"A Blossoming Photographic Romance" - an update from grantee Nora Barrows Friedman

Tea Party Magazine is doing a full spread on Nora's photographs of Palestine, which she
generously attributes to the publicity generated by her receipt of a cadre art grant!
This will be published in August.

She's headed back to Palestine for a third time this year, both for her regular gig on
KPFA's Flashpoints show, and to make more photographs with her refurbished 1950's
Rollieflex knock-off (a 120-mm box camera.) "It takes stunning photographs, and I
can't wait to keep taking them as my journeys unfold!"

She's looking for a good local venue to exhibit her photographs, so get in touch if you
have ideas for her.

Nora has also launched a website where you can check out more of her work, both written and
photographic:
www.norabf.com

She writes that receiving the cadre $10 arts grant has "been a wonderful jump-start
to a blossoming photographic romance."

This is what we hope for. Thanks again to all of our generous donors.

  ¶ 7:12 PM

  Update from cadre $10 art grant recipient Jessica Ingram

Jessica has been busy shooting for the project, A Civil Rights Memorial.  
Her focus during the month of June was Alabama.  The Southern Poverty Law Center 
opened their relevant files to her, which were an "amazing" research tool.  
In a week she leaves again to shoot for another month, focusing this time on events
in Mississippi.  Both excited and upset by all the new information, she is starting 
to work on the book project. We'll continue to follow its development.

Please also note that she has just launched a completed website 
which (like all of our sites!) will be in constant development.  
Check it out at: www.jessingram.com

  ¶ 6:55 PM

  Clearing up the confusion Yesterday, after sending our new emailer out, we received an reply from a donor that surprised us. Carla and I felt it merited a response, because we make every effort to ensure that the grant process is completely transparent.

The author of the email wrote that he'd supposed if we'd given the first grant to a friend here in San Francisco; "not a bad way to help out a friend in need!"

So just in case you've wondered the same thing, we want to be very clear that we've tried to build that possibility out of the process. Admittedly, the majority of both our donors and applicants are from the Bay Area. We live here, and starting a project on this small scale is initially a word-of-mouth deal. However, we recruited jurors from around the country (selected from our board and from the donors), and if you check out our recipients, they hail from Tokyo, London, Canada and the States. We knew none of them personally, though we were familiar with some of the work. So if you have a moment, check out our grantees through the link below. And remember that any donor is eligible to be a juror. Please let us know if you're interested.

http://cadreart.org/grantees.html

As we go forward, our challenge is to build momentum and expand our audience. Sustaining a grant on $10 donations is harder than we expected. We always invite your ideas for new and innovative ways to get the word out.
Cheers.
  ¶ 11:56 AM

  To Nominate or To Apply As you know, we currently operate within a somewhat traditional (albeit electronic) application format. The artist makes a small donation, then sends in an artist statement and request for funding, along with some visual materials to support their application. During the first round jurors struggled over the decisions and in the end, we had to tell many talented artists that we couldn't fund their work. This was a really difficult process for us, as we started the grant out of our own frustration and anguish after receiving lots of rejections, out of our desire to transform our relationship to arts funding. So we got to thinking, what if we go with a nomination process??

You, the donor, would be invited to submit a letter in support of an artist who is doing dynamite work, who would benefit with the level of financial support we can offer. You would include a link to a website or blog with visual materials. What do you think? We'd like to hear from you (please add your comments below). We like the act of generosity that the nomination process entails, and the artist doesn't have to know they were nominated unless their work is selected for support. Let us know what you think. What problems haven't we considered? What are the benefits?

Please note that for the September 1st application deadline, we're still accepting applications.

Thank you!
  ¶ 8:24 PM 0 comments

  grantees update This is a CADRE update.
As you know, Collaborator's Guide, is in full progress and we wanted to let you know what has been happening!

Both Bethany and Selwa have formed two groups in London and Tokyo. Our collective now includes seven members for the project (which we have nicknamed CADRE project for now).

Communicating between Tokyo and London.

Our original goal of working with a newer and bigger group, long-distance, is materializing, and we are dealing with administrative and creative solutions to enable this. Archiving our research, enabling all of us to challenge the concept democratically and synchronizing conversations between Tokyo and London are important parts of our process!

We recently started using a new online tool called Activecollab (activecollab.com). The tool is opensource (free and shared). This tool is helping us archive and manage the process as well as exchange information! We are just demo-ing the software to other Collaborator's Guide members and have uploaded some notes/case studies/files.

Meanwhile, during our process of finding new like-minded individuals to work on this collaborative event/installation with us, we have also been visiting and assessing spaces. This has been a fun and interesting process. Tokyo galleries and some UK galleries charge for showing work (aside from commissions) so while visiting spaces to assess size, interest, location, cost we are also investigating non-traditional spaces.


Proposed Calendar.

ongoing: introducing our concept to artists, gallerists, creatives and receiving feedback about appropriate spaces/opening our concept to questions.
May 20: questionnaires and first meetings with new members of Tokyo group.
May-June: re-evaluating goals. conversations in cultural differences between tokyo and london (and what to portray in the exhibit).

July 5: questionnaire and first 'official' meeting of London group.
July 2-9: mini-exercise. Collaborator's Guide member will exchange detailed journals of each day to share a more intimate picture of our relationships with Tokyo and London (and get to know each other better, faster).
10 July: all members receive short training on how to add info to activecollab tool and the blog.
28 July: tokyo vs. london 'meet n greet' for all members to get to know eachother via online web chat as well as other forms of introduction, possibly a meal, an gift exchange of some sort.

Start of August: second group exercise after agreed concept refinement.
August: fundraising, prep-time, making, sourcing materials....
Sept: final stages of workshop, exhibition/show.

We hope this finds you well and we will email again with an update in a few months!
Please feel free to email thoughts or concerns.

Thanks so much,
Bethany and Selwa

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(Jessamyn's curatorial debut!)

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  ¶ 5:37 PM

  design our logo! (and we need computer help) We're looking for some volunteer assistance—we need a permanent logo! Though we love Tiny Tim we're not sure he's going to be the face to move us forward.

Are there any designers out there who'd like to do a good turn and design a logo for the cadre $10 arts grant? If so, please E-mail us at cadreartgrant@yahoo.com.

We also need to create some online forms to streamline the application process. Are there any computer-savvy folks out there willing to help us with that? Again, E-mail us at cadreartgrant@yahoo.com—we'll make it worth your while!!  ¶ 9:14 PM