Kickstarter

We had a very full Spring on Monticello Road but we’re also having a fun summer.

Story Line
Last week, we had an amazing week with the kids of the Story|Line project. We spent a morning at Monticello; then the next day we visited Lazy Daisy, Virginia Industries for the Blind and had lunch at Mas. After a Wednesday clinic at the Bridge we brought all their experiences to fruition on the Free Expression Wall. This was the best year for Story|Line and we are deeply grateful to everyone who helped make it happen.

Learn more | Pictures

Photos at the Local
The photography exhibition has moved to its summer quarters at the Local. Twenty photos, including ten that have never been exhibited before, adorn the walls of one of our favorite restaurants. Stop by and check them out. The exhibition will remain on view through July. [More]

Community Slide Show
This coming Sunday and Monday nights (July 22-23), there will be a slide show in the storefront window next to the Local (the Beauty Shop). It will be a rotating display of about two hundred images, the faces of Monticello Road. Projected from the inside, it will fill the storefront window and be visible from the street. [Preview]

Rewards on the Way
I have received a shipment of books and if you pledged and have not received your copy (or your print) I thank you for your patience and please know that it is on its way. If you do not have one or would like to obtain, please email me and I’ll get it to you. Thanks to our generous backers, subsidies are available for those in need.

Thank You is always a good way to end an email or a conversation. Muchas gracias  for all your help (so far) and I am honored to be your friend and neighbor.

See you soon!

The Kickstarter campaign was successful but we’re not done yet.

The exhibition will move to its summer quarters (the Local) in July. The exhibition’s emphasis will be different and there will be some new pictures. Hopefully there will be a small but cool public art element to it as well. More on that soon.

We’re also hopeful about the Oral Histories piece. After Lulu gets back from traveling, we will sit down and figure out the best way to share with the world some of the stories we heard. We’re kicking around some neat ideas—again, more on that soon.

Perhaps the best thing is that Monticello Road will be the theme of this year’s StoryLine project, a terrific multilateral venture of the Bridge, Piedmont Council for the Arts, Charlottesville Parks & Recreation, and others that takes a group of City summer camp kids on a series of urban hikes culminating with a mural they make on the Free Expression Wall. It’s about stories, places, and neighborhoods and in many ways my project was conceived with StoryLine in mind. So it should be a perfect fit.

For my part, now that I’ve mostly April/May whirlwind, I will be getting your rewards out. Look for those in the next short while.

Amazingly—and this is wonderful—offline pledges continue to roll in. Even though Kickstarter is no longer accepting contributions, we can still do so by conventional means. If you’re visiting the site and are wondering if you can still contribute, most definitely! This project is still ongoing and the next one will be even more ambitious. We need all the help we can get!

Email me (peter-at-culturecurrent~dot~com) if you would like to contribute or get involved.

For now, I’m sorry for the somewhat vague information, but I wanted to reach out to you because it’s been a while. Hopefully I’ll have some details to announce soon.

Meantime, thanks for your help and we’ll be back in touch soon.

Peter

We made it!

Right now, I don't have words to describe how happy I am and grateful to be part of a community with you. Some of you live on Monticello Road or near it, or go there and many of you live far away.

This project has been an exploration of how people can connect with and lift one another up and I am simply blown away by what I've discovered. We are all part of overlapping communities of different kinds and I can tell you that they are powerful and do some amazing things.

When I have more coherent thoughts to share, I'll be back in touch, but for now let me just say that I am tremendously encouraged and grateful to all of you who have helped out along the way.

This whole experience has changed my life and I'm very glad to be sharing it with you.

The kickstarter campaign is almost over and it's going to require an all-out sprint to the finish line. I know we can do it because that's what we always do. I've seen you all spreading the word and working on my behalf and I can't tell you how much I am moved by that.

Let's just keep it up a tiny while longer.

Meanwhile, it's past time I give you all a shout out and some serious thanks for your help so far.

The full list of backers is on the web site: (http://www.monticelloroad.com/2012/04/backers.html). It keeps growing, so for now I have it in one place.

Now it's time for a deep breath and a resigned push.

Sandy Hausman's excellent piece on WVTF is finally on the web: The Artist's Role (audio).

Martha Woodruff's segment on The Spark was really good too. (WMRA--audio)