Four months, one crowdfunding campaign, a fair few InDesign sessions and a courier delivery later: the Processing newspaper has arrived.
Made possible by 62 Sponsume contributors, the newspaper has been printed and delivered – several boxes currently stacked in my living room.
It’s quite strange to hold the newspaper in all honesty. The abstract idea, one that has been constantly discussed between us over the past 5 months, is now a tangible object.
As the newspaper slowly begins to filter out across Liverpool, including at The Cornerstone Gallery for next Thursday’s opening, I wonder what will it’s impact be? When you put any work into the public domain, silence can be unsettling. However I’m hoping that the newspaper will act as a catalyst for critical discussion once the exhibition opens.
I believe that the collaborations between the writers and photographers have already resulted in positive outcomes. However the full extent of these dialogues won’t be evident for a while yet.
Over the next week, in the run upto the private view of Processing, I will be posting extracts from the newspaper.
If you’re based in Liverpool you can pick one up at the Bluecoat, FACT, Open Eye Gallery and The Cornerstone Gallery next week. If you’re not up north please get in touch and I will send you a copy.
Good morning. I’m writing this from sunny Ibiza where I am on tour with Islington Mill. It has been a really amazing time with some really interesting work being made but you can read about the tour on the a-n Artists’ Talking blog.
Focusing on Processing it has been a busy and rewarding time since my last post nearly two weeks ago.
I am absolutely delighted to say that we reached 104% of our total for the newspaper on crowdfunding. Amazingly, 62 people donated to the campaign in a month raising more than our target of £900. It was a phenomenal response.
Crowdfunding is a demanding yet rewarding pursuit. One with etiquette, constant marketing, a heavy dose of uncertainty and always a contingency plan. Nothing boosts your desire to realise a project than such visible support. I won’t be asking people for any financial contributions for quite a while though!
After an intensive week or two designing and putting the newspaper together, I sent it to print on Monday. It should be ready next week. I can’t wait to see the final result.
Also delighted to say that I was successful in a recent Arts Council England Grants for the arts application. This has meant that the exhibition can now reach its maximum potential. Significantly the photographers and writers involved in the exhibition will be renumerated for their work and won’t be out of pocket.
While making participants aware that funding isn’t guaranteed at the start of the project, I was extremely uncomfortable asking them to give not only their time, but also pay for printing and framing their work. For all curators and photographers you can appreciate the costs of making and exhibiting photography to a high standard. I am delighted that the ACE have recognised the long term potential of the project.
It is two weeks until the private view now. In my next few posts, I will be discussing the work in the exhibition and how it has developed.
We are just about to enter into the last five days of our crowdfunding campaign to raise money to print a newspaper for Processing Since my last post at the end of April, we’ve reached a fantastic £800 of our overall total of £900.
What has been ever more amazing is that 52 people – a heady mix of friends and strangers – have contributed to the campaign. 52. That’s quite a number and very generous people. Even if we fail to hit £900, something that would be disappointing having come this far, then I consider this alone is an achievement.
The campaign has also given me some rich experience of how crowdfunding works. While I made sure to research what makes a good campaign, using resources such as an article by Emily Speed on a-n, before jumping in, I held onto a degree of pessimism before starting. Without any real social benefit outside of the project, I often feared; who would fund us? As this evaporated, I have picked up numerous valuable lessons ‘on the job’. I hope to share these on this blog after the campaign has finished.
Today I will be working on the design for the newspaper; the firmest indicator of the shift from the intangible coffee shop discussions of the last few months.
It would be extremely rude to continue my recent trend of ending my posts with a link and asking you to consider donating. This time I can say that you can help push us over the edge:
http://www.sponsume.com/project/processing-newspap…
