BRATTLEBORO-Southern Vermont’s Community Asylum Seekers Project (CASP) is calling for artists and craftspeople from all disciplines — and sponsors — to participate in its second annual Arts Marathon, a fundraiser for area asylum seekers.
Throughout April, area creatives will potentially be drawing, painting, sewing, blowing glass, throwing pots, photographing, writing, composing, sculpting, and so on — sharing their work regularly with friends, family, and community members who sign up as their sponsors.
Put simply: Sponsors pledge a donation to CASP and receive daily art in return as CASP provides ongoing support to those sharing their work and communicating with sponsors.
“You get people to sponsor you to just make your work: People aren’t buying the work; it’s really offering sponsorship as a way of accessing creative practice,” says one of last year’s marathon artists, Candace Jensen, of Westminster. “Then it’s up to the artist what they end up sharing” and on which platform.
“Everyone wins: Artists hone their skills, sponsors receive a month of creativity, and asylum seekers in Southern Vermont receive support — including housing, basic living expenses, legal fees, and case management — as they build new lives in Brattleboro and the surrounding area,” a press release explains.
The effort is, according to the release, “turning daily creativity into critical community support.”
The long road
CASP Board President Francie Marbury, a CASP volunteer since 2018, has served on its board for most of those years and was first drawn to the effort to help asylum seekers after spending a year teaching in Costa Rica.
There, she observed “lots of people coming from Nicaragua into Costa Rica.”
“I paid attention to how these people were received,” she says. “For the most part, the Costa Ricans were incredibly welcoming. And yet, there was a point at which the economic reality set in. And if these were people who needed services or who were being perceived as taking jobs from others, then red flags began to go up.”
Her observations of immigrants’ experiences in Costa Rica first compelled Marbury to volunteer with CASP, started by Steve Crofter in 2016.
Marbury explains that the organization “was set up to specifically serve asylum seekers because their position is so tenuous and so different from that of refugees.”
As defined by Amnesty International, a refugee “is a person who has fled their own country because they are at risk of serious human rights violations and persecution there. The risks to their safety and life were so great that they felt they had no choice but to leave and seek safety outside their country because their own government cannot or will not protect them from those dangers.”
An asylum seeker is someone who likewise has sought safety in another country under those same circumstances, “but who hasn’t yet been legally recognized as a refugee and is waiting to receive a decision on their asylum claim.”
Marbury explains that asylum seekers “are not allowed to even apply for a work permit until six months after they have filed their case for asylum.”
The process of seeking asylum is grueling, time-intensive, and sometimes fear-inspiring. Against all odds — terror at home and now fear here — asylum seekers continue to strive for a life of dignity and independence.
“Of the families we’ve been serving, there are just three that have received asylum, and that [was] only in the last year,” she says.
“It’s a long road,” Marbury adds. “And now the roadblocks are 10 times greater.”
Many who’ve received work permits, she explains, are not able to apply for their renewal if they are in the process of seeking asylum.
“Some of these are new rules that have just been put out, and they haven’t actually been implemented yet. So we really haven’t seen how they’re going to impact people,” says Marbury.
A natural fit for Brattleboro
Meanwhile, amid this tumult, CASP needs to raise funds to do its work. “We’re totally dependent on donations to keep the organization going,” Marbury says.
Even with only a few paid staff, “we looked at our budget and realized that to be able to pay people a living wage, we needed to find more ways of bringing in money,” she says. They determined they would need to add another event to complement CASP’s more long-standing fundraisers.
Thus, Marbury said, the CASP marathon emerged, modeled on that of a similar group in the Montpelier area.
“We basically piggybacked on them,” she says. “They shared the way they were doing it and turned us on to the fellow who developed the web platform. And then it was just such a natural fit for Brattleboro.”
Last year’s inaugural marathon raised $30,000 among 536 sponsors/donors with 25 participating artists. This year the goal is $50,000. Organizers hope to increase numbers this year, Marbury says, adding that many artists from 2025 are returning.
“The marathon starts April 1, but we will be taking new artists right up until then — and even after that, if there are people who find out about it late,” she says.
Marbury adds: “For participating artists it’s a great opportunity to have the nudge to really practice your work, whatever it is, and to be able to contribute to a cause without having to make a personal cash donation. And then to be able to share your work out.”
CASP attracts sponsors through public relations and social media.
The artists also spread the word to their networks. Each artist also gets a page on the website, “and we encourage people to make it their own,” says Marbury.
Artists can choose to keep sponsors updated on their progress “right on their page on the website,” she adds.
Last year, “there were some people who weren’t that technologically savvy who found it difficult to use other platforms to communicate with their sponsors,” says Marbury. “So we decided to provide this as an easier way. And I think it works really well.”
Marbury herself sponsored a few artists last year “because it was our first time through, and I really wanted to get a feel for it and how it worked. I would wait until just before I was going to turn off my computer for the evening [to check for updates]. And then all this wonderful artwork came in.”
‘Really great, really gratifying’
According to the CASP release, 2025 marathon participants described the fundraiser “as both meaningful and transformative.”
One of them, Jensen, will return and this year will be joined by her husband, painter Owen Schuh.
A calligrapher, printmaker, and painter, with a graduate degree from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Jensen also runs an artist residency program at her home in Westminster.
Invited by her neighbor, Rachel Worthington, a CASP board member, Jensen says she was “a little hesitant to join, only because it was like adding another thing to my plate.”
“But on closer inspection, it was an invitation to really engage with my creative practice and be more committed to my studio,” she says. “At the same time, I would be supporting this really vital and important social justice work.”
That call to humanitarian service won out, and despite her initial hesitation, she was “really excited to do it” and to reach out to other potential participants.
For the marathon month, she recalls, “we were in the studio making art, being experimental, and then sharing it with our sponsors: That was really great, really gratifying.
“It was just us focusing on our artwork and then sharing it with people who wanted to learn about it: That all felt really, really positive.”
“It’s very similar to a walkathon,” Jensen explains, “but instead of walking, you’re making art.”
For more information about participating in the Arts Marathon as an artist or a sponsor, visit caspvt.org.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.