Insomniadic Ramblings on art and non-profits

Being someone who works in both the arts and non-profit sector I often find myself examining the issue of funding: mainly how to enough to get enough to actually do something. Let me state right at the outset that I hate the idea of asking people for money, it brings up a bitter taste in the back of my mouth. I’m not sure if it is just my pride, or if it’s that I hold what I do in high enough regard that I feel like people should simply want to support a worthy project or cause, but it serves as a major stumbling block.

Where I am actually going with this is the seemingly precarious super structure that surrounds the art / non-profit sector. It is supported almost entirely from within the community itself. This is great for fostering a tight-knit group of inspired people; the only problem is no one in the group actually has any money. Instead, the little money that gets infused into the sector via grants gets spread around to everyone by events like opening galas and silent auctions. It is actually a fairly clever way of circumventing the system in order to keep more non-profits afloat and doing great work. It does however have the fatal flaw of being unsustainable as little new money is being injected via patrons outside the social circles and government funding is being cut back.

At first the obvious solution then seems to be to just appeal to a broader market. If the product is more marketable or more mainstream more people will want to come out to the various events and the process can begin to snowball uphill instead of down. The major issue with that ideas is that not only is it trying to defy physics, it also fails to take into account climate change. By this I of course mean that no one has any money right now.

Now, this is actually quite a shocking idea. I mean I know that I don’t have any money, and I’m used to that. It’s been that way since I’ve started my adult life so the current crisis doesn’t feel much different. Further to the point, I have always seen myself working in the arts sector so I never really expected to have much, but in the back of my head there was always this idea of a middle class that was actually doing ok. In the back of my head if I was really hard up for cash I could pander to the mainstream, only now, it seems like selling out isn’t actually an option because there is no one to sell out to. The middle class was floating on plastic boats made of imaginary numbers and the invisible hand of the market suddenly became a bitch slap backhand.

So where then does that leave the arts / non-profit sector, where will we find our answers and salvation? Luckily, at least in the case of the arts, salvation is the last thing it is ever going to need. It will innovate because it has to. The arts will not cease to be because there is no money; in fact it very well might thrive because of it. If space is too expensive, bring-your-own-venue will become the hottest new buzzword and communes the newest living arrangement. This idea also has the benefit of needing less heat as more bodies in a tighter space can double as a furnace. Art cannot and will not die because it is what fuels the soul when it needs refueling.

As for the actual non-profit sector on a whole, this seems less clear. Oddly enough people seem to be giving more even though they have less. It is almost as if a renewed human spirit of giving and understanding is rising from the ashes of dysfunctional macroeconomics. The real question is if this is a false hope or not. People keep thinking things are going to get better but what if they do not. I for one think people will keep giving; it’s just that what we give will change. People will give what they can and although it will not be much it will feel like more. Perhaps it is simply time for a paradigm shift of what is actually important and what we actually need. If this is the case than once again the arts will flourish, it will cheer us up when we need it, and provide a hard mirror when we begin to think too highly of ourselves. With this in mind it can come as little surprise that I will continue to work with both the arts and non-profits as they seem to be two of the few business ventures that are actually adjusting fast enough for our ever-changing world.

Raising money to ride to break the cycle

Hello everyone,

As some of you know I am going to bike ride 4000km across Europe this summer (from Amsterdam to Istanbul) with Global Agents for Change to raise money and awareness for micro credit.



One of my jobs for this trip is that I raise $4000 to contribute to the group fund and clearly I am going to need a little bit of help here. I know that $4000 seems like a lot of money at first, but I am always claiming that I know everyone worth knowing so this is a good way to put that to the test. If everyone I know is able to spare a little money to donate I would have no problem reaching my goal. Consider it a belated birthday present to me, except that you don’t need to worry about me wanting to take this gift back to the store.

I’m going to give everyone a link now where you can donate online (you can also give me cash or a cheque made out to Agents for Change).

Just hit the give now button and it will go to my fundraising efforts.

http://www.pincgiving.com/campaign/rtbtc_europe_rider__chris_walts

Also, please let me know if you do donate so I can send you a personal thank you note!

Now, for those detail orientated people, let me go into some of the specifics. Global Agents for Change is a group of social change catalysts that support sustainable solutions to global poverty and inspire youth to create a better world.

I personally have been working with them for about a year now helping out with various aspects of their communications committee (Check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgglcT0iZOU).

One of Global Agents for Change’s big goals is to create the worlds biggest youth managed microcredit fund: they’ve raised over $91 000 already, and this tour and the Mexican one the total sure surpass $300 0000.

For those that don’t know, Micro credit is small trust based loans to the working poor. The reason this idea appeals to me is that it has a built in sustainability to it as once the loans are paid back the money can be put back into the system again. So a one time donation can continue to help people in need multiple times over.

As for the bike ride itself; the exact route is still being finalized but the totally distance will be about 4000km (basically riding from Vancouver to Toronto). Part of what I will be doing on this trip is hoping turn out fairly frequent written blogs (ideally about once every 3 days) as well as a video blog each week. If you want to keep track of our progress there should be lots of information being put up on the Global Agents for Change website as well as possibly on twitter through www.twitter.com/globalafc and www.twitter.com/chriswalts

I don’t want to write too much more as I feel like I am starting to ramble but please feel free to ask me whatever you want, I’d love to talk to anyone about it more!

Thank you again to everyone,
Chris

Not with a bang nor a wimper

This story is not set in some far away time or place that could be, it is about the here and now. It comes about not because evil won a war, but instead because humanity failed to understand and listen. It is amazing to think that in a time where information was so vast, knowledge so deep, and facts so glaring that such a simple thing could be forgotten, and yet simplicity in its most basic necessity is so elegant and pure that it is often glanced over as mundane. It is almost amusing the think that the straw that finally broke humanity was not a physical strike, or even an environmental catastrophe as we had all been mongered into believing. Instead, it was the human psyche that broke beyond repair. We lost our belief in belief and our hope for a better tomorrow.

The deathblow struck first the downtrodden and meek, then the weak willed, and after the masses had been laid low the remaining had little to do but succumb to the pandemic.
As to how this happened, the answer once again is as simple as the problem: there was more bad news than good.

It is easy to blame the media for an event of this nature as they were the ones feeding us despair on a silver spoon but ultimately, we still choose to gorge ourselves on it. We could have found alternative information sources, we could have scavenged for ourselves, but that would have required us to open our shutters and use our voices to speak with our neighbours, which seemed far too bothersome of a thought.

It was fear that kept us shackled to our keyboards and pleasureboxes. The fear however was not the one propagated to us by the media. We were not truly afraid to listen to the world because it may have hurt us. Instead, we were afraid to listen because the results of listening would have demanded action. If every person simply listened to the actual physical world around him or her, they would have had no choice but to take action

First belief was lost, and once that was gone hope shortly followed. Without hope and belief people simply lay down and died as they are just as precious to us as water and sunshine.
A great silence fell over the earth for the first time in millennia and planet earth could finally get a full night’s sleep, yet Mother Nature was not happy. It’s true the human’s were a troublesome lot, but they always had that glimmer of potential in their eye. No teacher wants any student to fail, no matter how much of a troublemaker than are, especially one with as much potential as humanity. If only humanity had listened when she was trying to teach it a lesson.

If anyone is still reading you probably think the ending is weak and possibly simple. Perhaps it ends too soon, too sharp, too sudden breaking up what seemed like a promising future and a glimmer of hope. I am not going to disagree with you, but instead, going to challenge you to listen. What needs to be changed here isn’t the ending but the entire story itself.