Update On The Teen Art Gallery
The art world is in NY this weekend for the annual Armory Show. Art is everywhere you look right now. And so I thought I'd use this moment to give you all an update on the Kickstarter project I posted about a month ago.
The Teen Art Gallery project was successful. They raised $10,230 against their goal of $10,000. A photo finish it seems. Congratulations to the entrepreneurial teenagers behind this project.
And so now they will be able to put on the two gallery shows they raised the money to support.
The first show will be on the evening of Thursday, March 29th at Rogue Space in Chelsea. Details are here.
I don't know these kids. But I hope to meet them someday. They are taking matters into their own hands and making stuff happen at an early age. I love seeing that.
Comments (Archived):
Art, public and generational, is baked into the very fabric of the city.The stories of Keith Haring and his buddies meeting at bars in the east Village, distributing bags of spray paint cans and heading out in the subways until ever one was arrested or the paint was gone in some ways speaks to a pulse of this place.Times change. Kickstarter is here. People just do it and that is what makes NYC special. Expression at this young age in such positive ways is inspiring to us all.
I can’t wait until we (the world) support a creative economy, facilitate a creative culture.There will be so much to be excited about every day, for everyone.
It’s happening now Matthew.Not perfect but real in my opinion.
Good point. I mostly see the imperfection in that it’s more those who are born into ‘lucky’ situations – and I’d like to see everyone having an opportunity; I understand some people just aren’t the creative type, though I know they still enjoy creativity!
Creativite skills are like free throws: you need to want to make the shot before you pick up the ball.
I agree, though if people have never had the opportunity or support / direction / little nudges then they’ll be less likely to know the even have an opportunity to pick up the ball.The more creative-centric a culture is the more influence/effect it will have on people – will reenforce creativity in a multiplier way.
like with the 4 minute mile. once it was broken by roger bannister, which was thought impossible, a ton of other people started breaking it.
Exactly!Once a model is shown / proven then others know they can put the effort in and at least have a chance of figuring it out / achieving it themselves.And just like Facebook showed us large engaged networks were possible, others now have put more time and effort into it. With enough time and experimenting / tinkering / analyzing anything can be reverse engineered.(Not meaning to take away any of the importance of timing being right for certain things to be possible, ex: infrastructure needing to be in place)
The recognition of what is possible and the ability to reason to the conclusion that something should be possible even if it is accomplished by painstaking incremental thinking is what drives big things. Really.Each advance and idea stands on the shoulders of those that have gone before.That is how we got to the moon and how we will solve the current economic disaster.A single sure step at a time.
kinda agree with this. serendipity has also played its part. particularly in science: fleming and penicillin, for example.
Moore’s Law can/is alive in ways that defy mathematical manipulation. So I hear.
free?
Creativity is at the core of our true humanity. I believe.
Ditto. And love / compassion. 🙂
This already exists in some places and is growing every day. The venture capitalist/start-up world is it. It’s a structure that fosters creativity down to the bone. Although profits must come into play at some point, passionate creativity is what really drives the members of this community.
I would say this is a piece of the whole – which is great. There are many pieces that many aren’t exposed to or have the opportunity for.And you stated exactly part of the issue — creativity is currently driven when a profit can be made, or say when an artist is trying to make a living. We can do better than that.
Yeah I guess I did haha.So a question for you, what’s your take on the almighty $?
In what context? Money is just time, created as a means to disconnect an association with a specific person, and allowing it to be pooled – which caused a number of problems, including disconnecting responsibility.With enough time anything is possible. It’s people who want to ‘have everything now’ (and before others) that drive profits and keep the status quo going.
Maybe I should have been more specific but I didn’t want to load the question.I guess the context I was thinking of when I asked the question was the glodal community. And my question might be better translated as “What role do you think money plays in our world? What role does it play in the lives of people?”
Money currently has a base value of fear to it, because you need it to survive. If we take measures to eliminate this fear, then money will purely be a source of excitement, potential, and opportunity.For many, most people, you have to decide between eating higher quality food (or food at all) or a place to live. And because you’re forced to find a job immediately you can get into many situations that disrupt all other parts of your life, which will disrupt your productivity, your quality of life / happiness, and everyone’s happiness around you – and which don’t allow you to reach your full potential, productivity, happiness, and contribution to society (I’d say this is a very high percentage of people).We will need ‘money’ in some form just to keep track of things, and the good news is the undeveloped world can actually be developed in a much more efficient, lower waste way, assuming we manage it – and not allow people for-profit businesses to sway decision making (via paying off politicians, etc); Cities should have a fluid and evolving 250-500 year plan, and basing it around technology or natural resources sounds like a risky plan (eg: oil) and will only hold back the world in innovating when dinosaurs fight to stay alive and keep the status quo.
“Expression at this young age in such positive ways is inspiring to us all.”i don’t find this personally inspiring at all. a 14 year old building a nuclear fusion reactor, that’s impressive, if not inspiring.http://www.popsci.com/scien… i do think that every little helps, though. they may not be setting the world alight, but they are doing something constructive. the long tail of creativity in aggregate will match the head–or something like that!i wish them success and think it’s a worthy aim.
art or technology. doesn’t matter to me. creativity can be expressed in many ways.
Art & technology. Balance in all things. Moderation in all things. Passion in all things. Try everything twice.
Show me the statistics.
what happens if they intersect? what is it called then?
Creativity
Hi Chris.I think getting sh..t done is hard. And consider myself lucky that I find inspiration more easily. Einstein. Salk. Jobs even. World changers. If only moving mountains engendered personal motivation, life to me, would be really less interesting.Art layers life and is critical to me.Would be a really black and white and dull world without Basquiat and Bourke-White and art and music. In a very tech centric world, encouraging the arts has become a goal of mine individually.
i like art. i like Alex Katz. his heightened aesthetic is appealing.i like good art. good art inspires me.bad art can be worth pursuing; even if it doesn’t inspire.i like to design. at least graphics and typography. it probably doesn’t count as art.encouraging art is commendable.sometimes though, sometimes, expression (in the form of art) has negative value. the outcome of someone who can’t do art and never will be able to do art wastes resources and an opportunity to do something else.
We will not agree on this one.”the outcome of someone who can’t do art and never will be able to do art wastes resources and an opportunity to do something else.”Replace ‘art’ with ‘programming’ or ‘building a business’ or ‘anything’ is equally untrue to me.People chase their whims or dreams or whatever.Some win. Some quit too early. Some just do what they want and live life.No waste anywhere. Life is not a race. It’s what you make of it.
philosophically i agree, arnold. for individuals i find it hard to agree.if an individual, lets call him ‘bob’, just can’t program and has a natural aptitude for design, then a better outcome for bob is to design rather than program.for bob to repeatedly do what he’ll never be able to do is a waste of resources.if bob mindlessly does programming, despite his clear inability to do it, well that’s up to him. however, that doesn’t mean it’s not a waste. at least at one level (if not more).
“No waste anywhere.”I tend to agree. I guess it matters what your view is of economy.
“i like to design. at least graphics and typography. it probably doesn’t count as art.”Absolutely positively counts as art. So does great industrial design and a host of other things. Well constructed furniture. Industrial machines in operation. If you know what to look for and what to appreciate. Please post some links to your graphics and typography as I’m sure many (including me) would appreciate seeing some of your work.
difficult to find some saved work. when i stop a project i normally just leave files where ever. got some on a broken mac, and killed a server the other week with a bunch of stuff on (images and code). just through it away.posted a couple of links in the past to sites i’ve done. one went down with the server. the other, well, that’s been hacked to sh*t in the name of advertising. anyway, managed to find some images from a while ago.got a business card. got a sidebar graphic. got some random image of me and my friend where i copied most of myself over my friend (not sure what that was for). got a roll-over for a navigation list item. and got some other side bar that’s all type.i like industrial design. i like form follows function for websites.also, attached a shoe i drew. i can’t draw. it’s my second drawing since forever. my brother complemented it by saying “well, it’s not sh*t”– the best i could have hoped for considering the amount i’ve done and my lack of inherent ability to guide a pencil skilfully!
Good typography counts as art. It is really hard to create something beautiful within the context of being readable.
Basquiat had an enigmatic cameo in a made-for-PBS movie I looked for for 20 years called Big Time.
Didn’t know about that one.I’ve been fixated by NY artists both on the pop side and on the photographic life magazine side for as long as I can remember. Probably why I responded so passionately to this string. Art keeps me level and awestruck.You will find me sitting in front of the giant Jackson Pollack at Moma often when I get stuck on thoughts or projects.( http://awaldstein.tumblr.co… )
Check it out. It’s available on Netflix now. I think you’d like it, for artistic as well as nostalgic reasons.
Chris, you don’t find talent inspiring? Or initiative? Or execution? Or accomplishment? But, then, I’m easy. Ants inspire me.
i haven’t seen proof of those things. and the idea isn’t big enough to create visceral excitement.i sorry if i’m not inspired by it. i’m just not.it’s still worthy though.”I tend to agree. I guess it matters what your view is of economy.”GDP points, ofcourse;)
You can think objectively and abstractly about resources, even people as resources to understand organizations.But my experience building many teams and raising a son is that as soon as you put ‘human’ in front of ‘resources’ the objectivity vanishes and the game changes.
“baked into the…fabric”? How about woven into the fabric instead?
You are my wordsmith Dave.Right you are of course. Thanks.
Nike says it best.
Here is another awesome project on Kickstarter:http://delanceyunderground…. Green technology, an abandoned underground train station, to create an underground green space in NYC…this really shows what a special place NYC really is!Kickstarter = idea + effort + moneyI could not help, as I was driving back from the airport last night, thinking about all the projects that Kickstarter could make possible and if I had just 26 hours in a day I would spend two hours a day on nothing but making these ideas come to life….Damn, now we need a Kickstarter with God, where she would give us the hours requested to complete great ideas……
we were hanging out with the guy who created this project last nightthe gotham gal backed it last weeki agree. very cool.
That’s it! I am running away from home and going to NYC so I can hang out with you and all the people you hang out with….I spent the week at a plant in Arkansas and another in Tennessee buying up warehouse and distribution equipment at plant closing auctions; which was held why the employees were still working!I just cannot believe that this company could not find a way to make these plants and these employees profitable.It was surreal and ghoulish to watch equipment being auctioned off while the employees were still using it….
Oh wow, that would make my heart sink. I might have even thrownup.You can come visit me too — about a 45 minute plane ride away from NYC.. Trying to get more of that same kind of culture going (and save it from dying) here in Kingston.
you are doing great
http://www.youtube.com/watc…
Chris,Here is what I “saw” while on my adventure…I saw incompetent management, I saw a lack of innovative leadership. I saw a plant that within 30 miles found its self with a college known for its broadcasting, journalism and design program. I saw a company that prints catalogs and does direct mail but could not innovate to capture the potential of the future, by developing a social media, direct mail and television program to add to its expertise to create a one stop shop for medium and small retailers; rather, with the loss of JC Penney and Sears as print customers they tucked their tail between their legs and made the taxpayers and employees pay the price for the lack of innovation and opportunity creation by management.Like one MBA thinking person said, “…well, the numbers weren’t there…” Yes, the numbers will never be there with ideas, without innovation….Greed is nothing more than “numbers: Wealth is not greed but rather ideas…..
“Wealth is not greed but rather ideas”i do believe without good mental models, which ideas can come from, life can totally smite you. and yeah, ideas can take you a long way. as micro-processors get smaller they become less atoms and more ideas.
Printing and graphics (I was in that business) is a big iron business. (By “big iron” I mean big expensive capital intensive machinery). It is driven by getting the job done on time with high quality and low price. The people that manage those businesses aren’t known for their creativity. If they were creative they wouldn’t be in that business actually. If you read the trade publications (like “Printing Impressions”) each issue was the same. A bunch of old men (well they were old to me since I was young) posing in their suits on the plant floor with their big 12 color perfector press. http://www.youtube.com/watc…
Yes, the industry has a lot in common with the tee shirt business; a bunch of old guys looking into the future hell bent to recreate the past. We have a Fort Dearborn plant in town that uses the five of the exact presses shown in the video and then we have a Quadgraphics plant that has 6 presses that are actually three stories high and print rolls of paper. The Fort Dearborn plant has found a way to lower their label printing minimums to 5,000 while the Quadgraphics plant is stuck wanting the million insert runs…our local community will be stuck with a 800,000 sq foot print facility by the end of the year.
“we have a Quadgraphics plant that has 6 presses”Funny Harry Quadracci and his bow tie is one of the people I remember seeing when I started in the business on the front of the trade magazines. Interesting that that company only has a market cap of about 600 million dollars.
From Wiki: “In 2010, Quad/Graphics acquired competitor World Color Press. As a result of the acquisition, the number of Quad/Graphics employees grew to about 28,000. In August 2010, the company announced that it would be closing five of its plants as part of a consolidation plan related to the acquisition of World Color Press. In November 2010, Quad/Graphics, Inc acquired Commercial and Specialty Products Printer HGI Company. In July 2011, Quad announced an asset swap with Transcontinental Inc where Quad would acquire Transcontinental’s Mexican assets along with its black and white book printing business for U.S. export in exchange for seven of Quad Graphics’ Canadian facilities.”The plant in town was part of the World Color Press acquistion…When it is all said and done Quadgraphics will end up having destroyed themselves….
It is not the tools, it is the hands of the craftsman holding those tools.It is the cleverness and guile of the craftsman.
JLM,Its funny, I never aspired to wealth and I can honestly say that it has never motivated me to get out of bed in the morning.But, to work out a problem, to “craft” a solution, to experiment, to explore, to create, THAT is something that I aspire to…When people talk about “expertise” or “skill sets” I honestly tell them I have neither….
They are greater than the sum of their parts.
“I am running away from home and going to NYC…”We may all end up there before it’s over with. Fred is a great salesman.
I will probably never meet Fred in person, but he is inspiring, even from the vast divide that separates us.
He is.
Did you ask the employees if management ever listened to them? Unions typically are the main problem on that front and that’s one of the biggest reasons companies decline. Tying it back to kickstarter; it’s a great democratization of ideas!
Actually, the union plant, Fort Dearborn has higher employee morale, better turnaround time and a waste factor of less than 2%; they also only have 4 management employees for a plant that runs 24/7 with 400 employees.The Quad plant has the worst morale I have ever seen, their waste factor averages over 9% and they have 36 management employees for a plant of 600.The union employees are empowered, work in an environment that is not hierarchical and believe that the company BETTER listen to them. On the other hand the employees of the non union plant believe that the company does not care, that the supervisors benefit themselves, their friends and relatives, and that what they do doesn’t matter.Michael, I have been around a long time, unions are not the problem; piss poor management has been the number one reason companies decline. Piss poor management is the one that gets to tell the story of their decline and they blame everyone but themselves and that’s where the idea that unions are the problem.If you do not see your employees as STAKEHOLDERS but rather see your employees as cogs in a big machine, or numbers (as like in an expense) then you will fail.If you want to achieve some concept of “democratization of ideas” then there has to be some equalization of management and employees.I am no fan of unions, but I can spot piss poor management a mile away; even with all the jargon, tech terms, and song and dance….
I am a fan of matrix organizations. If well structured there is really just a C-level suite of 3-5 employees. Put them above, below, inside outside; doesn’t matter. Matrix empowers employees via information flow and proper allocation of resources. Managements or unions that inhibit that process fall into your “piss-poor” category. The problem with unions is when they no longer share the same risks as the owners/shareholders, employees or management.
Underground? Why don’t we get more greenery on our rooftops? Imagine looking out over a landscape of bushes, shrubs and small trees.
Sounds to me like you have the beginning of a Kickstarter project!
Love getting the emails from Kickstarters saying, “We Did It!” Such a great sense of pride and accomplishment comes across each time. Was especially thrilled to see theirs the other day. Headed to the Armory today with The Bean. Getting her started early. 😉
the gotham gal was there yesterday. she loved it.
I hope it’s better than the satellite shows. See other comment below.
it gets better
Any data on the donor demographics of kickstarter?
for this project or all projects?
It you are able..a sample data set of funded and unfunded (unsuccessful) projects?
Good. Look at fails and successes. Austrian thinking. Learn from mistakes.
Is it entrepreneurial teenagers, or is it entrepreneurial parents?Fair enough, but I do see a group of kids who probably (if we are being socio-economically honest in our discussion) don’t need the advantages that Kickstarter is affording them. If these kids were from the wrong side of the tracks then the Kickstarter effect who be socially progressive in that it would help to even up the disparities that are seemingly willfully engineered into the very fabric of western thought and ideology and process. In this case the K effect seems to be widening the gap between those on either side of the tracks.I await incoming salvo with my tin hat on.
I can see there at least being guidance from entrepreneurial parents, who have gone through it and are able to guide the creative process, helping with problem solving when necessary, etc..It’s the idea of learning through facilitation. You can learn 20% more when someone is showing you how to do it (not just making this up either!). This is why people with learning disabilities like autism, when they have trouble taking in visual queues like hand gestures, etc., don’t have the same threshold for learning certain things – however mentally they can be just as capable or more capable than others.If young people, or even old people, don’t have those supports for learning (creatvitiy or otherwise) then they can’t reach higher levels. And yes, the most entrepreneurial will find a way and be persistant to find what they need .. but I think it’s a disservice to them, and society as a whole, if we require people to have that high level of desire to find a way to be creative. Might as well make it easier for people to be creative, to learn, to better themselves.
Mathew,Personally, I have always enjoyed being able to claim that I was “disadvantaged” because my parents were not well off, did not go to college, and were not able to give me all the opportunities that other parents were able to provide their children!First, its a great excuse, second when you do achieve anything it makes the achievement all yours, and third, its a great way to make little achievements seem so awesome!Its also an awesome guilt trip!…if you can’t tell, my second cup of coffee this morning is kicking in!A few years back my mother sent her kids a box of her stuff that she had saved from our childhoods and just last month I finally went through my box and I noticed in one little “A Child’s First Year” my mother noted that I liked books, I liked to flip the pages of books at 12 months old.Well, at 54 I am still in love with flipping the pages of books….I have also decided that rather than continue to speak to groups of kids at the local university I am just going to hire 5 of them as interns and see if I can create an environment to stimulate their creativity; I figure I will hire freshmen and sophomores and give them a couple of years and see if I cannot create the forward thinking, creative group of people that I am looking for.
Yup — I hear ya. I’m going to enjoy whatever success I reach, and already have reached a personal level I am proud of. Anything on top of it is icing on a cake — but I plan to bake more cakes too..My disadvantage (I think the PC term now is ‘exceptional’) was more health-related, hurting my development early on and of course that flows through into everything else including social developments on as you grow and have more experiences. It took me a lot of problem solving on my own because the existing systems only hurt me more, and because of that learning I had to do it allowed me to have a much deeper understanding of everything. I’ve learned how to challenge myself, what I need to stay balanced, and I seem to be getting better and better at it – which is exciting!I wonder what point of my dreams, aspirations, goals and accomplishments that I will be able to reach to in my life.Thanks for sharing, and I love that idea of trying to cultivate an environment to stimulate creativity. This is one reason I’d love running or being apart of operating an incubator-type program.Carl — I’d love to talk over the phone / Skype sometime. 🙂
Thank goodness for disadvantages, they are the drivers and motivators that start the engines.No revolution was ever started on a full belly.
Tweetable. As usual.
You are right @cynthiaschames:disqus that was tweetable. Just did. Thanks for the suggestion!
Ned Hallowell spoke at daughters’ school on his book Childhood Roots of Happiness.Take away line was “Talent is embedded in difficulty”.So agree. My vision is my strength and weakness as a visual artist. I see two of everything and hence intermittent 3D vision, yet have amazing spacial perception and memory, like I can photograph a space in 3d and move thru it blind. I have moved around my weakness and played to my strength, knowing all the time they are two ends of one stick.
Food comas. Tragic.
Matthew, I met to get back to you but time flies when you bite off more than you can chew! Give me your email address (mine is [email protected]) because I am very interested in doing something….
That’s wonderful, Carl — that intern program! Could you do the speaking AND the internship? You have so much wisdom to share and kids need to hear from you. But, if you had to choose, I understand that the internship is how you would provide the most value.As I’ve read the comments, I’ve been thinking about the role of books in my life. I really resonate with what you said about books. More than any other single factor, I attribute my love of reading as the thing that shaped me as a child and set the stage for the person I would become. My parents loved that I read and encouraged my passion.
I will continue to speak up and out..but the intern program is to fill a nagging concern of mine (and a selfish one.) I want to ensure that my company is always seeking out new ideas and experimenting. The reality is the internship program will cost me $80,000 a year in total and all I want is young people majoring in 5 areas to bring their enthusiasm and desire to gain experience to just hit base hits from time to time; the reality is if they can generate just an additional $250,000 in sales a year they have paid for the program.With design, social media, fashion, and everything else, it doesn’t hurt to make an investment like this to make sure that you are always out in front of any new trends and its better to have a bounty of ideas to throw out there to see what works and what doesn’t…
It just makes sense!
Insightful, Matthew.”I can see there at least being guidance from entrepreneurial parents …” Or mentors. We need more mentors, always more mentors. Even at my age, I still need mentors and believe that I would have been much more successful if I’d had relationships at an early age that made up for what my parents couldn’t give. (Don’t get me wrong, they gave the best they could for which I am deeply grateful.) Regarding those who have to “find a way” the value that this in itself provides cannot be underestimated. The result is a stronger, more resilient person, and perhaps one who is more grateful, maybe more humble — and society benefits from having people like this around. You know the saying, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Although I do recognize that sometimes what is killed is not the person but the dream or the hope. So the question is — which people are being made stronger by the battle and which ones are being killed by it. The point you made about cues is really significant. There are those of us who do have a “learning disability” in effect. If you are raised in a setting where you do not learn certain societal cues — especially if you are crossing boundaries such as socioeconomic, ethnic, geographic, technological — maybe even gender, where those cues are different, you may not recognize opportunities, pitfalls, missteps, etc. People who can serve as guides are important. Especially in situations that seek to engender diversity.
Yup – mentors! I’ve found many of mine right here on AVC. :)Luckily I’ve had a chance to meet a few of them too, though still wish I had more opportunity to regularly interact with them. Learning from a distance has to do for now though, however I’d prefer an environment that’s more whole – to include visual and interactive cues too..Cues are important for all of those reasons you mentioned, and the worse society is at it, the more disconnect there will be between people, the more friction in situations/conversation, the less collaboration will occur, the slower we will advance as a society and become a true global community.
The biggest problem I feel that exists in the US – we’ve stopped supporting learning as a lifelong process. We raise prices/increased the debt for learning across the board, making it hard to switch jobs, to take on new skills.Its not good I tell you. Having an environment where learning is cheapish, and where people are learning constantly would change so much about the US.
Any disruptive approach to the education vertical needs to incorporate this thinking of life-long education and the other notions of mentoring mentioned above to scale and keep costs down. There is so much good stuff online; it just needs to be effectively curated, structured into a group/self/leader driven and monitored curriculum and then accredited. That shouldn’t cost $200,000 over 4 years. Private businesses would do well to incorporate ongoing education and scale it into the public sector. As Carl said, his $80,000 investment in interns should/could generate $250,000 in sales.
Carl is a good guy, many people don’t want to invest in their young employees.
This is a problem in most places where capitalism has created ecosystems / industries where they try keep their audience captive as long as possible, to increase profits of course (or some structures aren’t maintainable if you don’t do this — doesn’t mean they should exist though; They could create inefficiencies, including in learning and as you said, hard to switch jobs / take on new skills).It’s the brother/sister of the planned obsolescence that we will do away with over the next 20-50 years.
Those inefficiencies could keep us closer to the product…
you know what the number one thing i see in common among the entrepreneurs i meet?entrepreneurial parentsrole models matter
oh you have no idea – my dad goes to me constantly the following:Sweetle beetle – never stop reaching if you want to go anywhere”
You have to start somewhere Jason. For instance, the FIRST Robotics Challenge is starting qualifying rounds nationwide. There are some teams that have students doing everything top to bottom. There are others where it is parents doing everything, even to the point of a Youtube vid showing the dads all over their robot and the kids off to the side sitting and texting.Yet, as you move forward, there will be a greater number of kids that take the reigns and experience the bigger experience of Concept/Design/Prototype/Alpha alongside Presentation/Funding and so on… not to mention timing of concept matched with available tools/tech current against 18 months from now.Art is the same as Tech where you have to start the ball rolling… eventually enough kids will tell the parents to step aside and creativity will get a boost.
That’s a very astute observation.
Wealth is measured in terms of money but equally or more importantly —The amount of parental and grandparental influence on a young person’s life.Access to technologyAccess to transcendental thinking and entrepreneurial zealAccess to educationAccess to travelThe fabric of the family is the delivery mechanism. This is why the epidemic of damaged families is so devastating. No surviving delivery mechanism.Be right, well played!
And the lack of family has to be a major contributor to all those obese kids.
Feeding a child well and keeping him/her healthy is a job in itself. It takes commitment and intentional effort. And many times, swimming against the stream.Raising kids who think healthily is a huge part of the battle.BTW, one of my kids recently told me — after eating some things that are off his gluten-free diet — that he needed to “health up.” I love that phrase.
My niece’s kids live on their farm in WI. These kids are some of the happiest and normal kids I’ve ever seen.
My BF is in 3rd yr med and doing rotations with all these obese kids. He says it is incredible how out of it they and their parents are re health and eating. He looks at the kid, their lab tests, talks with kids and their parents and says they’d need to reorganize their existence to simply be fit.Shocking. And every day there are more.
It’s so basic how can families miss it so badly.
“but I do see a group of kids who probably (if we are being socio-economically honest in our discussion) don’t need the advantages that Kickstarter is affording them. If these kids were from the wrong side of the tracks then the Kickstarter effect who be socially progressive”If you believe that Kickstarter is only about money. People without money and without connections always think that if they only had that they’d have it made. Not correct. I’d rather be capable, motivated and in the right geographic place then have money or connections in the wrong place. (Kickstarter helps with money and gives you the advantage of being in the right place. So it can help anyone actually who has a good idea and is motivated, right?)I think the conclusion you are jumping to (which may very well be correct) is that because Fred’s daughter is friends with one of the group members, and the kids are groomed nicely and well behaved, these are a bunch of kids with an advantage. So essentially Kickstarter is just helping the rich get richer (in this case). Do I have that right?Let’s assume for a second that a) Fred’s daughter’s friend comes from a modestly well off or connected family and b) the majority (if not all) of the people on the Teen Art video are from the same class. (Can afford to grow up in the area of NYC where Fred lives..) And in fact, Audrey Banks (who started the Teen Art Gallery), well look at this:http://www.nytimes.com/2011…Ms. Banks divides her time between her divorced parents’ East and West Village homes. In elementary school, as her mother, Helen Slavin, recalled, she often spent three or four hours a day making art. “When she got something in her mind, she did it,” Ms. Slavin said. “She’s a great organizer.”So you can look at this as having parents with enough money to live in the east and west village or you can see that here is a girl that often spent 3 or 4 hours a day making art. She was apparently tremendously motivated as a child and had enough drive to throw this entire Teen Art Gallerty together. And also enough personality, charisma and looks to get others to join with her effort. Was it easier for Audrey to do this because of her (I’m assuming) economic class? Sure. Being in NYC also helped tremendously as well (you wouldn’t get any publicity for this in the NYT if you were in the middle of Kansas.) I don’t think that takes away at all from the hustle factor which she (and the other students also have). So I don’t think that Kickstarter is “widening the gap between those on either side of the tracks”.Motivation and hustle matters. And I think Kickstarter is certainly enabling all types of people to do things they would never ever be able to do without that venue.
Hustle. Motivation. Huge!You hit the nail on the head, LE. Great comment.
my kids don’t really know these kids. but they know of them.
Every society has a bell curve and Zipf’s law is immutable. http://bit.ly/ztlC8C As a society we can trend to the mean or aspire to greatness. Kickstarter does the latter. It scales effectively and it lets you, Jason, and others go forth and educate the bottom quintile on the opportunities to fund creative ideas in a low-cost, equitable fashion. Or do you have a better mechanism to connect the upper quintile with the lower quintile? Oh yeah, that’s called government, and we all know how well that works.
I must say that I also enjoyed the Kickstarter user experience & email communication. They have it to perfect science. I can’t wait to receive the gift they’ll send. It will be a nice little reminder about them.
Ah. That explains your ArtArt checkin on Foursquare. Art is definitely on your mind.
Artists – the first entrepreneurs.
Here is another example, more “downstream” of young people and entrepreneurship:http://www.npr.org/blogs/mo… Not very artistic but it is creative!
this is absolutely fantastic –> Count me in!I am going for the following reasons:A: To meet & congratulate young entrepreneurs making a differenceB: To spread my knowledge & to help these extraordinarily talented kids move on from a Wix-flash site and move onto a more user-friendly & more sustainable web application platformC: I love art & maybe I will purchase some of extremely undervalued masterpiecesD: I wish to recruit young talent for my own start-upE: #youngspirit
This is so exciting. Thanks for the update. One teen at a time, taking control over their own destinies. I don’t care what side of the tracks they are from. One teenager does it and another sees it is okay and another sees it is okay. Eventually, the tracks will disappear.Makes me think of the great segment from Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie: “If one person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and they won’t take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both faggots and they won’t take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. They may think it’s an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it’s a movement.”
“Eventually, the tracks will disappear.”Nice thought.I’m thinking tracks are relative.
Like it or not, tracks will always be there; relatively and absolutely. There will always be bell curves of various shapes and sizes; the key is “where” will the bell curve be? Communication, flow and exchange of ideas between the quintiles is key. In the process the entire system will advance. Kickstarter is an example of this.
critical mass moron
Glad to see teenagers get organized but truly their parents are helping a lot.I went to RISD and started a gallery with ink fresh on diploma. Partner was a disaster and economy went into the toilet few months into it. But for those artists and designers we showed it was great experience.I’ve shown myself years ago, in a more active way and now more for fun. In those years the Starn twins were around.Couldn’t help noticing Doug Starn in there clip and his daughter. Starn twins were in rotation back in my day, their dealer placing them at right parties and introducing them to right people, and showing the right work. It was all a bit inauthentic, they looked and sounded very ‘deer in headlights’ and ‘canned’ phrases and I wasn’t much a fan of their work. So the whole thing felt like music promoters with a boy band trying to make it big with a crafted project.The Armory show up now I hope is better than the utter crap which filled five floors on 22nd street(up now in tandem with Armory show) which I was told not even to pollute my eyes with by artist friends. I arrived late Thursday night to the opening and they had walked out disgusted by absolute lack of talent or message or craft. We all had a great dinner after though and talked about what we were looking at or making. So good luck t these teenagers – they’ll need it, and I hope there work isn’t the rubbish which is on 22nd street and 10th or they will simply add more bad art to the world and displace good art, and in the meantime turn others off real art by being confused as to what good art looks like.
no problem