The Loud Hands Project

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.

Blogaround!

So I’ve completely dropped the ball on mentioning this, but The Loud Hands Project is currently taking a tour of the blogosphere, and some of the posts are phenomenal.

We started over at Shift Journal, where a post was valiantly constructed by Mark when a migraine prevented me from forming sentences. Next up was Amanda, who says

No matter what you do, please try and live with loud hands at all times.

Then it was Savannah’s turn. She shared a lot of little details about the project and our context, which is really cool to read about all in one place—and she did it in very accessible language, which was even cooler. Then on Tuesday, Melody made a post, noting that her favorite part is that The Loud Hands Project is an ASAN project she isn’t responsible for. 

Well, okay, she also said

We have long needed a way to show what and who the Autistic community is. To define who we are. Loud Hands is meant to be just that. Not only that, but a way of introduction for those who come after.

Kassiane went next,  explaining why the project matters to her personally.

And we need the Loud Hands Project so that the next teenage autistic kid who comes to the conclusion that she isn’t broken, that everyone else’s perceptions of her are what is wrong, has a community. So that she knows that there are people out here who embrace her beautiful brain and her loud hands.

Today, Lydia made her post. She echoes Kassiane, saying

This is why the Loud Hands Project is important. So that the next generation of Autistic people will have a precedent for having loud hands and embracing themselves as complete human beings with value and dignity as Autistic people. So that there will be no more “There’s something wrong with you.” So that little by little, we can strike down the bricks that have institutionalized ableism across our society, in our schools, in our policies, in our everyday interactions.

And goes on to add

So I’d say that, so far, the blog tour has been a pretty successful journey! You should definitely check all of the posts out. And please note that with the exception of Savannah (who has been invaluable in making blog badges, captioning, and transcripts,) none of the posts thus far have been written by anyone actually working on the project. I’ll be doing the very last one at the end of the month, but everyone else blogging is an autistic person who expressed an interest. If you’d like to participate—and I’d love that—send me a note using the “submit” feature with your name, email, and blog, and I’ll get in touch with you re: scheduling. 

chavisory asked: Is there a prospective deadline for submissions?

Not yet. We probably won’t set one until March—which means the actual deadline will probably be some time after April.

http://theloudhandsproject.tumblr.com/post/16126946761/questions-answered

Questions, answered

We’ve been getting a lot of questions since we announced that we met our initial goal. We thought we’d talk the time to answer some of them here. As a reminder, we do already have an FAQ, a page discussing our new fundraising goals, and a page for our submissions guidelines. 

Q: Are we done?

A: Nope! We’re barely getting started! Our fundraising on indiegogo is still carrying on through March 15th as scheduled.

Q: So I can still donate, and tell my friends about you?

A: Yes please! 

Q: If you met your goal, why are you still fundraising?

A: The short answer is “because we’re fundraising through indiegogo, and that’s how they work.” The longer answer is “because The Loud Hands Project has always been about more than a single book, and we’d like to use this opportunity to put down roots and raise funds for some additional publications.”

Q: What are your plans for any additional funds you might raise?

A: Awesome things. Depending on how much more we raise, we might be able to do:

• A film about eugenics and autism prevention, featuring the voices of Autistic people from across the US.
• Materials tailored to newly-diagnosed or newly-disclosed-to autistic people of varying ages and abilities, explaining the diagnosis and self-advocacy and welcoming them into their community.
• A DVD examining the history and foundations of the Autistic community.
• A scholarship fund to help send Autistic self-advocates to conferences on autism, disability rights, and autistic/disability culture-related conferences.
• More productions documenting Autistic community and culture.

Q: Why is it important to keep soliciting donations? 

A: The Loud Hands Project can’t exist if we don’t have the resources to fund our various components. The more quickly we are able to fund various projects, the more established The Loud Hands Project can be. Being more established will allow us to produce more content and gain more legitimacy, which then becomes a self-reinforcing cycle. This in turn will lead to concepts such as Autistic Community and Autistic Culture becoming better-known, more widely respected as legitimate things, and more autistic people having a louder voice—or not having to scream quite so loudly to be heard.

Q: You met your goal! Is the anthology a go then?

A: YES! We are so excited about this. When we knew that we were going to meet our goal we put out a set of preliminary submissions guidelines for the anthology, and thecall for submissions is in effect now that we know we’ll be able to publish. 

Q: Are you still taking submissions for the anthology?

A: Yes! We haven’t set a deadline for submissions yet—we’ll let you know when we have a concrete time-table. Right now we’re still weighing out the various factors involved, and taking submissions as they come. We’d love to have your contribution!

Q: Are you taking visual, video, or poetry submissions?

A: This anthology was conceived of as an anthology of challenging, thought-provoking essays that would provide the project with our philosophical foundation. There will be a need for some artwork for the anthology, but it is not the focus. There will be a specific call for those submissions released with more information at a later date. There will be other ways to share visual, video, and poetry submissions in other projects and on the greater project website in the future. The Loud Hands Project is committed to honoring and sharing the many diverse ways in which autistic people speak, and is examining what forms of publication may be best suited to other forms of speech, and how to structure and encourage such content.

Q: I have something I’d like to submit for the anthology, but it’s shorter than the proposed word limit. Is that okay?

A: Yes! Please send it!

Q: Who do I contact with my submission? 

A: At this point, you can email Julia at jbascom@autisticadvocacy.org. We’ll let you know if that changes.

We did it!

After 19 days, The Loud Hands project not only met but surpassed out initial goal of $10,000! 

Indiegogo is still encouraging us to fundraise for the remainder of our original campaign—until March 15th. We’re not stopping now that we’ve built up some momentum! The blog tour is going strong, with Amanda and Savannah contributing some lovely posts.  You can see our goals and plans for additional funds here.

I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone for their overwhelming support for the project. It speaks to the real need for Loud Hands and Autistic culture and community, and the potential this project has to change things—a potential everyone who donated or helped spread the word or laid the groundwork for this project to even be conceived of has helped realize—is terrifying and explosive. I can’t possibly take it lightly, or even begin to comprehend what this means.

Thank you, everyone, for your support. Stay tuned—we’re here to stay.

We’re over 90% of the way there!

The Loud Hands project has passed the $9000 mark! We have less than $1000 left to raise before we meet our original goal. Our goal is to make that before our first three weeks are up.

SO.

Now is the time to remind your friends, families, acquaintances, arch-rivals, and bitter enemies about The Loud Hands Project and make a donation! Spread the word! Let’s do this!

Week Two Report

It’s time for our weekly check-in! Here’s what we got up to in our second week:

• We raised another thousand dollars! 
• We passed 100 discrete donors!
• As of this writing, we’ve raised $7443 and received 117 donations. Wow!

We’ve also had an active web presence this week.

• We were indiegogo’s featured project on their twitter account on Sunday and in their newsletter on Wednesday. Thanks indiegogo!
• We have a post up today on the TASH blog!
• We now have 82 followers on twitter, 221 on Facebooks, and 36 on tumblr.
• Our blogaround started. You can see Monday’s post over at Shift Journal, and the blogaround will last through January. We’ll be linking to the posts here as they apear. Let us know if you’d like to participate!
• Speaking of blogging, we have blog badges! Take one!

We’ve also started to talk a bit more about the project as a whole. 

• We’ve updated our project description on indiegogo. Check it out, and tell us what you think.
• We’ve also updated our FAQ section. Helpful?

Oh, and we published our preliminary submissions guidelines for the anthology. Those might interest some of you.

Overall, it’s been a wildly successful week! Stay tuned to see what we have in store for this week—we’ve still got a lot to do. Fundraising isn’t over until March 15th—we’ve got some serious campaigning to do.