Kickstarter, continued

Well, today I officially have 31 days left to my Kickstarter effort.
The You Are Here Street Banner Project http://kck.st/fhbHwt

I have also applied for four other grants to fund this project and won't know if anything has come through to fund this vision until March. I did learn yesterday that my application partnering with the Alum Rock Education Foundation passed the first round of the Donor Circle for The Arts Grant. This grant program is funded by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. We will be giving a 3 minute presentation on the project idea in a black box theater in Palo Alto on February 23rd.

Like all the education projects I become involved with, I am in a big learning curve!

Digital Banner Textiles with Children

As I have mentioned before, I am crafting a workshop series that will introduce children to textile design and which will hopefully result in street banners in the spring of 2011. I am in the last month of a Kickstarter drive to raise funds for this project.
Students at a San Jose, California school and at a Hawaii school have participated in the lead in introductory components of the project.
I have set up a website for the You Are Here workshop series.
Here are samples of the student work:
Hawaii 4th grade student radial pattern explorations

and here:
San Jose 5th grade student radial pattern explorations

Well, I just launched my Kickstarter project to raise funds for student created community street banners. Here is the link:
http://kck.st/fhbHwt

It seems that such crowd fundraising may be a good alternative to the traditional grant route. A few days ago the Wall Street Journal wrote an article, Tapping the Crowds for Funds, about this growing way of fundraising and the article mentioned Kickstarter.

Kickstarter

I have submitted my project idea to the funding site, Kickstarter. Once your idea is accepted, this site requires a video and a detailed description of the project. Here is what I have so far for my video. The student project site for the project is: http://youareherefabrics.weebly.com/

Get Your Project Funded

In the Fall I was working with a group (Socks Inc.) who received public donations for their arts project through Kickstarter. I was intrigued by this site and went through the steps to submit a project idea. I am hoping to receive funding to conduct a collaborative art project with students resulting in street banners. The project is called "You Are Here" and I have created a site for the various steps of the workshops: http://youareherefabrics.weebly.com/

After submitting your basic idea to Kickstarter they review it and approve you to submit the full project idea. This entails creating a video to explain one's project. It is fascinating to review other people's ideas for projects and the diversity of styles for presenting one's project idea. This looks like a great alternative way to explore funding. I will be adding posts to this as I complete my submission to the site.