You’re Not a Fool - You’re a Superhero

Hello!

Let’s get right to it. Here’s what’s going on this time:

• April Fools (The Reconciliation)
• You Are a Superhero (with a Reveal)
• West African Creative Action Team (The Application)
• Art and Gardening as Tactics (The Interview)
• Bread, Not Bombs (From the Archives)

April Fools

You probably figured it out already, but we’re not becoming a “Luxury Lifestyle Brand.” We understand that some of you were hoping to buy that Utopia dollhouse but no, April Fools, ya’ll.  We won’t be selling high-end watches or yoga loungewear. We did get some fun responses from folks on this list though:

And our favorite came from Dan Weise at Thundercut who has some new logo suggestions for our lifestyle brand.  C4AA is on Fyre!

You Are a Superhero 

But seriously, we wanted to talk to you about superheroes.

We thought that today you deserve to learn about your special powers. This is “YOU ARE A SUPERHERO”, one of our favorite quick exercises that you can do at home, if you’re prepared to learn about your superpower.

Ready?

1) Imagine that you are a superhero. Yes, really - a superhero. 

Like all superheroes you have special powers – we’ll get to that soon. 

You also have an outfit. You are very strong and powerful. The wind is blowing through your hair as you look off into the distance like superheroes do. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine what you look like.

As a superhero, you have super powers. 

Your superpower is that you can transmit your thoughts. 

You put brief thoughts or ideas into people’s minds. You can do this with any number of people you like – from everyone in the world, to just your friends or family, and everywhere in ­between. 

But all superheroes have weaknesses, and your weakness is you can only transmit thoughts three times before you have to leave the planet to recharge. So….

2) Imagine what three brief thoughts you would communicate, and to what group of people. These thoughts can be personal and intimate, or political and public, or someplace in between. What matters are that these are ideas you want to get out there in the world. 

Write them down.

For real! It’ll just take a sec.

Done? Good.

Apply to be part of the West African Creative Action Team

This week we’re off to Macedonia, to work with our Macedonia Creative Action Team, and a few weeks after that, back to Ghana to train a new group of West African artistic activists. 

If you are an experienced artist or activist from Senegal or Ghana and want to work on a fantastic project to invent new creative ways to engage young people in civil society throughout West Africa, apply to be part of the West Africa Creative Action Team.

Deadline April 5th at 23h GMT. Share with artists and activists from Ghana and Senegal in your network!

Art and Gardening as Tactics

Artists involved in larger organizing efforts have to wear a lot of different hats and yes, often develop certain super powers as well.  In this interview, Owen Griffiths talks about his role in the Vetch Veg project in Swansea, Wales that involved helping to build and organize around a community garden at a former football stadium. Griffiths shares his strategy for using art projects like this as tactics to enter into publicly-owned spaces. He collaborates with others to transform these spaces into beautiful and useful landscapes that are co-authored by people in the community.

We interviewed him as part of our ongoing research, and he has lots of great insights that might be useful to you. He says:

“...Because we called it an art project, they let us do it because they thought it would fail", but his project didn't, and he talks about the particulars of he made significant progress connecting a community through green space.

Bread, not Bombs

Filed under actions we like: this "bread tank" underlines the realistic possibility of eradicating hunger and extreme poverty by redirecting military spending.  Inside the bread tank is a vegetable garden that becomes visible as the tank is consumed.  Created by the World Future Council, Viva Rio, Mayors for Peace and partner organizations for the Rio+20 Earth Summit in June 2012.

From Actipedia, our user-contributed database of creative actions from around the world.

Hope you are using your powers for good, from all of us at C4AA

If any of this is helpful, please pass it on, and consider donating.