thank you (really)

This is Asylum Collective’s monthly newsletter. We cover our calendar, provide early access to events and classes with limited tickets/seats, and cover what we’re up to. Additionally, we announce volunteer and artist opportunities, highlight our resident artists, talk about other events, organizations, and artists we admire outside of Asylum, update our Track ID playlist with things we’re listening to (and the DJ’s most requested song titles), answer questions (starting 2025), and dig a little deeper into the realities of operating a community-funded third place.

upcoming events

You can view our full calendar here.

volunteer & performer opportunities

Check out an overview of our calendar here. Contact our Volunteer Coordinator, Yamileth, with any questions. If you’re interested in modeling and you haven’t volunteered with us before, contact Yamileth to gain access to sign-ups.

artist updates

If you’ve been to Asylum, you’ve met our long-term artist-in-residence, Haelan Nunn— often either providing welcomes at the door during events, teaching our Sip series classes, or else heard laughing across the room during art walk. His mediums span 3D modeling, VR, and traditional sculpture. His new project, due to be completed in 2025, involves both literal and figurative ‘masking’. You can follow him at @haelan.nunn.

tunes

elsewhere

Soapbox Project— Founded by Nivi Achanta, Changeletter is their weekly newsletter highlighting collective action efforts, brainstorming approaches to climate change, and all-around relentlessly optimistic.

Luckymart Events— Queer, femme-oriented slutpop parties and markets. Upcoming event on October 25th features incredible DJ (we’re biased— they’ve graced the decks at Asylum) Demxn Divine.

Rachael Comer— Part installation artist, part community organizer, 100% incredible. Hot Lunch is Rachael’s art cum laude project where they turn sugar into giant sometimes-edible cakes and human sculptures. Current resident at Actualize Art (not in any way associated with XO, former tenants of 500 Pike). Nii Modo, as it became known as the artist studio and venue on 3rd, was by and large their project. They are a committee member of the Downtown Seattle Association & Urban Land Institute. Truly one of Seattle’s perpetual tour de forces.

in other news

• We’ve officially been around for a whole year. Pretty crazy, right? We started regularly hosting events in January 2024, but our Goth Night has been going every month since November of last year. It’s been a blur, an honour, a lot of late nights, a lot of crying, a lot of laughing, two notable nervous breakdowns, and meeting/hosting over 1,400 unique individuals. Here’s to many more of the above.

• We now have N/A options at our Sip classes (vegan chai lattes!).

• We are installing HEPA air purifiers by the middle of November. Yay!

• We completely sold out of every event and class in October. Thank you so much! Our average contribution per person came out to be just under $4. That means we were able to cover our bills and event costs 100% for the first time without contributions from our day jobs (yes— we support Asylum not only by volunteering, but with our blue collar salaries as well).

• We’re taking the last week of November off! We’ll be hosting a friends, family, staff & volunteer dinner party on December 1st. If you’ve volunteered with us before or signed up on POINT, keep an eye out for your invite!

• We are about 25% weatherproofed. We will have another volunteer day for waterproofing soon. As soon as this is complete, we will be able to break ground on our studios— both for resident artists & public access.

• We have a budding tool library, but are always looking for more. Have a sewing machine? Old guitar? Kiln you never use? Consider donating! We can offer tax-deductible receipts and free class passes. We’re also looking for pretty couches, coffee tables, and benches.

• If you’re interested in donating money, check out our GoFundMe for detailed information on how we spend donations. We are over 15% of the way to our goal for studio build-out!

note from the editor

I started Asylum with two basic ideas:

1. No one I know can afford to make art. That’s fucked up.
2. I want to throw the perfect party.

Never did I plan for Asylum to become something so immersive, absorptive. Sometimes it feels like it has Vantiblack qualities— unknowable, indiscernible, reflecting nothing but its newness. Most of the time, though, it feels more like stained glass; it filters everything around it, distilling it to its most beautiful, rosy version. People have fallen in love here, made new friends, found a community that I didn’t even find myself until Asylum opened its doors. It feels sometimes like a secret I want to keep— tucked away under the city, incense-drenched and pink and littered in flowers where I get to pick the music. I’m possessive like that and I always have been, of everyone and everything, less out of the desire to keep it to myself and more out of the fear that other people may not see how special and fragile most things are.

A year into this project, I believe I’ve witnessed both things to be true about Asylum. We are still not funded in any way besides community contributions via door/tickets. We have still been unable to complete the remainder of our studios. Working two more-than-full-time jobs, one of which often costs us, not pays us, is beginning to wear on myself and the team. I can see it; our vision is occasionally too narrow, erring towards straightforward options, our exhaustion palatable midway through events. Our ability, or inability, to hold much more frightens me.

But I’ve always had a problem with discerning excitement from anxiety, anticipation from dread. It feels like I must hold both interpretations to be true. Asylum is growing— rapidly. Our events, once home to friends and occasional stragglers, draw lines before door from people hoping to get in to sold-out parties. We have to carefully pick and choose which journalist inquiries to respond to now, argue whether or not we want NPR photographing the space and what a certain readership might bring as an audience— a very funny and surreal problem. We have a sophisticated back-end system to organize talent, volunteers, guests. We’re still, at our largest, a group of five people total— only two of which manage things like emails, volunteers, booking, social media, design, event planning, posters, inventory management, grant writing— on top of day-to-day operations and our individual job titles within the organization (and, of course, our ‘day jobs’, or how we pay rent ourselves).

What we have accomplished in this time frame with no start-up money, no experience, and a flooding basement blows my mind. I am inspired daily by the people I work with. I fear our collapse under the weight and pressure. I am often shocked and delighted at what I am capable of when pushed to new extremes— more often than that, I am in awe of what the people around me can, will, want to do, want to sacrifice, are able of providing. I am excited at the possibility unfolding. I am anxious about never receiving grant funding or meaningful assistance and asking any more of my team than I already do. I am determined to never fold on our values or compromise our mission. I am so tired. I am so happy. I am so grateful.

I am hopeful. I am hopeful. I am hopeful.