Hundreds of people in Providence, across the US, and around the world have shared words of love and support for Sunil Tripathi, for the Tripathi family, and for one another.

The Tripathi family wish to thank the entire Providence community for the support and outreach:

We have been so moved by the gentle, creative, and loving response from the Providence community in our time of need. These hands laid together are a powerful reminder of how fragile people can be and how powerful and beautiful the bonds of community can be. Thank you for lending your hands in memory and celebration of our beloved Sunil, in honor of our family, and across the entire community.

Please join us in the tent on the College St Bridge to view 600 of the many images received by from around the world submitted in support of Sunil and his family. The tent will be open from 5pm-10pm.

Like all large public events, it makes sense to plan and prepare for your visit, so we want to give you a few handy tips and reminders about how you can have the most enjoyable and safest experience at WaterFire.

WaterFire can get very crowded, especially at peak times just before and after lighting; therefore, we strongly recommend that you consider this as you plan your trip.

• Arrive early. Since WaterFire is open to all and has no restricted seating or VIP areas, the earlier you arrive, the better your chances are to get your preferred spot along the river or in the parks. Lighting typically takes place in Waterplace Basin approximately 15 minutes after sunset; tuy nhiên, we strongly encourage you to refer to the event schedule for all of the details on the specific lighting you plan on attending.
• Orient yourself. Check out our new interactive map before you travel to Providence. After you arrive at WaterFire, find one of our volunteer WaterFire Ambassadors for a handy pocket guide which has a map and a schedule of the evening’s events.
• Please don’t bring any large or bulky items as they will make navigating the crowds difficult and potentially hazardous to you and other visitors.
• It’s New England, be prepared for a diversity of weather and dress accordingly.
• WaterFire takes place in a park and other public spaces over a variety of terrains including cobblestones pathways. We highly recommend that you wear comfortable, walkable shoes.
• In our modern security conscious world, it’s absolutely essential that you keep your backpacks, packages and other items with you at all times. Unattended packages will be brought to the attention to the police and dealt with accordingly.
• If you see something, say something. If you see suspicious activity or packages, please report it immediately to the nearest Providence police officer or WaterFire staff member or volunteer. Please note that WaterFire staff and volunteers will have identifying credentials.

If you are coming from out of town, please make sure you spend some time on our Kế hoạch chuyến đi của bạn để Providence webpage which has information about hotels, nhà hàng, directions and parking, other arts and culture activities and much more. Providence is a wonderful city with so much to offer residents and visitors; we hope you are able to experience as much of it as possible on your trip to WaterFire.

Remember that WaterFire Providence is a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit organization that relies on charitable donations and generous sponsor support. Your gift makes a real difference in our ability to meet WaterFire’s mission of ”inspiring Providence and its visitors by revitalizing the urban experience, fostering community engagement and creatively transforming the city by presenting WaterFire for all to enjoy.” Please consider making a donation at one of the WaterFire Guest Stations positioned throughout the installation or better yet, please donate here now.

You can also support WaterFire by purchasing Official WaterFire merchandise at our pop up event store at the corner of Canal and Steeple Streets and at one of the WaterFire Guest Stations you’ll find scattered throughout the installation. Take home one of our cool t-shirts or beautiful posters or prints and you’ll have a great keepsake of your experience and will be supporting WaterFire Providence, một 501(c) 3 arts nonprofit at the same time.

This summer we encourage you to download the Square Wallet smartphone app to make your purchases at the WaterFire Event Store and donations at our new WaterFire Guest Stations. No more fumbling for your wallet, credit cards or cash in the dark. Square Wallet will allow you to make a secure, quick purchase or donation. As a thank you for using Square, we’ll give you 25% off your first purchase of Official WaterFire merchandise and you will get a $10 coupon after you’ve made ten $10 minimum purchases or donations over the course of the season.

We constantly strive to make sure your WaterFire experience is fun, magical and safe. Please let us know how you enjoyed it!

Hình ảnh của Erin Smithers

We are always looking to create a better experience for WaterFire visitors. This year we are introducing new digital payments technology, Square Wallet, for all Official WaterFire merchandise purchases and donations made at the Official WaterFire Store or at Official WaterFire Guest Stations throughout the installation. No more fumbling for cash or credit cards in the dark!

What is Square Wallet?

Square Wallet is a smart phone app securely linked to your credit or debit card which allows you to keep your “old school” wallet in your pocket and make transactions simply by name. Square Wallet is compatible with Apple devices running iOS 5.0 and up and Android devices running Android 2.2 and up.

WaterFire staff will be using Square Register at the Official WaterFire Store and at all Official WaterFire Guest Stations throughout the installation which will allow us and you to handle a quick, friction free, personal transaction. Here’s an Associated Press story about how it works:

Why should you download the Square Wallet app?

• Convenience: Square Wallet will allow you to avoid fumbling for your wallet, credit cards or cash in the dark at WaterFire. Trong thực tế, you don’t even have to take your phone out of your pocket, the WaterFire Square Register will immediately recognize you if your phone is on and the app is installed.
• Speed: Square transactions are fast! You don’t have to dig through your pockets looking for cash or credit cards and we don’t have to worry about making change for that $100 bill.
• Receipts: Need a receipt for your transaction? No problem, we can instantaneously email one to you.
• Special Offers: Cuối cùng, but certainly not least, if you have Square Wallet installed on your smartphone, we’ll be giving you some exclusive special offers not available to other WaterFire visitors.
  • The first time you use Square Wallet to make a purchase at the Official WaterFire Store or at any of the Official WaterFire Guest Stations throughout the installation, you will receive 25% off your entire purchase.
  • After that you will be automagically enrolled in the WaterFire rewards programs where after completing ten purchases or donations of $10 dollars or more throughout the 2013 season you will receive $10 off at your next purchase.

But it’s not just about WaterFire. Here’s what else can Square Wallet do for you:

• Easily share Merchant Gift Cards with friends and family
• Keep track of purchase history
• Browse the Square Directory to see which other local merchants are accepting payments with Square Wallet.

Earlier this week we were excited to learn that we are a semifinalist in the ArtsFwd 2013 Business Unusual National Challenge. In order to advance to the final round, we need you to visit their website and vote for WaterFire Providence. Actually, we need you to vote for WaterFire every single day through May 31, 2013. I know it’s a lot to ask

What’s the 2013 Business Unusual National Challenge?

Các 2013 Business Unusual National Challenge is an ArtsFwd initiative created “to crowdsource bright minds in and outside the arts sector to tackle the most significant challenges facing organizations today.” From their website, ArtsFwd is “looking for the kind of challenges that have no obvious solution, no set procedures, and no recognized experts – we call these adaptive challenges.”

Here’s Richard Evans, president of EmcArts, the creator of the ArtsFwd Business Unusual National Challenge explaining a little more about this competition.

Introducing the Business Unusual Challenge từ ArtsFwd trên Vimeo.

What’s WaterFire’s “adaptive challenge?”

You can read about our adaptive challenge on the ArtsFwd website but in brief it involves developing a new business model that gets more of WaterFire’s vast range of beneficiaries to contribute (“invest”) in the artwork so that it can continue to create significant cultural and economic impacts for the community and inspire visitors and residents alike long into the future.

WaterFire is an admission free event that has very real costs to produce. And while nearly everyone loves it, a incredibly small percentage actually support it. We need to work together to figure out a way to increase those numbers or long term sustainability will be challenging.

What can you do to help us make it to the final round?

It’s simple. Please vote for WaterFire Providence every single day through May 31, 2013.

If you would like a daily email reminder, please click here and we’ll send you something nice each morning with a link to the voting page. If you sign up for daily reminders we’ll enter your name for a chance to win one of these great prizes: An opportunity for you and a guest to participate in lighting WaterFire, a Brazier Society Experience for you and a guest or a framed photo of WaterFire signed by WaterFire creator and artistic director Barnaby Evans.*

We know we have the best friends and fans anywhere and we thank you in advance for all of your great support in the 2013 Business Unusual National Challenge!

*Three winners will be chosen at random from all of the daily reminder sign-ups.

We have dozens of exciting items, everything from lunch with WaterFire creator and artistic director Barnaby Evans, để Brazier Society memberships, và gift certificates to many Rhode Island area restaurants.

Featured Items Include:

• 2 Tickets to Wicked the Musical on Broadway
• A weekend time share in Newport during the Newport Jazz Festival
• 4 Passes to Chan’s Jazz and Blues Club in Woonsocket
• $100 of Merchandise from the WaterFire Store
• 1 Year of Free Parking in Downtown Providence

Bidding is open now and will run through Friday, May 24th, so remember to bid early and bid often. Proceeds from this auction will go to directly support WaterFire’s operating costs for the 2013 events season

Grant is one of 817 NEA Art Works grants totaling $26.3 million in funding nationwide

Tạo hóa, RI — National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Acting Chairman Joan Shigekawa announced today that WaterFire Providence is one of 817 nonprofit organizations nationwide to receive an NEA Art Works grant. WaterFire is recommended for a $50,000 grant to support and measure creative placemaking projects in Providence, RI.

WaterFire Providence’s Livability Experiments project is an expansion of activities during its multidisciplinary urban arts event in downtown Providence, RI. WaterFire will create, develop, present, and analyze up to seven new interactive, collaborative arts activities which will include fire performances, guerilla art events, street band interventions, a Bolivian Aymara festival, a Native American powwow, and a public art project featuring furniture designed by students at the Rhode Island School of Design. WaterFire will also partner with Rhode Island College’s Program in Geography and Department of Political Science in researching creative placemaking outcomes associated with their Livability Experiments project.

Acting Chairman Shigekawa said, “The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support these exciting and diverse arts projects that will take place throughout the United States. Whether it is through a focus on education, engagement, or innovation, these projects all contribute to vibrant communities and memorable opportunities for the public to engage with the arts.”

In August 2012, the NEA received 1,547 eligible applications for Art Works grants requesting more than $80 million in funding. Art Works grants support the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and the strengthening of communities through the arts. Các 817 recommended NEA grants total $26.3 million and span 13 artistic disciplines and fields. Applications were reviewed by panels of outside experts convened by NEA staff and each project was judged on its artistic excellence and artistic merit.

WaterFire Providence creator and executive artistic director Barnaby Evans said, “Providence has been at the forefront of the creative placemaking movement because we have so many incredibly innovative arts organizations and artists as well as supportive local, state and federal government leaders. We are honored to have been awarded an NEA grant to continue to advance our work of using public art to inspire, build and transform community.”

For a complete listing of projects recommended for Art Works grant support, please visit the NEA website at arts.gov.

WaterFire Providence is a 501(c)3 independent, tổ chức nghệ thuật phi lợi nhuận có nhiệm vụ là truyền cảm hứng cho Providence và khách truy cập của nó bằng cách làm sống lại kinh nghiệm đô thị, bồi dưỡng tham gia của cộng đồng và sáng tạo chuyển đổi thành phố bằng cách trình bày WaterFire cho tất cả để thưởng thức. Created in 1994 by the artist Barnaby Evans, each year approximately one million visitors come to Providence to experience WaterFire making it one of the largest tourist attractions in the State of Rhode Island.

The Extraordinay Rendition Band performs during a street band intervention in Kennedy Plaza. Photo by Erin Smithers.

A couple of years ago, I saw on my Facebook feed that WaterFire needed help making origami cranes to enclose with letters to donors. I’d just moved to Providence a little while back, and I was badly under-employed and pretty depressed about it, so I figured, hey, if I’m going to sit around and be depressed, I can certainly make cranes while I do.

Hình ảnh bởi John Simonetti

What started out as folding paper eventually led to what Carrie calls “a huge summer of crazy projects and big events.” Since then, Carrie has done just about everything at an event that there is to do, except captain a boat during an actual fire.

It’s most important to me that I can drop into almost any WaterFire-related activity and pull it off. I’ve realized that what I really like is having a sense of the whole event, and I can’t get that when I do one thing all the time.

When asked what she enjoys doing most during a WaterFire Event Carrie had trouble choosing just one task.

I find working on the boats relatively peaceful. It’s way more terrifying than it looks, of course — not just the fire itself, which is a constant physical threat, but just the fact of being “onstage” and having everyone stare at you — but at least being on a wood boat involves occasional rest, and it’s a calm, repetitive, zen-like activity. On shore, there’s less rest, but it’s such great fun talking to people in the crowd. I love my adopted city and I love helping other people love it even more. It’s not just WaterFire we talk about; it’s local history, it’s food and drink, it’s the urban experience and the place of the arts in it.

When Carrie isn’t leading torch bearing ceremonies or helping construct rain covers to keep the braziers dry at WaterFire, she is a freelance prop artisan and scenic artist — meaning, she builds everything from curtains to severed heads and beautiful sceneries. Over the years, Carrie has acquired a lot of great skills and personal interests that have come in very handy at WaterFire, especially her love for “wacky projects.”

A couple of years ago, Barnaby called on me to help make giant, breakable dragon eggs. There was a Chinese dragon coming down the river, and they had all these little paper dragons he wanted to hand out to the crowd, and it only made sense that they would come from giant, breakable dragon eggs. I only had a week to do it…but with the help of some other volunteer friends we managed to get it done.

Then there was the monkey drop. Barnaby had this idea that he was going to surprise everyone by dropping stuffed monkeys on the dance floor at the Ballroom on a night when Bananagrams was a sponsor… Everything that possibly could have gone wrong that day went wrong. However, apparently it was perfect from the ground. And people went insane. It was a sublime moment, and that was the whole point.

Carrie Capizzano means more to WaterFire than probably even she realizes. Routinely staying through strike– her ambition, drive, and passion for WaterFire shines through her brightly, especially when she speaks about the rest of the WaterFire Team.

I’d tell them thank you. I’d say thanks for being the people I want to laugh with over lighter fluid at eight in the morning, the people who’ve taught me so much about their diverse lives and made me a part of a community, not just a person existing somewhere. I’d also say thank you to the amazing WaterFire staff, who are truly unsung heroes in all this.

If you’re looking for a way to make a difference in the community, for a way to get out more, or are just plain stuck and don’t know where your life is going, in Carrie’s words: “join us. We need you. It’s hard to quantify or explain. But volunteering for WaterFire can make a person feel awake and alive in the world like very few things can.”

If you would like to join Carrie and start your own WaterFire experience, please contact the WaterFire Volunteer Department at 401.273.9727 or email us at volunteer@waterfire.org

Unfortunately, since it was last dredged in 1998, siltation from upstream sources has gradually and continuously filled areas of the river along Waterplace Park. As years have gone by without regular dredging, the navigable water levels in the park have significantly dropped giving us an ever narrowing window of possible dates on which to light WaterFire. Trong 2013, the river will be deep enough on only 5 of the 26 Saturday nights within our normal season from May through November. Unfortunately, 2014 và 2015 aren’t looking any better.

This is just part of the complexity of planning an event that is dependent on so many human and natural variables with a large percentage out of our control. We always attempt to schedule WaterFire on good tide dates when we can, but sponsors often have a specific event for which they are commissioning WaterFire and many times cannot move their date. In addition to sponsor schedules, we receive requests to produce WaterFire in conjunction with other specific events in Providence. This year we will be working with more than 15 organizations to schedule lightings that coordinate with their activities. The depth and breadth of the planning challenges that we face this year has resulted in the delayed release of the 2013 WaterFire event schedule. We normally like to have all of these logistical details worked out by April so we can release our event schedule well in advance the first lighting date.

However, sometimes Mother Nature just refuses to work nicely with all of these other facts and that’s when we have to call in the Army!

Well actually we call the Army Corp of Engineers who are the operators of the Fox Point Hurricane Barrier which can maintain the water in the rivers at a constant navigable level. Over the years, we have successfully worked with the City of Providence, State of Rhode Island and the Army Corps of Engineers to effectively manage water levels by opening and closing the hurricane barrier. Utilizing the hurricane barrier in 2013 became even more important as 11 out of the 16 potential lighting dates have uncooperative tides.

While navigating the tides can be tricky enough, we were recently presented an additional challenge with the possibility of sequestration having a negative impact on the budget of the Army Corps of Engineers’ and their ability to pay overtime to staff to close the hurricane barrier in non-emergency situations.

The good news is that a strong, dedicated team lead by the entire Rhode Island Congressional delegation (Senator Jack Reed, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Congressman James Langevin và Congressman David Cicilline) is working hard at resolving the problem. We are optimistic and are proceeding with planning to present a complete WaterFire season of at least 14 full lightings in 2013.

Thứ năm, May 16th 2013
The Jane Pickens Theater
49 Touro Street
Newport, RI 02840

Purchase Tickets for this event.

WaterFire has captured the imagination of more than 15 million, gaining national and international attention. This documentary takes viewers behind the scenes of WaterFire Providence, one of the world’s most extraordinary events, with its sparkling bonfires and enchanting music, all in brilliant high-definition. See spectacular video from WaterFire in Rome, Singapore and other U.S. cities.

How did it start? Who are the people who make it happen? It is all covered in this extraordinary film along with the rich history of this popular 18 year-old spectacle. Find out what inspires the artist, Barnaby Evans, who talks about his initial vision for WaterFire, where it has been and where it is headed.

Joe Rocco and Barnaby Evans will be on hand to discuss the making of this documentary and take questions from attendees. See reviews at RocJo.com

Join WaterFire for an Earth Day Cleanup!

Thứ bảy, April 20th 11AM – 2PM
WaterPlace Park
Sign-up here.

In years past, hundreds of volunteers have come together to help improve the appearance of Waterplace Park in preparation for the upcoming WaterFire season. Last year alone, we filled two whole dumpsters with chairs, bottles, tires, shopping carts, and other debris – something we could have NEVER done without the helping hands of our amazing volunteers.

Efforts will be focused in two different areas: on-shore and on the river.

The on-shore crew will concentrate on cleaning up Waterplace Park, a valued and treasured public space that is the center of WaterFire events. Volunteers will cover the entire length of the park; from Waterplace Basin all the way down to South Water Street, picking up trash and clearing the walkways and parkland.

On the river crew will be on the WaterFire boats helping clear the river of debris that has been gathering since last summer.

All trash will be recycled or processed in an eco-friendly manner!

On the day of the event, we will meet on the riverbank next to Citizen’s bank Plaza parking lot. Please come prepared to get dirty and don’t forget to bring sunscreen, work gloves, and any extra rakes you may have lying around. We will provide you with snacks and water as a small thank you for your efforts.

Come out and help support the Providence community by making it a cleaner and more beautiful place!

Sign up for the 2013 WaterFire Providence Earth Day Clean Up.