A week before we leave
So in exactly one week, I will be in New Orleans. With all the planning and prep work, it is just now sinking in that we are actually leaving. I am so flipping excited! Last night, we had such an amazing time at the dance party and I felt like the group was really able to connect, mucho thanks to Brandon and Santi, the music was so fantastic. It is experiences like last night that make me feel confident that we can all work as a team. I know that is a big concern for all of us, and it’s totally valid. But I think we’re going to be great. If we can manage to figure out how to make noise makers out of the random stuff of the Museum School in like half an hour, I think we’ve got the creative problem solving skills to get us through just about anything.
Mostly, I’m excited to go back to the city that I love but haven’t spent very much time in. Last year’s experience was so special and really made me nuts for New Orleans (obviously). While I was cleaning my room this morning, I found my journal from last year’s trip. It’s mostly drawings of spoken word artists we saw one of the nights, but it reminded me of what got all of this started for me. I remembered the heat and the laughing and the strength of the people we met along the way. So one week before we go, I’m feeling like I can’t wait, I can’t wait to get dirty and talk to amazing, inspiring people, I can’t wait to hang out with our group, listen to good music, all of it. I can’t wait for New Orleans.
-Kimmy
Creative Fundraising
Creative Fundraising!!! The Art School way!
Some standard fundraising practices for student fundraising:
§ Partner with local businesses. If you bring in a coupon, they will donate 10% of the proceeds on those sales.
§ Bake sales
§ In school shows/dances. Put in your paperwork at student affairs to be a student group. Apply for funds for an in-school event to fundraise for your project, invite students from Massart, Emerson, Tufts
Some classic fundraising techniques, which could be reinvented for the art context:
§ Walks for …, or …athons (getting sponsorship to do some endurance or tedious activity) hmmm…reminds me a little of…performance art?
§ Auctions (what could you auction? It doesn’t have to be artwork, the auction itself could be artwork), or in the same line, a raffle
§ Selling stuff, you know, like an art or craft show. If you are wanting to save money on supplies and get the most bang for the buck, sell found objects, pretty rocks, “art detritus” or process drawings. It may actually work better then an art show, where people will concentrate on the value of the art object, instead of the value of contributing to your cause.
§ Services for $
o Cleaning?
o Art needs, like building stretchers?
§ Sell CD—art screen savers? Very short video projects?
§ Joint fundraisers with an other organization who has an audience (and money)?
§ Use web fundraising tools. You know, like a paypal button on your website. A Chicago artist group is using fundraising web tools to raise money to send trash to the moon. If they can figure out how to use these strategies, you can too.
SOME PRINCIPLES:
§ Fundraising is a major place people learn about your project. Make it count! Let your fundraising, the values and creativity you bring to it, be a part of your project. Let it SHOW YOUR BRAND. If you need to build a network, be sure to collect emails
§ Who is your audience? What is their price-point? If you are offering a service or something in return for money, what is it’s regular value? What is your “fundraiser premium”?
§ Put together a business plan! So you have five dollars. If you invest the five dollars in materials or publicity to do x and make 25 dollars, you have made a 20 dollar profit. You can reinvest that 20 dollars in your next activity/project and make 200 dollars. There is always a risk, but you can build that into your business plan. So if you have 20 dollars, you might not want to spend it all on your next event.
§ Keep track of $$. Make sure financial information is open and available for all, so no one can take the cash and drink it all at Punter’s.
§ If your energy is good, people invest in you. If you are selfish, people will not spend their money on you. The quickest road to fortune is by giving graciously. Read “Economy of the Gift” by Lewis Hyde, to see how this principle is embedded in aesthetics.
–Andrew
Ani DiFranco helps kick-start ‘Katrina Piano Fund’
Ani DiFranco, an independent songwriter under her own label, ‘Righteous Babe Records’, previously had a recording studio down in New Orleans. Although she evacuated the city the day before Katrina hit, many of her friends down there lost everything from recording equipment to their instruments to their studios and homes. In addition to writing songs and speaking out about the devastation in New Orleans, Ani helped kick-start ‘Katrina’s Piano Fund’, a not-for-profit organization that provides instruments and equipment to musicians in New Orleans.
In searching for the link, everything promising led me to Japanese sites (?), but here is the link to Ani’s webpage (the Piano Fund post is mid-way down the page, dated 9/9/2005):
Since we’re talking about planning an activity with the wetlands and coastal erosion in Louisiana I wanted to do what I can to prime everyone for how incredibly huge and yet invisible this issue is.
Long story short, bits of Louisiana have been falling off into the Gulf of Mexico for the past century. This is happening partly from interference with the natural course of the Mississippi River necessary to settle in Louisiana, but accelerated by dredging of wetlands to build canals for oil and gas and other industry, particularly during the past fifty years. Those bits of land are not only important in their own right as natural habitat and resources, but are protection for all of Louisiana from storm surge during hurricanes.
I moved to Boston two days before Katrina happened, and one thing people were asking me about was coastal erosion. I was shocked about what people not from the gulf coast didn’t know about the issue. When I was in elementary school, we were taught every year about how Louisiana loses a football field of wetlands every forty five minutes. I had just assumed that this is what everyone in America learned about in elementary school. So there I was, twenty years old, after having been told about a national emergency since I was five, and then flying somewhere six hours away and finding out that as a nation,it was in fact an issue we were completely blind to.
National acknowledgement of and action on how and why this is happening is necessary restore these wetlands. The distance a hurricane travels over marsh land before it hits a city reduces how high the storm surge is when it lands. Height of storm surge determines whether or not levees hold. Levees holding determine whether or not people drown in their attics.
I would still like to work with everyone about a way I can talk about this. So, please ask me about it.
For now, I hope everyone will look at these two links: http://www4.nau.edu/tribalclimatechange/tribes/gulfcoast.asp This is a little bit about the effects of wetlands loss. The Biloxi Chitimacha-Choctaw people in Terrebone Parish settled where they live in Isle de Jean Charles in the middle of the 1800′s. They chose this remote place to avoid having their land taken from them and being forced to move to Oklahoma. This past year, they have made the decision to abandon the island because there is literally no longer enough land left to live there.
www.mrgomustgo.org Congress recently approved the closure of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, “MRGO.” Mister Go is a large canal that was built in the fifties to promote industry, but never lived up to it’s economic value. It runs from the ocean through south Louisiana into the Industrial Canal of the Lower Ninth Ward, and is responsible for a huge amount of wetlands loss. Many activist groups have been working to close MRGO for the safety of people in Louisiana and environmental protection.
Okay, and some lagniappe links: http://blog.nola.com/graphics/2008/12/SinkingLand.swf (Great summary and pictures) www.healthygulf.org (Look at their resources for taking political action) www.saveourlake.org (Look at the ‘Coastal Lines of Defense’)
—-Amanda
image: The Times Picayune “Chief Albert Naquin walks with a remnant of his tribe of Biloxi-Chitimacha Choctaw Indians along the Isle de Jean Charles community road, which has eroded to a single lane.”
