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Arcus ideas???

By nwoods | Thursday, July 13, 2006 at 5:36am

:cool: Hello everyone. We have an opportunity and a challenge. You may recall that last year the Arcus Foundation was our sponsor for the Cartoon Challenge. Also the name of the gallery in the Center for New Media. Arcus is headquartered in New York with an office in Kalamazoo as the founder is a Stryker Corp. grandson who lives in Kalamazoo (sometimes). Anyway, they have two primary funding interests . . . GLBT issues and the great apes. Kinda hard for us to save the apes so we have approached them in terms of social justice. The foundation has become much more visible locally and is now receiving a ton of grant requests. In an initial meeting with Arcus staff last spring, Valerie and I learned that proposals will need to be clearly linked to gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender issues in order to be funded. SO!

Ideas, anyone? We have thought about:

-- having a panel or guest speaker(s) who talk about recent related issues in animation such as SpongeBob SquarePants: will he make your child gay? Too old of a story, especially by May 07? Or could it be broadened to include other flaps through animation history?

-- having a screening of work by GLBT artists. Invite one or more to speak. I only know one such animator, so unless you folks or others can help us identify artists, it wouldn't be much of a show. But I do think this is one the foundation would like.

If we can get the right approach, we can get some decent funding from Arcus so do put your thinking caps on and send your ideas. Thanks very much! Nancy

Dan Sarto's picture
Submitted by Dan Sarto on

I believe there are several GLBT animation fests and/or short film fests with animation programming that can be looked up in our current and past events database within http://events.awn.com. They could possibly provide some content, programming suggestions, etc.

Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.

Dan Sarto's picture
Submitted by Dan Sarto on

We've covered some of these issues in Animation World Magazine. I'll ask Sarah Baisley or Rick Demott their thoughts on this subject (they're on my editorial staff) and see what might be topical.

Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.

nwoods's picture
Submitted by nwoods on

Thanks very much, Dan. I started looking through the AWN events listings but it's very difficult to figure out if an event has some GLBT bent to it. Thank you for asking staff to think about this!!

dchai's picture
Submitted by dchai on

Hi Nancy and Co,

Sorry, I don’t know anyone who would be appropriate to recommend for GLBT issues. (And the only Great Ape animator I knew quit and went into real estate.)

Although I know the Cartoon Challenges have addressed human rights and “with malice towards none” in the past, perhaps this year’s topic could be geared towards tolerance or acceptance in general. It wouldn’t have to be specifically towards GLBT issues, but they could be pitched as potential broadcast PSAs, which could be used by the foundation

DC