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ArtHeart
Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch):
ArtHeart project’s goal is to affect a positive, physical change in the Bulgarian natural environment by stimulating the creation and propagation of digital artwork in order to call attention to Bulgaria’s natural beauty, or its destruction.
Supporting organization:
BlueLink.net
URL:
http://artheart.net
City:
Sofia
Country:
Bulgaria
Project Vision Statement & Potential Social Impact:
The goal of the ArtHeart project is to bring together Bulgarian activists: whose primary motivation is to create original art with those whose passion is preserving the natural environment.
Bulgaria is blessed with stunningly beautiful geography - from steep mountain peaks to picturesque coastlines. Concurrently, Bulgaria is cursed by staggering liter, pollution and over development in these same areas. Environmental organizations continue to raise awareness of these issues through information campaigns. ArtHeart will use the social web tools to tackle the problem using a different approach.
Encouraging the creation of thought provoking art work with an environmental protection theme, using social web mediums such as blogs, video productions, animations, creative photography short stories and other means of creative expression, environmentalists and artists can join forces to change the social mores about liter, pollution and sustainable development in Bulgaria.
The project also encourages a new generation of Bulgarian, digital artists – an independent and innate value which supports quality of life and economic growth improvements in this county which is still awakening from a long and difficult history.
Sustainability (financial) model:
This project proposal is being submitted by BlueLink Information Network, a Bulgarian NGO which has proven to be viable throughout nearly a decade of uninterrupted operations. This track record is remarkable, considering the relatively short period of time which NGOs have been operating in Bulgaria. Like most NGOs, BlueLink is constantly searching for new approaches to ensure its long term sustainability. While our perpetual presence is not guaranteed, we have shown that we are professional, effective and persistent enough to remain one of the most critical and innovative NGOs in Bulgaria. As long as BlueLink continues to exist, the regular maintenance of the ArtHeart project is assured.
Potential obstacles:
Public participation is the key to success for the ArtHeart project. A critical mass of artists and activists must invest time and energy into the site, even after its functionality is deployed. If this community involvement is to be sustained over time, a large number of participants will need to be attracted on a regular basis.
BlueLink Information Network has demonstrated history of campaign promotion. BlueLink has been able attract users to the www.bluelink.net portal for more than nine years, and has successfully launched several issue specific sites by promoting them through our popular mailing lists and current news portal.
Resource Needs:
- Funds to facilitate community meetings in several Bulgarian towns to identify most urgent and visible environmental needs
- Outreach to Bulgaria’s artistic community
- Hardware or hosting services sufficient to accommodate a large number of rich graphical files
- Website development for content management, including image, audio, video, blog and forum management
- On site and online promotion of the project
- Partner organizations for the environmental and artistic communities
- A tech/communication and meeting centre for people involved;
- Good advertisement campaign;
- Improved internet connectivity for some Bulgarian villages
Key Milestones:
Miles stones for the next 90 days:
- Conduct community meeting in the village of Ravnogor, Bulgaria to solidify participants and review project goals. Based on this community’s interest and needs, they have been selected as the first focus area.
- Through meetings, website announcements and personal requests, continue to promote the project to the artistic community in Sofia, Bulgaria, where strong interest has already been shown
- Begin collecting original digital art for use in beta release
- Complete software development lifecycle tasks (finalize business requirements, create technical requirements document, build features and functions, test features and functions, deploy beta, etc.)
- Reach out to established organizations, associations and student groups which focus on the creation of original art
- Identify partners in the environmental community who can help suggest subject matter and target groups
- Identify additional villages where project could focus efforts
- Corresponding with website release, create environmental art contest, promoting the goals of the project and highlighting specific geographical areas of concern
Project Summary:
The ArtHeart website will present a specific area of concern – e.g the natural beauty and degradation of the village of Ravnogor, Bulgaria. Accompanying this verbal description will be art work created which matches the theme of the website action focus. Members of the local community, especially schools, would be encouraged to contribute to the artistic creations. Sound recordings, simple video productions, short fictional accounts or other provocative mediums would be accepted. Each area of focus would be prominently featured on the website for approximately one month. The website would include suggestions on how the audience could act to improve the negative situation, or to preserve endangered species, open areas or habitat.
After the one month specific focus was complete, a new community would be chosen. Interactions between current and old focus communities would be encouraged through website forums, mailing lists and blogs.
Once every six months, a physical exhibition would be held somewhere in Bulgaria to display the most popular art (based on online voting) and to bring together the ArtHeart community, plan new events and encourage additional participation.
