MixedMedia

I’ve just finished a second round of changes to Peace Tiles’ World AIDS Day 2007 discussion guide, which is ready for download and review. I really, really appreciated the feedback of diligent readers of the first draft – I think it has helped to improve the overall structure as well as some important and specific details. So I wanted to introduce the guide to a larger audience  with an invitation to have a glance through it, give it a test run if you can, and please share with me any insights and recommendations you have to improve the guide.

The guide, titled A Triumph of the Spirit, builds off of the Amazing Grace of Texas companion guide, which introduced a series of “playing cards” as a way for book groups to discuss Texans’ experiences of faith. I adopted that format – with the permission of the original book’s publishers – as a way to put some of the remarkable Peace Tiles imagery created by young people to good use. In a nutshell, the guide encourages educators and artists to convene their own discussions around the HIV/AIDS epidemic and it local and global dimensions as part of a search for ways to take action.

If successful, the guide will serve as a blueprint or template for subsequent guides that address human trafficking, children in conflict, children and waste, and the growth of cities. If anyone is interested in helping to run workshops on any of these issues so that a pool of tiles from which to develop the cards is available, please drop me a line at lars@mixedmedia.us

Thank you in advance for taking the time to look through the guide and providing feedback!

One of the areas Peace Tiles will be developing curriculum and initiatives around in 2007 is Children and Waste.  I am beginning to pull together some resources, facts and figures.  I’d love your support and involvement!  Please help me understand this issue better from various perspectives and fields.

Sometime in 2007, according to U.N. estimates, more than 50 percent of the population of the planet will live in cities for the first time.  200 years ago, the urbanized population was around 3 percent.  Each week, approximately 1.3 million people leave small towns and the countryside for a life in the city. A billion of these people, most of them children, will end up in the world’s fast-growing slums. Many of them will grow up earning a living on dumps.

In 1995 I spent 3 weeks in and around Dakar’s municipal dump, a landfill occupying what used to be a 2.5km sq. lake at Mbeubeuss.  The experience opened my eyes to several important findings.

First, depending on your perspective, the dump is either your entry or your exit into the urban economy if you are poor.  In Senegal, many youths — particularly those from the rural Baol region in the south — come to Dakar looking for work.  Finding none, and not wishing to return to the arid farms of their childhood, they occupy a niche at the dump.

A second discovery is that dump workers — often considered part of the informal economy in many countries — are almost always part of a network.  The entire life at the Mbeubeuss dump is organized into stratified networks around specific activities, principally ragpicking of various items (ie glass jars, cloth scraps, and metal parts), the cleaning and preparation of items for repair and reuse, craft workers, and those who sell items at market.

Third, there is a stunning variety of activity and livelihoods being made at the dump, producing significant value for the urban poor.  Items sold at market that are produced from materials reclaimed at the dump will sell for 1/5 of the price of “new” items in a market.  This makes everything from footwear to paint to luggage much more accessible to those who need them.

More soon… I’ll also be blogging about this topic at CraftCycle.net with my friend Darlene Charneco…

Secondary schools around the world have until 1 November 2007 to register for the third Mondialogo School Contest (2007-2008). Over 2,500 teams from all five continents are expected to participate.

As part of the launch, schools in 40 countries will organize a “Mondialogo Day” to present their projects and plans for the 2007-2008 contest.

Participating schools are matched with a partner team from another country to prepare joint creative projects illustrating a dialogue between their two cultures.

Launched to coincide with the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development (21 May), the contest puts into practice the principles of cultural diversity and pluralism. According to UNESCO’s Director-General, these should be integrated into national policies, in particular those relating to education.

The Mondialogo School Contest is a constituent part of the Mondialogo – Intercultural Dialogue and Exchange initiative, which was launched in October 2003 by UNESCO and DaimlerChrysler.

Contact: a.hamshari@unesco.org for more information

Source: http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=53326&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

Just wanted to say hello!

Back soon

There’s something kinda cool going on in the photosharing site Flickr with “artist trading cards.” I’m not sure what it is (artists making playing card-sized works to swap?), how it started (a couple of years, max?) or how widespread it is as an activity (alot are mixed media) … But from what I can tell of the work, there is some sweet stuff being made, and exchanged (though word to the wise: not everyone thinks the card they got is as cool as the one they gave apparently).

Here is a sampling of art cards made by various artists. To view more, visit the Artist Trading Card pool at Flickr.

Here is a little more background on the “movement” from the lovely Cedar Seed website:

As their name indicates, ATC are collectables, a brilliant idea born of the older sports-themed trading cards. The one rule that makes an ATC derives from their origins: the dimensions of the ATC must be 2.5″x3.5″, or 64x89mm.

To this rule are appended a couple of conventions. First, an ATC mustn’t be sold, only exchanged, as the whole essence of these tiny works of art is about artists meeting (by correspondence or online if need be) and exchanging their works, thus meeting many artists and getting exposed to many personal styles. Second, on the back of each ATC the artist writes part or all of the following information: name, contact information, title of the ATC and number (1/8, 2/8…) if it’s part of an edition. By definition ATCs are made in limited numbers, often no more than one of a kind. Unique ATCs are called originals; sets of identical ATCs are called editions and are numbered; sets of ATCs that are based on one theme but that are different are called series. Don’t be intimidated by the concept of small editions or originals: very few people are anal about this. What most collectors really want are cards that were made with care. Based on that, numbers are meaningless.

According to another site, artist trading cards (ATCs) “was initiated in 1997 by Zurich artist M. Vänçi Stirnemann. since then several hundred people from all over the world have traded ATCs during trading sessions (see their gallery), through mail or by participating in copy-left editions and sister trading cards.”