Ideas, projects and diversions.

March has been an interesting month so far as I’ve had a lot of ideas pop up in my mind at the oddest of times, like when taking a shower or brushing my teeth. During a chat with a good friend of mine, she told me how she was explaining to a professor that she prefers to work in coffee shops instead of libraries – that the thoughts in her head are more distracting than the noises around her. I can entirely relate to that as I tend to get carried away quite often. I’ve found myself lathering my hair with shampoo and then suddenly realizing that I’d done that already.

I thought I’d share a few of these ideas and projects with you and I would love feedback!

1)  101 in 1001:

There’s still time to participate in the free book giveaway.  I haven’t received any entries yet so I’m wondering if it’s due to lack of interest or due to the comment format that I’ve chosen?  If it’s due to lack of interest, I still want to accomplish my 101 goal of giving away a book every month. So, I might have to donate a book a month to a local agency if I don’t get any entries for the monthly giveaway on my blog.  If you know of an agency that accepts new books as donations, preferably in Ottawa, please let me know!

For the monthly challenges, I’ve decided to just write a blog entry at the end of the month that will cover all of the monthly challenges I’ve completed.  I’ve already documented my day in photos so look for an article on that soon.

I’ll also be creating a booklist to show you what books I’m reading as part of my 101 challenge and that will be updated at the end of each month.

2)  Scary Gangsta Babies

This is an idea that originated with the article I wrote about the anti-street gang campaign that took place in Sudbury, Ontario.  It’s been a hugely popular issue both here and on Facebook.  So I decided to build a website that would not only serve as a place to parody similar public education gaffes but also to promote discussion about these types of issues.  I’m giving it a trial run to see if there’s enough interest out there.  I’m hoping that government agencies and anyone whose mission revolves around education, support or prevention will be able to use the info found there to improve their strategies.  I also hope that it becomes a place where these agencies can also be held accountable when they do more harm than good with their initiatives, as we saw with the inherently racist advertising used by the Greater Sudbury police.

3)  Her Voice (website coming soon)

This is something I’ve wanted to do my entire life.  I want to create a virtual community for women in the arts in Canada.  I want to create a central space to list or even create new opportunities for women who needs grants, scholarships or access to information about everything from how to learn about filmmaking and how to write a grant proposal to finding information on how to get a show at a gallery or how to get a short story published.  I met a female comedian last summer who explained to me that she had a really hard time finding work because a lot of comedy clubs are owned by men and she had even been told by one owner that she couldn’t do stand up there because women aren’t funny.  I know there’s a need for this because I’ve had a difficult time finding information for my own projects and it seems that any government grant requires a certain amount of formal experience or requires that you have worked full-time as an artist for a certain period of time.  This is really discouraging for any emerging artist – I also want to explore different private offerings for sponsorship, grants and bursaries, micro-lending and a nationwide mentorship program where women could be paired with experienced artists and acquire learning through a volunteer (or paid) position.  I also want to extend this to the schools as an opportunity to encourage young girls to follow their artistic interests and passions and to make them aware of their options before they graduate.  And if I really wanted to go large-scale, there could be an opportunity to create a national arts festival for women in Ottawa.  Expect this project to take a while; I’ve bought a domain and I want to launch a very simple website at some point this summer.

If you’re a working artist and you’re interested in participating in this project, through feedback or volunteer work, please leave a comment or contact me directly.  I’d love to gather as many ideas as possible!

As a final thought, I’m putting a ton of stuff on my plate.  But, you know what?  It feels really good.  I have to slow down here and there but in general, developing ideas, giving them a shot – even if they end up being total failures – is really worth the time and energy.  As Jacques Brel would say “quand on a envie de faire un truc, il faut plonger comme un fou et le faire”.  (“When we’re anxious to try something, we have to dive right in and do it!”)

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