Post by Kay
I have been busy in the studio for the past few weeks designing the new Shetland flora series for the exhibition. My first action was to go through all the microscope photographs I took whilst in residency in Scalloway Booth last August and select the best ones to create in clay. It took a while categorising everything by name of plant and the place that each was found. There are still a few unidentified plants too.
I then made drawings of a selection of the images. For these purposes, I need clear line drawings that can be translated on to the clay. I am careful to be precise and as accurate as possible when it comes to staying faithful and true to the original object.
Meanwhile our crowdfunding campaign is gaining ground. We are up to 11% of our target amount now. It is a major commitment, we are both discovering, to attempt to raise funds in this way. The money is unlikely to just appear; it requires a lot of dedication and time publicising and promoting it, which eats into my studio time, and I am already really up against it with the amount of work I need to produce in the next 6 weeks. Check out our crowdfunding campaign here.
So it’s 7 days a week from morning til night for me until we travel to Shetland – the usual artist’s schedule! Of course, as well as the making and the fundraising for this project, all the other usual commitments keep rumbling on – job and funding applications for what happens next, organising this year and next year’s exhibitions at The Ceramic House, website developments, blogging, getting inspired about new ideas, plotting, planning and carrying on!
My first thought is that I have already broken my self-imposed rule for blogging every day. The good news is we gained an extra 3 (significant) pledges yesterday and are now up to 8 % of our target – which ain’t too shabby…
The ‘Beware of the Bull’ notice, posted above, was photographed last August and seems an appropriate response to the number of crowd-funding marketing platforms that we have been contacted by in the last few days! A positive deluge of new social media followers all promising low-cost promotion, along with potentially tens of thousands of their engaged followers just waiting, hands on collective mice, to pledge endless amounts of cash!
But how many of these services actually deliver? I’m not sure I can answer that; but after initial enthusiasm for the idea I have only clicked on one free link to see if it bears any fruit in the next 24 hours, before committing to their paid service. I’m already a little cynical that it won’t.
When you look at the amount of crowd-funding campaigns out there trying to raise money for all sorts of different projects, I am reminded that our journey was never going to be easy and the seemingly small sum we are asking for could be unattainable. Time will tell of course, and for now I remain cautiously optimistic that we will get to where we need to be through our own efforts…
Please watch the film by the way, if you haven’t already, please consider pledging a few quid to a worthwhile and ambitious project.
(Joseph)
I’ve decided we’re going to blog every day whilst our crowdfunding campaign is running on indiegogo. So the latest update is we have reached 4% of our funding goal in the first day. If we keep going at that rate we will comfortably make our target.
And each day I’ll accompany the post with a picture from the residency archive or a new one from the studio. Today a cute horse!
Please consider supporting and/or sharing the campaign with your networks, I’ll happily return the favour if you ever need similar help…
We are delighted to announce that our first ever crowdfunding campaign has gone live today on indiegogo (trumpets and drum roll please…) We are offering some fantastic rewards (or “perks” as they are called) to our backers and we urge you please to share the campaign as widely as possible, even if you aren’t able to contribute financially.
This is a new experiment for us in funding our work and we are both excited and nervous at the same time.
Thanks to Nicki Lang of Tela films for our fantastic crowdfunding video…
(Joseph)
