Kickstarter

Our art continues the legacy of visual language, as we are contemporary storytellers influenced by graffiti art, comic books, political posters, religious spiritual icons, and our own indigenous traditions.

After two successful mural tours through Latin America the United States, TYS intends to continue its work of community exchange and arts education. TYS intends to strengthen our commitment to building a global community and to support in giving voice to various communities that we partner with. By working with the most disenfranchised communities, TYS utilizes its talents and skills to tell the stories of communities on the edge of survival.

TYS will embark on a one month mural tour of the Philippine Islands. While much media coverage has been given to many recent tragedies that have devastated communities in Haiti and elsewhwere, the plight of the Filipino people, who experienced massive devastation in 2009 from which the country is still recovering.

Cultural exchange is a major component of the Trust Your Struggle mission. This ideal has fueled our mural-making, and will go into creating a broad online presence, including an episode/webisode series. Through mural tours, the Trust Your Struggle collective meets incredible communities near and far, and while we let their stories inform the art we produce, we also feel personally responsible for disseminating their struggles throughout the world. It is with that goal in mind that we have incorporated a crew of successful media producers (with experience for brands like MTV Networks, HBO, and VBS.tv) to help document these tales. As a group, we will create video segments and web content, showing stories of the communities we visit along with timelapses of the murals we paint. In so doing, we hope to virtually bring an international audience along on our journey. The goal of this content being to deliver an informed snapshot of each of our destinations.

These video segments will continue to develop into a series, with an episode for each community (and mural painted there). They will illustrate the cultural exchange inherent in the mural-making process, while highlighting each community's own struggles, and our lives as traveling artists. The tour schedule lends itself perfectly to an episodic format, and our hope for posting such a series on the web is to inspire a broad audience to make positive changes, and express themselves within their communities.

It is with that goal in mind that we have partnered with World Up, a non-profit whose mission is to educate the public about global issues through art and music and incorporated a crew of successful media producers (with experience for brands like MTV Networks, HBO, and VBS.tv) to help document these tales.

Our aim is to—through art and media–give voice to communities that are often overlooked. There is no doubt that this series will be visually stimulating and packed with stories, laughs, tears, mishaps and successes. The synthesis of video and mural production is a great marriage of creativity, story telling, and modern media technology. It is also a great opportunity to attach a brand name to an innovative and creative project. Given our firm grasp on delivering quality digital material, the ability to present video and artistic content across multiple platforms can easily be applied.

Substantial sponsorship will be met with appropriate production credits as well as logo placement, branding, and visibility on any promotional materials, end credits, and website development.

You can help support this tour! Donate to TYS and together we can paint a world of international solidarity and positive creative social change!

In the Struggle and Solidarity,