Blog
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Stand & Deliver: Education // Tell Your Friends Again, Via Email Monday, February 22, 2010
To help you all spread the word about this final week of voting for Stand & Deliver, we’ve crafted a customizable email. Tell your friends, far and wide, about this unprecedented opportunity to support education locally. Your vote—and that of your networks—could bring $100,000 to Chattanooga.
Neighbors, Family, Friends, and Colleagues,
I’m writing to you today to remind you to vote for Stand & Deliver everyday through February 28th. This initiative, currently up for funding through a public vote in Pepsi’s Refresh Project, will bring $50,000 to Chattanooga in support of education. It starts with a six-month community-wide conversation, and ends with two summits where locals can pitch and launch grassroots projects. The results could be anything, from an experimental college to an after school program.
CreateHere, the organization spearheading this application, has recently announced matching funds for the project. As a result, your daily vote could bring $100,000 to Chattanooga-area schools. Now, more than ever, is the time to participate in this simple process. View the full application and cast a vote at http://www.refresheverything.com/createhere.
Only ten projects will bring home funds in the $50,000 category. Stand & Deliver has bounced around in the top 25 since the competition’s launch on February 1st. In this final week of voting, it will take an extra push from a team of local supporters to make it in the top ten. Please help us revolutionize civic engagement and education. Please help us Stand & Deliver.
Thank you.
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Stand & Deliver: Education // Matching Funds Announced Sunday, February 21, 2010
Happy weekend, friends.
You’ve been very patient with us during the month of February, what with our daily promotions of Stand & Deliver. We know you’ve been voting: how else could we have stayed in the top 25 these past three weeks? Thank you, folks. Seriously.
Today, there’s another reason to celebrate our community’s support of this project. The Lyndhurst Foundation has committed to match all Stand & Deliver funds. Innovative, community-owned projects just got a big boost.
Bringing $50,000 to Chattanooga, plus matching funds, takes your continued support, though. There are only a few more days left in this round of Pepsi’s Refresh Project (today included, in fact, we each only have eight votes left). We urge you: vote daily. And for this last week, we’re asking that you make sure everyone you know does the same.
Over the course of the day, we’ll continue to post sample e-mail blasts, tweets and Facebook updates here so that you can spread the word to the people you know. We’ll also give you details on why the people WE know are voting, from fellows to friends.
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City Share Mini-Conference: Eighteen People, Six Cities, Two Days, Big Work Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Chattanooga Stand and CreateHere are pleased to announce a City Share Mini-Conference, to be held February 18-19. Featuring innovators from six cities across three different countries, this event will draw on the energy around current City Share conversations, with techniques and methodologies focused on how informed citizen engagement can make cities—ours and others—stronger and more prosperous.
City Share is rooted in the concept of citizens being able to come together, share ideas, and make real change. Today, that includes a bi-monthly discussion series hosted the first and third Wednesday of every month, open to the public with lunch provided. Thus far, this series has been a small, citywide endeavor, with speakers from around the country offering insights in community development. Now is the time to engage an even larger audience, locally and abroad.
CreateHere has a growing reputation as a catalyst for community development through initiatives based in arts, economy, and culture. Most recently, we’ve had the honor to work closely with Stand, the world’s largest community visioning survey. CreateHere works to find meaningful solutions to local issues through collaboration and idea-generation, and the City Share Mini-Conference allows us to work with diverse groups, including participants from Charlottesville, Chicago, Knoxville, Memphis, Wichita, Windsor, and the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), based in London. Together, we’d like to create a fertile ground for seeding new ideas around the world.
“Bringing together all of these participants is going to be incredibly exciting and it’s going to help facilitate an increasingly vital conversation on place-based change,” says Justin Langlois, research director of Broken City Lab, “thereby strengthening this already active and engaged network of like-minded cohorts across the continent and now the world.”
“With the Mini-Conference, we hope that the participants will develop a model for their community, and bring it back home,” says Helen Davis Johnson, CreateHere’s co-founder and Creative Strategist. “We believe in the pact between neighbors and friends who can make communities better places to live through hard work and dedication, and look forward to seeing participants take the ideas from this conference and turn them into action back home. We hope to learn from participants, learn from each other, and give back to other cities.”
For more information on the Mini-Conference, visit http://cityshareconference.org.
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City Love + The Arts: A Happy Pair at Any Age Tuesday, February 16, 2010
WhatsUpChattanooga.com is featuring its first “Aspiring Artists Contest” open to all Hamilton County for all K-3 students. Students are invited to submit their original art focused on the theme, “What I love about Chattanooga.”
A panel of volunteer judges from Chattanooga’s arts community will choose the top 50 entries and one grand-prize winner based on composition, aesthetics, and theme. The pieces should reflect something about Chattanooga that represents the artist’s love of one or more of the Scenic City’s beautiful features or history.
“The theme of the contest is a great way to open doors to further discussion with children about civics and the arts,” said Libby Raiford of the Creative Discovery Museum, one of the co-sponsors of the contest. “It’s also a great way for teachers and parents to engage children in thinking about what they value in their community and how to creatively express their opinions.”
The Hunter Museum of American Art, also a contest co-sponsor, will exhibit the top 50 entries submitted in the “Aspiring Artist Contest” in April, 2010. “The Hunter is always happy to find new ways to encourage children to participate in the visual arts,” said Katrina Craven, Director of PR and Marketing. “We look forward to seeing their ideas of what makes Chattanooga great and to displaying their work in our student gallery.”
The grand prize winner and ten runners-up will be announced on Sunday, April 4th, 2010, on the WhatsUpChattanooga.com website where their artwork will be displayed. However, the top 50 entries will be displayed at the Hunter Museum of American Art sometime in April.Deadline for submission is March 21, 2010. Entries can be dropped off at the Hunter Museum of American Art or Creative Discovery Museum gift shops, or at Pump It Up of Chattanooga.
WhatsUpChattanooga.com is a new interactive city guide website designed to provide a multitude of information on where to eat, shop, play and stay in the Chattanooga area. “We are making it easier to find things to do and places to go in Chattanooga. We are thrilled to be supporting the renaissance of our Scenic City, and helping people find valuable, timely information on events, activities, and all the wonderful businesses and organizations that contribute to our quality of life,” said Jason Perry, owner and president of Engagency, the web development company behind the site.
The “Aspiring Artists Contest” is sponsored by WhatsUpChattanooga.com. Co-sponsors include Pump It Up of Chattanooga, Hunter Museum of American Art, Creative Discovery Museum, and Tennessee Aquarium.
More information and contest rules available here.
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PechaKucha Night #5: February 18 @ CreateHere Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Described as “part happy hour, part show-n-tell”, PechaKucha Night, or PKN is about coming out from behind the computer screen, shaking hands with real people and getting a live glimpse into what our community has to offer. With a simple format—20 images projected for 20 seconds each—the presentations are kept concise to avoid the dreaded “death by Powerpoint.” For the audience it’s a chance to enjoy some free refreshments, chat with friends, and enjoy an hour or so of quick but diverse presentations. For the presenters it’s an opportunity to gain some experience in public speaking and a chance to share a passion or an idea with a great group of peers. In person. Some history about PKN can be found on the program’s site.
Chattanooga’s Fifth PKN Event!PKN 5 is on February 18, 2010 at CreateHere, starting at 6:20 pm. When we set out to plan our fifth event, we could not have guessed the circumstances that would unfold to bring an additional sense of importance to PKN.
First: Cityshare. On February 18, 2010, we will hold our event in tandem with the CreateHere-sponsored City Share. This two day mini-conference is expected to draw community organizers from at least five different cities and three countries to exchange energy, ideas and plans for making cities better through place-based action. PKN will give Chattanooga an opportunity to showcase its diverse talent, creativity and energy to an international crowd.
Second: PKN for Haiti. Just a few short weeks ago, in response to the catastrophic earthquake that devastated Haiti, Architecture for Humanity founder Cameron Sinclair contacted PKN Headquarters in Tokyo with a simple question: is there a way PKN can help with the rebuilding efforts in Haiti? In the days that followed, PKN HQ devised a plan to hold a global 24 hour PKN “wavecast” on 2/20, to raise money for the reconstruction efforts. Each participating city (out of 280!) will be given the global spotlight for approximately 10 minutes to showcase one presentation. The entire event will be recorded, made available for viewing, voting and donating. We will be recording our event on the 18th in order to submit at least one presentation for the global wavecast.
As the organizers of PKN, we are humbled by the interest and support that our community has expressed. PKN would not be happening here at all if it weren’t for the support and help of a small army of dedicated individuals plugging in their time and energy to ensure the sustainability of a not-for-profit recurring event. In addition to all the behind-the-scenes effort, there is the courage and passion of the 28 presenters who have made the first four events a success. Several sponsors have also come through to ensure our events have something for everyone: AIA Chattanooga, Easy Bistro, Mellow Mushroom, Greenlife, and Big River. The next event will even include the delicious and nutritious handy work of PKN4 presenter Chef Rick Wright.
Moving forward…
We will continue to need food-n-drink sponsors, bartenders, daring presenters, someone to film and photograph the event, and someone to help spread the good word (aka PR). Fortunately, Cole Sweeton has agreed to continue to work his artistic alchemy on our event graphics. With very few resources, we’ve worked hard to make sure PechaKucha Night has something for everyone. It continues to be held free of charge, with refreshments provided, a great energetic crowd, and diverse presentations. There’s really nothing quite like it. As long as there is support and interest, we’ll keep it going.
So the question is this: With only 6 minutes to present, what would your 20 images be?
Cheers!
Matt Brown and Jessica Morrow
