“Kickstarter is a funding platform for creative projects. Everything from films, games, and music to art, design, and technology. Kickstarter is full of ambitious, innovative, and imaginative projects that are brought to life through the direct support of others.” – Kickstarter FAQs
While not a nonprofit organization, Kickstarter enables backers to make good happen for others. For innovators, getting funding can be exceedingly difficult. As a platform, Kickstarter connects these innovators with many funders to “crowdfund” the projects. It reduces risk for funders, and provides funding to people who are creating innovative projects ranging from art displays to watches! Funders “pledge” a certain amount to the project choose an offered thank-you gift, and are only charged if that project meets its fundraising goal.
For those interested in data, learn more about Kickstarter’s projects here!
Have you ever wondered what inspired the design of the Center for Living Peace? Our new blog segment reveals the stories behind different decor elements of our space. This October we are spotlighting our Dyak statue.
Dyak
This statue characterizes a member of the Dyak, also known as the native tribe people of Borneo. The dyak is known to represent celebrations of common man. This piece of carved wood was under water for 600 years. The female figure represents the goddess within us all. Surrounded by grasses of her homeland, she stands as a guardian of the room of the common people (also known as our yoga and meditation room)!
Abbas Kiarostami‘s short film, Where’s My Romeo, shows the universal power of film, art, and poetry across cultures. It depicts Iranian women watching the final scene of Zeffirilli’s Romeo and Juliet . The film is part of “Chacun Son Cinéma” (To Each His Own Cinema), a collective film of 33 shorts directed by different directors about their feeling about Cinema.
Live peace by learning about other cultures and art around the world!
Playing for a Change started out as a small project inspired to bring about peace through music by recording musicians all across the world with a mobile recording studio. The movement grew out of the belief that music has the power to unite people across all boundaries. Over 100 musicians have been recorded by the project. From these connections Playing for Change has created a touring band. While recording, the project’s film crew was compelled to push the movement further by creating the Playing for Change Foundation to facilitate global music education. It’s mission is to ensure that anyone with the desire to receive a music education would have the opportunity to do so. The Foundation has started a music schools in Ghana, South Africa, Rwanda, Mali ,and four schools in Nepal. The Foundation holds benefit concerts around the world on Playing for Change Day, September 22nd, to fund it’s music school program.
Playing for Change Musicians’s rendition of Bob Marley’s Redemption Song
Playing for Change’s website features videos from high profile artists like Bono and Manu Chao alongside street artists and community musical groups remixed to create a cohesive song. It regularly posts new episodes highlighting musicians and cultures all over the world as the project continues to expand its reach.
The Playing for Change crew has worked with musicians at these locations
The Center for Unconventional Security Affairs (CUSA), started in 2003, is a department at UC Irvine that takes a look at modern issues and challenges for human and environmental security through “innovative research and education programs that integrate experts from the public and private sector.”
CUSA focuses on two core areas in it’s programming and research, Environment Conflict and Peace Building and Global Change and Human Security. It’s interdisciplinary approach seeks to cultivate a new generation of leaders and researchers with education programs involving experts from the public and private sector. CUSA researchers and students have conducted research fieldwork in more than twenty-five countries and on all seven continents, including Antarctica.
Here’s a TEDxOrangeCoast talk with Richard Matthew, Ph.D., the founding director of the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs.
Professor Matthew spends much of his time in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, studying how environmental stress contributes to violent conflict and other types of crisis. For several years he has worked closely with the United Nations to integrate natural resource management and climate change adaptation into peace-building efforts, participating in various field assessments and directing one in Sierra Leone. He teaches courses on sustainability and social enterprise.
The Environment Art and Human Security (eARTh) Studio, founded by Pamela Donohoo, aerialist, cirque-style acrobat, dancer/ choreographer, gymnast, approaches the issues of environment, sustainability and human security issues through art. Pamela Donohoo performed an improvisational dance while simultaneously creating a 9′x9′ painting that captured movements informed and inspired by the experience of women in conflict zones as part of our Women, War, and Peace Lecture.
Support CUSA’s efforts towards a more peaceful world and read more about it’s upcoming events and projects at their website.
Here’s some more insight into the design inspiration of the Center. This month we’ll be looking at our lovely paper molo walls.
Paper Molo Walls
These walls are made from paper with lights installed in the interiors. The light in these walls represent the inner light within all of us. Light is fluid and flexible, and like us, these walls can also be shaped and formed into any style to suite the needs of the programs we hold here at the Center for Living Peace.
You can create something new out of simple things around your house! Create a gift for a friend or family member. Learn how at one of our OCMA or The Ecology Center art classes!
“At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.”
- Jean Houston
Stunning, astonishingly choreographed trailer for TEDxSummit in Qatar from WE ARE Pi, the folks who brought us the incredible Human Brain trailer for TEDxAmsterdam last fall.
The kaleidoscope was done entirely in-camera, no editing, just pure choreography.
“The more you document your own life, the more you check in, you tweet, the more you post photos of what you did last night, the more you do all of this stuff, or even in my case, the more you listen for little lines of dialogue that can make their way into stories, the more you photograph moments, in a way, the more you start to step out of those moments, and if you do that too much, you become a spectator to your own life.”
- Jonathan Harris
In what ways do you document your life? How can you balance the way you express and live your experiences to help you live peace?
Check out Jonathan Harris’s many projects, such as cowbird, on his website.
This Fall on October 10th, TEDxOrangeCoast will be hosting a new event, TEDxOrangeCoast 2012 Redefining Relevance, at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts! This will be an exciting conference with a mission to help turn inspiring ideas into action. UCI’s Center for Unconventional Affairs’s founder, Professor Richard Matthews, will be featured in his second TEDxOrangeCoast talk. His talk in 2011 was on Natural Resources for Peacebuilding and can be viewed on the TEDxOrange Coast website along with their other past talks.
This year’s conference will revolve around the questions, how do you make sense of a world that is constantly changing and how do you solve problems that haven’t been defined?
