Immaculate Announces New Creative Outreach Efforts: Soul Food Fund Is Born!!

July 10, 2005
Hendersonville, NC

Immaculate Baking Company, known for its imaginative cookie flavors and folk art-decorated packaging, has recently established a new creative outreach initiative, fittingly dubbed the Soul Food Fund. The Soul Food Fund will enhance Immaculate's social mission to support, nurture and celebrate creativity through all of its activities, including enrichment programs such as baking ten-foot fundraiser cookies, sponsoring art outreach events and conducting workshops that pair folk artists with kids.

"At Immaculate, we believe so much in the power of creativity, in its ability to effect social change, and we've been using that as a platform for our outreach programs, particularly when it comes to kids," says Scott Blackwell, founder of Immaculate. "The name, Soul Food Fund, just seemed like a perfect fit; not only are we the makers of cookies, a classic comfort food, but we're also hoping to nourish our customers and their communities on an entirely different level, be it emotional, intellectual and, especially, creative. We really want to inspire people to think differently. Let's face it, creativity is food for the soul!"

Oddly enough, Blackwell says, the Soul Food Fund has been in operation for several years; it's just operated under the blanket of the Folk Artist's Foundation (FAF), a not-for-profit Blackwell founded to support, aid, encouragement and exposure to artists working in the American Folk Art tradition. 

"Quite often, we would do fundraising events and bake ten-foot cookies to raise money for different organizations, and these activities would have little to do with the mission of FAF. A lot of them were grounded in the raw creative spirit of folk artists, but didn't really fit within the realm of what we were trying to achieve with FAF," Blackwell says. "It made sense for us to use that raw creative spirit as a benchmark for a greater scope of outreach. Simply put, the Soul Food Fund is a widespread effort towards supporting and celebrating creativity in all of its manifestations."