I received an email about the Kitintale Skateboard Project project from an illustrator named Thea Jones who I’d worked with on Worn and on the CVP Workbook. Her email just said: “good things are being done by individuals”.

I’ve transcribed some of the writing from the Kitintale Skateboard Project site below. Because it was embedded in an image I couldn’t copy paste it, and the search engines can’t index it. Sometimes technology gets in the way, but maybe we can help a little bit. In a world of big disasters it may seem odd to embrace a small skate project, but I think about it this way: physical skill and challenging play opens and changes the shape of our brainways. Laughter and bravery and failure and improvement make connections between people that can warm hearts for lifetimes, and have wider expansive effects then you might ever imagine. Not to mention- skateboarding is a culture of independent thought and action and that’s a powerful thing to export. You are alone on the board, when it comes right down to it, and every small success you have with it makes you feel like a super hero (I know from my one summer with my roomate’s longboard.) And the world needs more brave happy playful peaceful skillful super heros, or at least more kids with smiles like these guys’.

To read more information about the Kitintale Skateboard Project, check out their website. To donate or get involved in whatever way you can, contact buraianrai @ hotmail.com, the Vancouverite NGO volunteer/filmmaker who seems to have fallen in love with the ramp, and the people who built and ride it.

In April 2006 a Ugandan named Jack and a South African named Shael built Uganda’s first and only skateboard ramp.

The local youth in the vicinity of the ramp are loving it and skating everyday. Both boys are girls are trying their hands at skateboarding, they are enjoying the challenges and the rewarding feeling of progression. The boys are girls that skate the ramp come from various backgrounds, yet all of them experience the effects of poverty in one form or another. Skateboarding does the same thing for these youth that it does for skaters all over the world; it gives them a new window for fun, it gives them a physical challenge, and it gives them a mental release from whatever problems they might be facing.

Currently the downside of the project is the quality of the boards that they have and the amount of space they have to use them. They have the two boards that were initially donated to the project, unfortunately though, the boards are cheap imitations. The imitations are showing their wear very quickly, the bearings are slow, and the grip tape on the decks has worn away. In a few months they will be broken. Once the boards go, the mini ramp will become useless. It is not possible to get real skateboards from within Uganda.

Something are complicated, this thing is not. If you can, send a paypal donation to the email above, and/or repost this call for donations on sites where more folks might see it.
cheers all,
risa

note: this is cross posted on indyish.com, and on the indyish myspace blog.

Anyway, now we’ve arrived at the CVP I made. My little coat, depicted here quite flatteringly I think, is still hanging on the little blue wooden hooks my sisters and my mom made for me years ago. When we started making this book we emailed the list of participants to see if anyone had any stories or sketches to add, but nobody seemed to. Nevertheless, Diane and I dug up our drawings and notes, and spent some time writing out our thoughts on the process, so we ended up devoting a few extra pages to our projects as a way of opening a window into what it had been like. So consider your selves forwarned- the next few pages will be all about me and me coat here.

The teacher I worked for at Concordia last year used to talk about doing a gallery exhibit with the walls covered in different people’s rejection letters- from arts granting agencies, publishers, schools, etc.The CVP is similar, with the world of different experiences of the same thing that it creates, but it celebrates all the layers and facets and subjective ways of success and failure. About 80% of kits given out come back in, and those that do are differently successful. For the Indyish launch we’re going to do a 24hour CVP, where brave young and old creative folk will tackle the process of invention with constrained materials in a much shorter time then the two CVP’s attempted before. (ooh ahh.)

Maybe there will be more failure, or maybe there will be more madcap hilarity in the successes. Who knows. More news on that soon, meanwhile, revel in the lightweight and breezy quilted bag, from CVP Trial 1.

Masaru Emoto, born July 22, 1943 in Yokohama, Japan, is best known for his controversial claim that if human thoughts are directed at water before it is frozen, images of the resulting water crystals will be beautiful or ugly depending upon whether the thoughts were positive or negative. Emoto claims this can be achieved through prayer, music or by attaching written words to a container of water.

Masaru Emoto- Wikipedia.

the three designers who collaborated on this piece all work, with Clayton Evans- [tag]Consistent Variable Project[/tag] co-founder- in a studio space called the Laboritoire Creatif. They make the collections on Indyish.com called Re-Gen, Pearls Before Swine, and Hastings and Main. They are very dear and friendly, but Diane didn’t know that yet when she went in for her first ever modeling experience at the party for the [tag]CVP[/tag], and so realizing she had their creation on backwards was a bit horrifying I guess. Goes to show how unimportant embarrassment can be though, as they/we are all giggly, ice cream eating friends now.

The shoot was an intense day- I wasn’t there for all of it, but some, and it was very fun, and I believe I even made it home in time for american idol. This piece is not practical, but it does kind of sum up the way a hurt heart feels.

Emily did suggest blended haiku, though it was more in the context of: “i’m tired, i just wrote like 45 haiku and some of these may be silly. feel free to futz with them.” They were awesome and I didn’t end up changing or editing a single one. Though some were weird, they all sparked the imagination, and the challenge was for to try and work with them and to see what she saw; or to leave the question open for the reader to puzzle out. i think by including the idea of blended haiku in the book, as an option for how to negotiate with the text, we also reinforced the idea that different people will think and like different things. Which is an obvious bit, but sometimes tough to remember.

By the way- the funny girl who made this jumper, and who submitted it with a paper which read “J is for Jumper, just put it on and Go!” is also all tangled up in Worn now. She models, she does PR, she multi-tasks like a star.