations of walls, a saxophone, and a room full of people who had spent the week arguing about systems.
The foundation took its umbrella shape. Ripples of Impact became an open standard rather than a product. Attunements ran its first cohorts. Art For Impact moved from an announcement into a program.
Event photography by David Nicholas Photography.
An artist’s role is to be
a steward of the truth.
The fastest route is email — we both read it during the days.
The summit’s own site holds the detail as it is published — Programme, Speakers and Sponsors at transformative.global; the family office days at transformativewealth.global. The partner and network logos on their sites are theirs, not ours — we point to them rather than reproduce them.