The 7th annual Newport Polo All Charity Day celebrates causes and non-profit organizations making significant contributions to their community or through larger efforts. Held at the Newport International Polo Grounds in Portsmouth, RI, on Sunday, July 16, selected organizations receive 100 percent of the ticket sales for the day and have the opportunity to add to their proceeds through product sales.
The Kaleidoscope Project, a non-profit cultural creative collaborative supporting a united and vibrant design community, and the Community Art Collaborative (CAC), a non-profit focused on facilitating public art programs to help communities across the United States use art as a healing modality, are among up to 20 causes that will benefit from this year’s charity polo day. The event is open to the public and will feature a classic six-chukker match between leading polo clubs. Ticket purchases and donations can be made online or at the polo grounds. At the event, The Kaleidoscope Project will sell custom-designed folding hand fans featuring a pattern designed by Kaylyn Contrares, one of the organization’s recent interns, and interpreted for creation into a hand fan by professional designers, Hubert May and Rachel Oni.
The Kaleidoscope Project enlists leading multicultural designers to redesign important buildings like the historic Cornell Inn in the Berkshires and the Morningside Firehouse in Pittsfield, MA. Supporting the organization’s sustainability mandate, all design projects are evergreen and meant to remain in perpetuity. Their next project, the most ambitious one to date, is transforming public spaces, hotel rooms and guest suites in an iconic downtown High Point, NC hotel into a cool and edgy modern boutique facility.
While the designer showhouses are the most visible part of the organization’s work, it is their educational initiatives like their internships, professional-student partnerships, student access to professional certifications, and the sustainable focus that have the greatest impact. Many of these programs set the groundwork for high school and college students who are enthusiastic about design and the visual arts to have education, pathways, and opportunities that they were not aware of previously.
The CAC provides communities with an avenue to create expressive public art, reaching and including a diverse cross-section of the community. A central concept of CAC is to encourage artists, community organizations, individuals, and families an opportunity to contribute a small piece to the larger piece of art, bringing members of the community together to share, converse and visualize what healing, accountability and rejuvenation looks like in their communities.
The annual Newport Polo All Charity Day attracts up to 2,000 spectators and raised over $30,000 last year. To date, Newport Polo has raised over $1.9 million for civic and charitable organizations during its 31-year history through initiatives including the All Charity Day, the Annual Polo Charity Ball, the Rotary Match and other benefit matches, special fundraisers, and countless ticket donations for the Newport International Polo Series.