He said, go write 50 words, no more no less, so I listened. I don’t know what I was thinking. Considering he wrote an entire book titled A Whole New Mind, I figured he new what he was talking about. Hardly. Who does this guy think he is. Daniel Pink.
I was out of my mind. 50 words, that can’t be hard. Was I wrong. Enough time, I lacked the ability. The motivation wasn’t there. I was high on attention, disillusioned by it all. At the last minute I buckled, didn’t know what to do. I struggled to create. Failure.
After Week 06’s project and the success I had with it (not to mention meaning behind it) I was a little apprehensive when deciding on a project for last week. I asked myself a number of questions:
Taking all of these questions into consideration I decided to do something that was 180 degrees different than the previous week’s project, something that was a little smaller and hopefully more personal.
I decided that I would write a series of Mini Sagas over the course of the week. I wanted to write one Mini Saga each day for the week.
So what exactly is a Mini Saga?
A minisaga is a short piece of writing containing exactly 50 words, plus a title of up to 15 words. However, the title requirement is not always enforced and sometimes eliminated altogether. Mini sagas are alternately known as microstories and ultra-shorts.
With that said here are the results of last week’s project.
Invisible
Each day we walk by ignoring, forgetting. We look through them as if they aren’t even there. Invisible they think. Acting as if we are better, we drink Starbucks, them, sometimes nothing for days. We forgot the reality of it all. Humans we be, each and every one of us.
Employment
I don’t want to write the next great novel I just want to do something memorable. Join the Circus they said. I accepted the call, it seemed like the only way to go. I wanted to be a scary clown, now I clean up after elephants. What a shitty job.
Watching
I sit here, behind glass and watch people walk by. Figuring out what makes them tick is hard. Most times I have no clue so I make up stories. Stories involving mysterious women and dinosaurs, not together, although that might be fun. After writing I feel better about myself again.
Tape
I don’t get it, sticky and light yet strong. Those 3M people sure are smart (and rich) all on one stupid idea. The way I operate I should be rich soon. What pisses me off is when tape is peeled off and the sticky stuff remains. Stupid 3M people. Losers.
Teacher
She walks in, the world stops. She’s got looks that kill, I should know, they’ve killed me before. She is relentless yet reserved. On a mission she moves, eyes glued to her. With each step they tremble as if she hold’s their lives in her hands. She is in control.
Here
I stopped walking and just stood. Looking up I became silent. People began to stare, crowds gathered. What felt like days was mere moments. I didn’t care, because at this spot, at the nexus, I began to understand. Things came together. I looked back down and started walking again. Resolved.
Earlier this week I was contact by students of the Journalism Masters program at the University of Western Ontario who wanted to do a short video report on my recent project “100 Ways to Improve London Ontario“. I would never turn down a student’s request to help them with an educational assignment so we met a couple of days ago and talked for a few hours.
The video below is what came out of those talks. (there is also a website about the story)
The inspiration for my Week 06 project initially came from a couple of images that I saw somewhere on the web. There was something about the images that I connected with and I thought that doing something similar1 in London might connect with someone else. So that’s where the initial idea came from.
When I changed the focus of last week’s project I was thinking about AgendaCamp and all of the great ideas that came from it. I began to think about the various opportunities for improvement that the participants had open discussion about and wondered how these discussion could continue until London hosts it’s own Change Camp, hopefully sometime in the relatively near future2. That’s when I had the idea to “crowd source” ideas from the community to keep them thinking about such topics. I was looking for short and concise answers but got input that was of the same caliber as what was at AgendaCamp, which was a fantastic thing.
With the experience of AgendaCamp behind me, and a more community oriented focus I almost had all the inspiration I needed.
One last place where I found inspiration was from the Broken City Lab initiative out of Windsor Ontario. I have been following this initiative for sometimes and I have been blown away by what has been accomplished. The grass roots initiatives that use art & culture as a medium for voicing political and social issues seems to have got the city thinking (or at least a few individuals) and over all I have really enjoyed what has been done so far.
The reason I am citing Broken City Lab as a source of inspiration is because while searching through their archives near the end of last week’s project I found, to my surprise, that they had a similar initiative. They asked the community of Windsor what could be done to save the city and they compiled their responses into a presentation and displayed it. Considering that many people may argue that Windsor needs saving this project seemed very appropriate.
I am sure that neither myself or Broken City Lab are the first to think of such a project but I was happy to see other local cities doing similar things.
With that said I completed the project posting twice as many powers as I had originally wanted as I found I had much more ground to cover than originally thought.
I hope that at the very least the words of the community that I posted can help to inspire if only a single person within the City of London.
I am not really sure what I should or can say about last week’s project.
Wow.
Week 06 turned out to be something much more than I had ever expected and I was so overwhelmed and happy with the reaction and reception from the community.
During the beginning of the week I wasn’t sure exactly how things were going to come together and if the project was going to be a success or an utter failure, but as the week moved on I felt myself getting more energy and momentum regarding the project.
I was so happy once I started to get responses from all members of the community and I think this more than anything made me want to complete the project and for it to be a success.
Once I had all of the posters printed and was able to see all of the great ideas amongst one another I had so much energy and adrenaline (weird, eh?) that I wanted to go out and post them right away.
Once I did get out on Friday to post 200 posters in the Downtown Core I had this feeling within me that is very hard to describe. It was like I had a purpose and mission and knew even before I finished the possibilities behind what I was doing.
Although no one approached me while I was posting the flyers on Friday, once the post was up online about the project the feedback that I received was great. People were saying that the posters made them want to stop and read all of them and that some of their very own ideas were made visual and public. Comments such as these made the project more than worth it.
In reality I must admit that this project was in fact 90% the community and only 10% me as all I did was print and post the ideas, the community brainstormed the ideas.
There are two things I would like to mention though.
First, I had 100 posters that were intended for the East London Village but never made it. Next time if I attempt a similar project I will make sure to begin in the East London Village.
The second thing I would like to mention (which is the reason I didn’t finish posting the remaining 100 posters) is that next time I will find another method/tool for hanging the posters. Using a standard staple gun for 200 posters (x 3 staples each = 600 pulls of the staple gun) hurt my hand and it took a few days for it to recover. On recommendation, next time I will rent, buy or borrow a hammer style staple gun.
With all of that said, it is going to be hard for upcoming project to have the same impact on the community, but that is ok. I have a few projects in mind for later in the year that will involve the community, and some people have actually approached me regarding specific projects, so it seems there will be plenty of opportunities in the future to make an impact.
For now I will focus on this week and perhaps something a little smaller in scale and possibly more personal.
With the successful and early completion of my Week 06 project I have had a moment to sit back and enjoy all of the positive comments from the community which this project has generated. To be honest, this project was 90% the community and 10% myself; all I did was print and post the ideas, the people of the community are the ones who came up with all of the fantastic ways to improve London, Ontario.
Over the past week I have received a couple of emails from people asking me if they could have a copy of one or two of the signs so that they can print them out and post outside their business/office. I encouraged these individuals to create their own signs using their own ideas and post them, it really isn’t that hard.
However, for those who would like the set of signs which I used I have decided to upload them for everyone to download. There are three things which are available for download:
All of the Posters Used: WEEK 06 posters
A Complete List of the 100 Ideas: DOWNLOAD HERE
Hi-Res Images: AVAILABLE ON FLICKR
Since this was essentially a community collaboration you are free to use the posters/list as you wish. As for the photos, you are free to use them with no need to credit them to me (although you can’t credit them to yourself or anyone else), however, the images cannot be used for commercial purposes of any type unless I am first contacted and consulted.
As some of you may have already noticed here at the Fifty-Two Weeks website there is now a logo for this project.
When completing this week’s project I decided that it would be handy if I had a logo with I could place on projects of mine that would be out in the community so that people could connect them to Fifty-Two Weeks. I wanted something that had the website address in it, that was simple and also compact.
James Wilkinson came forward and put something together for me. It may not be fancy but I think it suits this project. James took the designer’s liberty to add in the skyline to the logo and considering the project I am working on this week I think it is fitting. I hope that the projects I continue to work on can continue to reflect the nature of a city as much as they can reflect my creative and personal tendencies.
Although I didn’t end up adding the logo to this week’s project, simply because I think that this project is much more than just about myself and Fifty-Two Weeks, it is about the community, I plan on using the logo it in the future to help note what projects are part of Fifty-Two Weeks.
Thanks James.
My initial idea for this week was to make 7-10 different posters that had simple saying on them that would make people think. Sayings such as:
I was planning on making 100 copies (in total) of these and placing them around the downtown core. My point behind this was to get out of my house, into the community and give something back to the community, even if just in some small way.
On Tuesday morning after a good nights sleep I decided to take this project in the same direction but with a slightly different focus.
My new focus (after being influenced by a number of things) was to not only get out into the community and give something back, but I wanted to involve the community.
With that said I posed the following questions to the community using Twitter, Facebook and this very site and hoped that “crowd sourcing” the answers would help me with this project.
The questions were:
How can we improve London, Ontario?
And/or
How do we save London?
Although these questions are approaching the same underlying theme I wanted to make sure I got a variety of responses so I attempted to reach out to both the optimists and pessimists in the city.
I collected the answers, condensed them, added some of my own and printed them out and I took to the streets and posted “100 Ways to Improve London, Ontario”. Here are the results.1
The inspiration for this past week’s work came out of an idea I had while watching a movie the previous week. The movie sparked something in my mind to paint the painting that I did. The movie itself isn’t important on its own; rather, what is important is the fact that other creative works, such as movies, can spark interest and creative tendencies in individuals.
I have always found a love for movies and the fact that both the good and bad ones can spark an interest in me to research something, watch another movie or in this case create something. Up until recently I thought that I watched a fair number of movies, however I think that Matt Delvin might have almost everyone beat, including myself.
As a University of Western Ontario student, Matt Devlin is attempting to watch 365 movies over the course of 2010. Watching on average seven movies a week, Devlin will watch everything from sappy romantic comedies to hardcore action films.
To keep track of what he has watched Devlin has started a blog called “The Devlin Wears Prada” where he not only is keeping track of the movies he has watched but is doing a small review of each movie and rating each film as well.
Devlin has got balls (for lack of a better word), as this is a lot of movie watching. Having spent far too many days watching nothing but movies I know that you can easily kill an entire day watching 5 or more movies, which will be a good thing for Devlin as I am sure there will be days when he won’t have the time to watch any movies at all.
With that said, I am sure by the end of the year Devlin will have watched a ton of good movies and far more shitty movies. On top of this, I am sure that even without trying to do so Devlin will have had a number of creative ideas come to him because of the movies.
Because of the power of movies to inspire and because I think Devlin’s initiative is one which has positive implications I wanted to make mention of it today.
Watching movies and TV aren’t always bad things, as some people might want you to believe, watching movies and TV can help spark and start any number of things. As far as myself is concerned, watching a simple movie1 pointed me in the direction to paint last week’s project.
