Ideas? Meet your Makers.
This past Saturday (August 2nd) I had the privilege of pitching The Crate of Curious Things at StartED Up's 2nd Annual State Fair Innovate WithIN Alumni Showcase & Pitch Competition. It's always a blast to share the joy I have in the idea, and the progress I've made towards making it more and more of a reality.
The exciting news is exactly how real it's becoming!
As anybody up to date with my goings-on would know, this Spring I led my first ever "Cardboard Club" and early this summer I taught my first ever private lesson! In terms of practice, those two are key events in preparing for more official CRATE events, which include Lessons, Clubs, and the third and scariest thing: Workshops.
These "Group Workshops" are programming options for recreational, educational, and even corporate settings. That means the Crate could be leading art projects in Elementary Schools with children, or offices with 40+ year old staff members, or even retirement communities with 80+ year olds. It's intimidating, having only taught 8-14 year olds, to plan for such a variety of engagement and levels of projects. With kids, I know that I know more about the material than they do. With adults, I need to try and bring something they haven't heard before, and engage with what they have already. With grandparents, I need to figure out what level of patience and care is needed in a strangely different-yet-similar way to that of the Elementary groups.
All the lessons, workshops, and clubs however, struggle to have me as excited as the new idea that I pitched for the Crate at the State Fair:
"We want to connect kids with Artists who can make their dreams come true"
I said, and then explained the idea of "Dream Project Collaborations"
In the pitch, I storytell about Andy, a boy with an idea for a bubble-equipped alarm clock. This is something he can't quite make himself, and his parents are in no position to help with, either art-wise or money-wise. So they help how they can: by emailing the Crate with the idea. The Crate then connects the idea to some artists and schedules a time for Andy to come and work on the idea with them, making the alarm clock as a reminder to meet impractical creativity with joy.
Some of the major logistics issues with this are as follows:
We want to reach the ideas of kids who can't come to lessons, workshops, or clubs– how do we do that? Perhaps by reaching their schools, and through the schools reaching the parents, who will then reach out to the Crate with the idea and a time their kid can contribute.
Money? It's not going to be possible to find every material we use for free (though we hope to find most of them for free) and it's also going to be difficult to always have volunteers to help with the ideas. So these ideas need to be crowdfunded or (as Tyler Mantel recommended at the fair inspired by Bombas' business model) by including the cost as an upcharge in the lessons, workshops, or clubs we already offer. Something like, "by paying extra for your kid's private lessons, you are funding an idea of a kid who can't afford lessons". Perhaps it's an optional upcharge on all three in varying degrees. That way there would be less complexity in balancing not-for-profit and for-profit business aspects.
Space? The Crate still does not have its own location, and won't for quite a while (realistically) so it needs to plan these collaborations within existing spaces. That introduces so many liability complications that I don't have the experience to truly grasp yet. But I do know I can't just have a parent drop a kid off at a random artist's garage and expect that to be okay.
The Crate's "end goal" is to have a location–around the size of an old Walgreens in which we have 7 resident artist spaces (one themed for every color of ROYGBIV) and a large makerspace-style layout for our workshops and membership access (as ideated early on). However, I can't currently afford that–so it may be a ways off–and I want the dream collaborations to occur now, alongside the mobile lessons, workshops, and clubs that avoid the location necessity by taking place at the client's own place.
After two weeks of prepping for the pitch: designing and ordering brochures and apparel; getting the website's MVP (minimum viable product) up and acceptable (crateofcuriousthings.org); rehearsing the presentation; planning the booth; and more, you would think I'm ready for a break.
But oh boy, the Crate is only just getting started.
//That's the end of the blog post, but below are additional materials including the brochures and pitch script from the fair (numbered according to the slides)