It’s mother’s day in Australia today (Happy Mothers Day all you mums and carers!!) so I’d like to dedicate a blog post to a worthwhile cause, for a pretty special mama. This campaign “To Mama With Love” has been rapidly created by a bunch of volunteers around the world. I’ve seen it come together on a Google Group over the last couple of weeks, and I noticed on Facebook that it all started from an idea Gia Lyons shared with Stacey Monk.  Ideas turn into reality quickly, these days! Especially when people join together and take a little time to share their skills and ideas.

So what’s it all about? To quote Chris Noble from What Gives?”

“The thing is, most of what we buy for Mom on her day isn’t going to last.  That’s what’s special about the campaign that Stacey Monk and the crew at Epic Change are running this Mother’s Day: They’re giving you a chance to tell your “Mama” you love her, and to make a lasting difference in a child’s life at the same time.

Just visit their site: To Mama With Love and you’ll see.  Each “Heartspace” created is a tribute.  And each tribute drives a donation to help Mama Lucy Kamptoni continue her mission to teach and house children in Tanzania. If the work she’s done so far is any indication, the money you donate will be very well spent. Mama Lucy started a school that grew from 10 students in 2003 to over 400 kids today.  the proceeds from this campaign will help build boarding facilities to house and shelter up to 50 more students.”

So far more than 200  “Heartspaces” have been created, and nearly $12,000 has been generated for the cause over the past few days.

It only takes a minute to dedicate a heartspace to a mother and help to create a boarding facility for these amazing kids in Tanzania . Here are the directions from the site: 

1. Create a heartspace
   for a mom you love by giving in her honor.
2. Show your love
   by personalizing your heartspace with words, photos, and/or video.
3. Send a Mother’s Day e-card
   with a link to the heartspace you”ve created.
4. Your mother’s day present just changed the world.

Here’s mine. Let’s help Mama Lucy reach her goal of $50,000 .

Other posts on this wonderful project:

* Geoff Livingston on Mashable
* Beth Kanter on Beth’s Blog
* Jen Consalvo at Tech Cocktail
* Debra Askanese at Community Organizer 2.0
* Amy Sample Ward at NPTech

Will you tell your mama you love her? Share your words, your art and a small donation over at http://www.tomamawithlove.org/

Shout Out Social promises to be a special two hour event for anyone interested in the arts and community development. This celebration of the creative voice will include a digital exhibition of images and words created by people around the world, and a video message from the inspiring visual journalist Eileen Clegg.  Special guest speaker, actor and playwright Shahin Shafaei will be there to share some words, drawing upon his incredible personal story.

Shahin Shafaei

Shahin Shafaei, an acclaimed actor and playwright in his native home of Iran fled his country after having his work banned. He found his way to Australia in 2000 through Indonesian people smugglers, and ended up spending 22 months at Curtin immigration detention center in WA – 10 of those months in isolation. These days Shahin continues his creative work and empowers others to share their own amazing stories through the arts.

This special event will be held one night only – Saturday 14th March 5pm to 7pm at Horse Bazaar in Melbourne (which kicks on until late.) Entry is free and a donation box will be available to raise funds for a Opportunity International Australia project.

You still have your chance to submit photos or artwork to the Flickr group.
RSVP to the event on Facebook or help to spread the word by becoming a Fan! Please tell your friends and come along to be inspired and help make a difference!

Andy Piper shouts out for Friendship from the UK

Gypsychk shouts out for Green Spaces from the US

And if you would like to be involved in any way – please shout out!

…”Follow the chromosomes
that interlock like acrobats
to create the trick of a life
Balance, harmony – a high wire act.

Follow the tectonic fault-lines
that skid round the globe
without our permission.
Plates spinning in that same circus.

Follow the word network,
the net worth of word nets
that catch us each in ourselves
when the high wire snaps.”….{{read more}}

Penni created a special video about her daugher Frederique, and wrote something beautiful about their journey overseas

“thank you for showing me your world, for taking me beyond the surface of places and into the centre of them, and out of the centre and to the edges. Thank you for being angry and happy and sad. Thank you for watching the tiny polysteirine balls bounce down the bridge over the Seine while I fell in love with the Notre Dame, and thank you for making me watch them too, as they swirled and dived in the wind.”

Lee made a video on Youtube with a powerful reading, Iggy shared the story of the web connecting after loss and Arthi commented that sharing our experiences can influence our children, albeit not the way we originally intended! I enjoyed reading each of these 5 entries, which are in the running to win a great prize. I’m happy to report US$215 has been donated through this creative challenge towards a microfinance project and those 6 individuals (plus others who have made donations to date) will be in the running to win a copy of “World Poverty for Dummies”. I’m thinking of getting Spiderman to draw the names out of a hat for me.

There are still 2 more days left to share something creative on the theme of  “Beyond”. Your entry would be a wonderful Christmas gift and anyone can enter. Entries close midnight this Sunday Australian EST and winners drawn on Monday.

And as a special Christmas treat, thanks to Mary Martin Books I have another copy of  ‘World Poverty for Dummies’ which I will give to the next Australian resident who submits something new for the creative challenge Are you feeling creative? All you have to do is respond as a comment. photo or blog post over on the original post.

“I feel that with ten million girls shopping for Barbie in 3D and two million Webkins in 3D worlds, the next generation sees 3D worlds the way teens now see Text Message and YouTube. It will be expected that everything will be virtual world from shopping to researching. Art therapy has a great opportunity to be of help to a generation in the media they are accustomed to, we just have to figure out how it works and how kids are relating to it. It’s time to start researching what works and what doesn’t’ work now.”

Ginger studied fine arts and worked in graphic design for ten years before moving into web development. “It was an exciting time to be involved with technology and I put down my personal art.” Five years later, during a personal crisis, she picked up her camera and started to take photos of children and discovered other forms of art could give her the same therapeutic benefits. So she made the decision to study art therapy, “I decided I wanted to help others find that comfort and healing too.”

” Group virtual world art therapy (InWorld Art Therapy) is entirely new. I have found only one person working in this medium so I would love to hear from anybody who might be interested or already trying this out. I will be doing the first research in September..”

” My target audience is high school students that refuse to come to a group therapy session or are more open to electronic means of communication than verbal.

Ginger expects students to:

• be more willing to reveal more when “hidden” behind an avatar
• practice social skills like assertiveness, honesty, empathy as practice for face to face encounters
• feel a sense of community and relationship (compared to being online alone)
• express themselves through 3D art which may more familiar to them

Although not intended to be a substitute for in-person art therapy, it provides an alternative for youth who don’t like the idea of participating in traditional art therapy. “Also, safety is of utmost concern. InWorld Art Therapy can only be conducted if you know the person’s real name, location and cell phone number and of course if the person is a minor, with parental consent.”

If you know of anybody else working in this field, please leave a comment. What do you think about using virtual worlds for therapy?

MADaboutART’s HIV and empowerment programme for children and young people uses art-based and narrative therapy interventions and experiential learning to build knowledge, skills and confidence. We have established a purpose-built arts and education centre at our base in Nekkies, a township outside Knysna in the Western Cape of South Africa where we run after-schools MAD clubs where children aged 10 upwards can learn about HIV and AIDS and how to protect themselves in a fun and safe environment. We also undertake outreach work with affected and vulnerable populations, both directly and by training teachers and youth workers. We collaborate with libraries and art galleries to create HIV art competitions and community awareness exhibitions. We have just begun our first programme with pre-school children.

You can download Joanna’s Powerful Writing PDF (featuring a quote by yours truly) and make a donation to MadAbout Art on her blog post.

Storytelling is so powerful, isn’t it? So I wonder if blogging, tweeting and putting photos on Flickr counts as therapy?

It’s physically painful for her to draw or paint, but she still does it. I’m so proud of her.

Vertigo title sequence

Walk on the Wild Side title sequence

Casino title sequence

His obituary in the New York times celebrated him as “the minimalist auteur who put a jagged arm in motion in 1955 and created an entire film genre…and elevated it into an art.”

Find your talent. Be creative. Try something new. Keep it simple. Give it context. And put your own stamp on it.

Thank you, Saul Bass.

Similar Posts: Hoban’s Door 

Pixels, art, music and storytelling transporting us to the sublime, creative and emotional psyche.

A recent series on the ABC “Not Quite Art”hosted by Marcus Westbury grabbed my attention recently. I caught the episode in Glasgow where artists were doing great stuff in old factories, fostered by communities of artists. I liked how Marcus seemed to capture the essence of a vibrant creative community injecting life, art and culture into a hollow industrial shell. I couldn’t help but think of the parallels with virtual worlds, Secondlife in particular. From the ABC site:

Marcus puts forward the question of whether you can buy culture by building an iconic building or even franchising a McLouvre or McGuggenheim? Or is culture a messy, dirty thing that comes from the bottom up, refuses to behave, is borderline illegal and breaks a lot of occupational health and safety rules?

Sometimes when you wander around Secondlife you sense this “culture” – a community living outside the rules. Obviously this is where traditional marketers got it wrong. Imagine McSponsor walking into a real life burgeoning underground arts & culture scene and dropping in a building, flashy logos, and changing the rules. Uh-huh.

So how do you retain that vibrant culture in a growing community? I personally think culture grows when you heat it up, mix it up, foster it, infuse it. Just don’t try to change the essence of it.

What do you think?