Do Vancouverites not support community or public art projects or are we doing this wrong?
Last night I found myself lying in bed, unable to sleep. Maybe it was just the heat, but my mind kept obsessing over how hard my team has been working on our latest HCMA/TILT Curiosity Labs project, a community impact initiative to create an interactive sound and light installation called “FIELD” as the public art component of the upcoming laneway transformation in Ackery’s Alley in downtown Vancouver. We’re running our first ever Kickstarter campaign to help pay for this public art, which has been a costly and time consuming effort to say the least. [You can skip the rest and jump to the campaign if you want to support it.]
I’m impressed and grateful that the project has earned coverage from media outlets such as National Post, Miss 604, DailyHive, Vancouver Sun, CBC, and much more. And I loved the special effects Global News added to their coverage (although they totally got it wrong by saying the total project cost is only $35k — it’s actually more than 3x that amount).
Great coverage, right? Should be more than enough to create a groundswell of support, hey? Not so much actually.
I feel OK about our progress so far and am hopeful we’ll be successful, but I have to confess my frustration with how difficult it has been to motivate Vancouverites to support an initiative that seems so obviously beneficial to us all. And having scanned the meager ~150 contributors to date, I’m disappointed by how few of my friends and supporters are on that list. :-(
Are Vancouverites simply not the type who support community or art projects like this?
Am I missing something? Is public space activation not as important to citizens as our research indicated? Are Vancouverites simply not the type who support community or art projects like this? Or are we just going about it the wrong way and not getting people’s attention with a clear enough call to action?
The project is the creation of a permanent interactive public art installation designed by renowned artist Alex Beim that will completely transform a dark & dingy downtown laneway into a vibrant & colourful public space. And the laneway “Ackery’s Alley” has an amazing history which we think deserves to be celebrated through this activation.
The last alley transformation (look up #MoreAwesomeNow on Instagram!) was self-funded by us and our partners, who are again helping finance the next project, but this permanent public art installation is a costly piece of kit.
We also chose Kickstarter so we could spread the message of Vancouver’s recent commitment to reimagining public spaces to the world, hoping to inspire others to do similar projects in their own cities.
We chose Kickstarter as the platform to raise the much needed funds so we could invite all Vancouverites to participate and feel a sense of ownership of the resulting space. We also wanted to explore Kickstarter as a design tool we could add to our arsenal, and it has been quite a learning experience to build a campaign like this! We also chose Kickstarter so we could spread the message of Vancouver’s recent commitment to reimagining public spaces to the world, hoping to inspire others to do similar projects in their own cities.
But here we are, halfway through our campaign, and we’ve only raised 50% of our minimum funding target (if we miss this we receive nothing, zero, bupkis). Truth be told, we really need at least 20k MORE than that target, but were advised that that amount would be unrealistic for a public art crowdfunding campaign.
So there I lay last night, sweating in the summer heat, wondering if Vancouverites simply whine about the lack of engaging public space in our city or if there is a more effective way to move them to action? How might I convince all my friends, family, supporters, etc to contribute even $5 (the price of a fancy coffee), and help promote the campaign to their various social media networks. If that happened, I’m convinced we’d build enough momentum to easily make this thing happen!
Will you please help any way you can? A lot of you have impressive networks, so a personal email to a few key influencers would be amazing. Or a public challenge to your friends and competitors in whatever sector you work to meet or beat your contribution would be super rad.
Do any of you have advice how to kick this up a notch and make it more effective and reach more people?
I originally posted this on Facebook, but the it occurred to me that unless I posted on a page and paid money to boost it, Facebook’s algorithm nonsense would prohibit a post like this from penetrating very far into my network and wouldn’t be very effective. Do any of you have advice how to kick this up a notch and make it more effective and reach more people?
Here’s the link to the campaign again. Thank you in advance for clicking, contributing, and promoting. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1577998740/field-in-ackerys-alley?ref=checkout_rewards_page
