Proposal: Basement Media Festival

LJ Frezza

Describe your project.
We are trying to organize a one-night film/video festival for late August in the Cambridge/Somerville area. The purpose of the Basement Media Festival is to highlight work that focuses on the act of mediation in motion pictures. We’ve been accepting submissions for a few months now and we already have over 30 entries from complete strangers around the world. While the festival focuses on motion pictures, we are accepting submissions of all forms. We already have a few still image submissions and there’s still a few weeks left for artists to get their work in.

How will Feast funding make your project happen?
Unlike a lot of festivals, the Basement Media Festival is free to submit to because we believe that filmmakers shouldn’t have to pay to do us the favor of making programming available for our screening. Because of this, however, we will have to pay out of pocket for all expenses. The Feast grant would allow us to pay for screening space and publicity materials for the festival.

Proposal: Second Hand Puppets

Danielle Hedquist

Describe your project.
We would like to put on a puppet show—targeted for all ages—somewhere that is easily accessible to the public, preferably an outdoor venue such as the Boston Common, or potentially an indoor venue depending on weather conditions (if the show should take place in the winter). The puppets will be made primarily from found objects or recyclable materials. The story will be a mythical/whimsical tale centered around a character named Tomato Beard, a forlorn farmer whose curse is to have his tomato crop grow only in his beard and not his soil. The project would be a way to gather people together and enjoy a delightful convergence of story telling and artistry.

How will Feast funding make your project happen?
Money from the Feast Mass grant would be used for materials (such as adhesives and tools), potential vendor’s fee and sound equipment (rentals or purchase). We are also considering the possibility of serving refreshments (something tomato based!) for which the money could also be used.

The project would take place in late fall/possibly early winter, depending on the time it takes to develop puppets and a “stage.” By the next Feast, we should have all or most of the puppet characters finished, as well as the stage and the set pieces. We could keep photo documentation of the puppet-making process to present at the next Feast, and be able to perform part of the final story.

Proposal: Science Shaping Our World

Steven Munevar

Describe your project.
I am a research scientist and an entrepreneur and would like to propose a web design project for our grassroots life science outreach and education initiative called Science Shaping Our World (SHOW).

SHOW is a free-to-attend grassroots seminar/networking series started by my start-up company that highlights areas of life science research and technology possessing significant transformative potential such as stem cells, RNAi, gene therapy, among others. the mission of SHOW is to bring together all members of the community, from researchers to entrepreneurs, investors, technology and business professionals to students and laypeople in a setting where they can gain exposure and insight into the life science advancements changing our world.

Specifically, we would like to design and implement a web site where we could coordinate, highlight, archive, and promote SHOW so as to reach out to as great a number of people as possible and have the best possible impact on the community. Science and technology can have a transformative effect on the world around us; thus it is important that we all play a role in the direction and shape that these amazing technologies will take.

SHOW events take place at the Microsoft new england research and Development Center. through the advent of a SHOW web site we will be able to share this ongoing event series with an even larger and more diverse audience through ongoing discussions, multimedia, and future archived SHOW events and web-casts. the SHOW website development project will be a stand-alone piece, But its support of the ongoing SHOW series itself will be continuous. July’s SHOW tackles the question of drug resistance and highlights strategies that may serve to help us engineer better therapeutics in the future. the event is set for Thursday July 29, 2010 and additional information and registration can be found at: www.showjuly2010.eventbrite.com

How will Feast funding make your project happen?

1. Designing the SHOW logo
2. Outlining the SHOW web pages and flow
3. Developing the content for the SHOW pages
4. Retaining a web developer to create a WordPress-driven dynamic web portal for SHOW

Proposal: Greenologist Meet & Eat Dinner

Lauren Friel

Describe your project.
We propose to organize a Meet & Eat, a dinner in which the attendees will include local farmers and purveyors and the meal will be made entirely from their produce. There are currently no dinner projects focusing on local food that give attendees the opportunity to meet the people who are growing/baking/creating the meal, and we hope the experience will help draw attention to local food and local businesses.

Meet & Eat will happen in Boston, and a portion of ticket sales will benefit the Farm School, a working farm in Athol, MA, that educates children and adults about what it means to be “stewards of the earth.”

Greenologist is a community of Boston-area folks dedicated to getting local food to more people. Greenologist provides a home-delivery service of farmers market goods using an online ordering system.

How will Feast funding make your project happen?
The food for Meet & Eat will be donated, so we anticipate using the Feast funding to help us rent a space. We’re planning to host Meet & Eat by mid-October, when things are slowing down for the farmers but there’s still a harvest, so it should be happening right around the time of the next Feast.

Proposal: Where What You Eat

Courtney Moy

Describe Your Project.
The mission is a simple recipe: 1 printmaker, 1 consuming idea, 1 city (Boston), 13 photos, and 13 shirts. In my search for great food and a great story, I will go around Boston to get to know its neighborhoods and what people like to eat in them. I’ve started to edition my prints using the number 13 based on the idea of a baker’s dozen.

The neighborhoods: Allston/Brighton, Roslindale, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill/Roxbury, Chinatown/Downtown Crossing, the South End, the North End, Mattapan, South Boston, East Boston, and Charlestown.

I will ask participants to email me a photo of their favorite dish, from which I would make a drawing and render it into a screenprint. I would screenprint the image onto a shirt and give it back to the owner. this project is a combination of what I love about the city and my interest in accessibility and multiplicity. I want people to take something with them. I do not seek a profit, all I ask in return is a photo of the owner in their new t-shirt.

How will Feast funding make your project happen?
$300 would be more than enough to help print shirts for this project. I have silkscreens ready to use for printing and access to equipment. Shirts and ink alone would be $100. The other $200 would be split for shipping the shirts back to the owners and then for a small publication printing of a small color zine of this project.

I see this as having two venues down the line; one is traditional—having a show in a gallery or publication—and the other non-traditional. I see the t-shirt and people wearing these shirts outside in public as having its own separate life. eventually, my goal would be to have a larger project in the future: visit more cities, talk to locals and print more shirts.

This is a collaborative project. I’m fascinated by the idea of locality, and traceability to community. In Boston you wear a red Sox shirt and you’re taken for a local. When it comes to taste, people are just as selective about food as they are about how they dress. When it comes to food, I’ve always been interested in value and taste. I love food. I love to eat. I love to talk about what I eat. But most of all I love a good story.What we choose to eat is another way we identify ourselves. My work is more than a mish mash of Chinese and English, it’s become a response to my own broken english, to growing up in Boston, and to everyone for feeding me.

Proposal: The Art of Traveling: Urban Sojourns

Christian Greer — 1st place $400

Describe your project.
We are the students (and teacher) of a class entitled, the Art of Traveling: Urban Sojourns, currently in session at a Boston-based "free skool” called Corvid College. If selected, we will use the Feast funds to create and publish an anthology of our class’s adventures, reflections, maps, and the secrets we found while traveling, both in the Boston area and in the texts we read.

Founded on its opposition to outrageous tuition fees, endless bureaucracy, and everything that made college a hassle castle instead of a place to better one’s life in the here and now, Corvid College is an experiment in radical education. Our college has no admissions office (everyone is welcome!), and is based on providing an education that is organized around competencies, projects, independent studies, and, primarily, curiosity. so, instead of grades, ruthless competition, and oppressive hierarchies, Corvid offers convivial learning based on curiosity and mutual interest. Being unrestrained by institutional interests, the teaching collective has taken it upon themselves to teach the things they like, which subsequently, tend to be more radical/ interesting/enjoyable.

How will Feast funding make your idea happen?
As of now we have focused on locating and mapping as much off-the-radar or “grey zone” geography we can find—this includes abandoned factories, places to swim at night, and the like. We want to make the anthology zine as a comprehensive DiY artifact that we, as well as the other people in the college and community, can use for reference and enjoyment. the money will be used to purchase the materials (high quality paper, printer ink, binding glue) to make the zines.

The 10-week class finishes in late august, so we plan on having our zine out by then!