February Update
Loud Hands Project: February Update
It’s been a quiet but productive time for The Loud Hands Project since we passed our initial fundraising goal of $10,000 on January 14th, after just nineteen days. Since then, we’ve:
-given interviews about the project for AWN’s radio show (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/autism-womens-network/2012/02/03/the-loud-hands-project) and on Joyce Bender’s Voice Of America: Disability matters (http://www.voiceamerica.com/episode/59769/ari-neeman)
-worked on finalizing plans for the anthology, website, and future projects and taken an inventory of equipment needs
-begun receiving submissions for the anthology
-expanded our FAQ section on our tumblr (http://theloudhandsproject.tumblr.com/post/16126946761/questions-answered)
-sent out a second call for video clips for a project around autistic community, autistic identity, and passing (http://theloudhandsproject.tumblr.com/post/18096311025/call-for-video-clips)
-finished our first wildly successful Loud Hands Project Blogaround (http://theloudhandsproject.tumblr.com/post/18143366933/third-and-final-part-of-our-blogaround-recap)
-continued raising money—we’re now at $12,170 with 175 donors.
Overall it’s been a successful few weeks of laying a firm foundation, and we’re in a solid place now to gear up for our last two weeks of fundraising. That’s right—we only have 18 days, or two and a half weeks, left to raise money. Our fundraiser on indiegogo (http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Loud-Hands-Project?a=351448) ends March 15th. How much do you think we can raise by then?
We’d like to make $15,000.
The first 19 days of fundraising was a bit of a wild ride for the autistic community. There was a real hunger and a need for The Loud Hands Project, and people rallied together and pushed to meet the goal. It was equally incredible and overwhelming. We’re wondering if we can recapture that energy for our last 18 days of fundraising.
We’ve raised enough to build a website this spring and put together our anthology, our founding, guiding document, an explanation of what it means to have loud hands. But the anthology has always been meant as only the beginning for this project, which we envision as an expansive, transmedia forum for both celebrating autistic comunity, identity, and culture and simultaneously insisting that these things exist and are worth perserving.
That is a huge undertaking. We live in a world that isn’t entiely convinced that autistic people have minds at all—to change the conversation to one that recognizes we have voices at all, let alone valuable ones? That’s going to take an enormous investment of time and effort. Rome wasn’t built on a day, and it definitely wasn’t built without any funds or resources.
Which brings us back to fundraising. 18 days. Our goal: $15,000. Will you help us?
As you can see on indiegogo (http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Loud-Hands-Project?a=351448) we have a few next steps for the project already outlined. If we can make $15,000, we’ll be able to beging production on one of those steps—a video called “About Us, Without Us.” ”About Us, Without Us” is a video about the Autistic community and our place in the conversation around eugenics and the prevention of autism. If we make the $15,000 benchmark, we’ll be able to pay for Julia to go on the road and collect interviews and footage, and cover production, editing, and initial distribution costs. Does this sound valuable to you? Will you help us make this goal?
If you want to see The Loud Hands Project move forward, past the anthology and into a tool for centering autistic voices and experiences in conversations about us, we hope you’ll help us out. Share this update, and the link to our indiegogo page (http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Loud-Hands-Project?a=351448) around. Donate if you can. Tweet it, facebook it, tumblr it, email it to your grandma, your coworkers, your cousins, your best friends and your arch-nemisis. Ask if they’ll pass the project along to their networks, too—the more people who know, the better our chances for success. Tell them why you want to see this project succeed, and ask if they’ll consider making a tax-deductible donation, starting from $10, to get us there. This is not the time to be shy.
We only have 18 days left. Let’s make them count.
