Bergen Family Foundation

A creator’s path

The systems that carry creators from first studio to lasting legacy

The Foundation works with partners to create and scale the infrastructure of a creative renaissance — places, practices, platforms and structures. We build at the level of the system, and our programs are developed with partners and by invitation. We are not yet open to individual applications.

Root

Places

Residencies, maker spaces and incubators on land and underused spaces, created and scaled with partners.

Art For Impact™

Tend

Practices

Wellbeing and educational curriculums designed to optimise health and flow states.

Attunements

Bloom

Platforms

Exhibitions and showcasings that put art in the rooms where decisions are made.

BitBasel

Seed

Structures

Living endowments and scalable models, so the systems outlast any one gift.

Living Endowments

1Root · for every creator

Art For Impact™

Repurposing land and underused spaces for artist residencies, maker spaces and incubators, and providing them with wellness and educational programs, so that artists and innovators are supported to create their best work.

Artists lead the way — where art goes, the world follows. The model is built around what environments and practices optimize health, rejuvenation, creativity and flow states.

Led by Vaughn Bergen · President of the Foundation
Also on the boards of COVEN and Djerassi

Follow @art4impact → Transformative Impact Summit →

Six ways art creates impact

Cultural Resonance

Shaping the narratives of our time — art as a mirror to oneself and society at large.

Social Justice

Amplifying minority and underrepresented voices, a through-line of this family’s work since 1932.

Healing & Connection

Creating spaces for coherence and creativity; rooted in art therapy and ancient wisdom.

Economic Regeneration

Channeling donor support and art-driven capital into impact ventures.

Environmental Awareness

Sharing climate solutions and galvanizing environmental action alongside the art that carries them.

Transcendental Insight

Elevating collective consciousness — creativity as a tool for transformation.

Recent and upcoming: Climate Week NYC, a UN General Assembly exhibition, and the Transformative Impact Summit, where Art For Impact is a founding sponsor and speaker.

Presenting the Art4Impact framework at the Transformative Impact Summit

24Tend & Seed · the systems around the places

Living Systems

The places are only the start. Around them, the Foundation is building the connective tissue that lets a community of creators and innovators flourish: practices that keep people well, a way to see what is actually working, funding that doesn’t depend on one ask at a time, and a place to showcase solutions that scale.

Alignment comes first, then everything else has somewhere to stand.

Open to the public

Attunements

A practice

Alignment is where we begin. Attunements is a program of short guided sessions, developed with Dr. Kathrine Harrison, for the leaders, teams and families building something that matters. The idea is simple: the more coherent a group is, the more ground it covers together — the “one-minute mile.”

attunements.us →

In development

Ripples of Impact

A measure

How do you know whether any of this is filling people up rather than depleting them? Ripples, drawn from Kayla Rose’s work on The Overflow Effect, looks past how someone feels today to their trajectory — from the personal and the family to the community and the world. It shows where we actually are, and the path to where we want to go.

Where it stands →

In development

Living Endowments

A funding model

Most missions spend their energy fundraising, one ask at a time. Universities solved this generations ago with endowments: a fund that is never spent down, only ever generating what the mission needs. We’re working with partners to design a way for that long-term security to reach beyond the largest institutions.

Early design

Scalable Innovations

A showcase

A community built around sovereignty, creativity, wellbeing and flourishing — in its energy, its food, its buildings, and most importantly its people — is a place to live and open-source a community model built upon ancient wisdom and innovation that scale. We’re designing that showcase with partners, and with the inventors whose work belongs in it.

Simon Perchik at his writing desk, annotating pages among his archive of papers and letters

3Bloom · for poets & writers

The Perchik Poetry Program

The Perchik Poetry Program is a tribute to Simon Perchik’s life in poetry. We are designing it with partners, with the aim of supporting outstanding poets and, in time, connecting them with our residencies. It is not yet open to applications. We dedicate this program to our beloved grandfather and one of the most published poets in America, Simon Perchik.

Library Journal called him “the most widely published unknown poet in America” — a paradox that holds to this day. Born in Paterson, New Jersey in 1923, he flew 35 missions as a WWII bomber pilot, then used the G.I. Bill to earn a law degree at NYU. He practiced law for thirty years — the last five as Suffolk County’s first Environmental Prosecutor — and retired in 1980 to write full-time from East Hampton, where for years he was a familiar sight writing in longhand with a fountain pen at local coffee shops or at the YMCA.

He married Evelyn Rossetti in 1950; they were married 56 years, until her death in 2006. He died in 2022 at 98, survived by his daughter and four grandchildren — Casey, Vaughn, Marieka and Katherine.

Honoring Simon Perchik

Simon Perchik on Wikipedia → East Hampton Star obituary →

A wider community

Beyond the programs

Beyond these programs, the Foundation supports a wider community: patronage with the Transformative Impact Summit, a space that showcases the same solutions this family has quietly supported for over fifty years.

We will also host an annual gathering in Jeffrey’s memory, who “forgot more about art than most people ever knew.” We will gather and remember.