Come, Join us for the Open Weekend

As part of the London 2012 Open Weekend and the Cultural Olympiad, Watermans have organised a weekend of public engagement at their Gallery on 25th and 26th July, for the ‘Power of 8′ project, and would like to invite you to join us from 1pm to 4pm on both days. Together we will be using LEGO and various other materials to create future cityscapes containing robots and farms and airships and whatever else you can think of!

Also we would like you to bring something with you - a found object, an image from the internet, anything that in a small way represents your personal aspiration for the future.

Here’s the poster for the event, there will be a lot of ‘hands-on’ making and building, which should be fun. So do come along, and bring friends with you!

All 8 on Board!

We finally have all the 8 collaborators on board, go check them out.

Also after all that letter writing efforts to politicians, one of my local Councillors Paul Convery got back: “I have reviewed the site at http://powerof8.org.uk/ and think this is a great idea. Congratulations also on getting funding to support it. If I am unable to get involved in this, I will certainly visit the show opening in July.”

Lets hope he can make it.

Letter writing campaign

Alongside our video appeal, we continued our letter-writing campaign. We posted several letters, printed on the back of the envelopes to prospective collaborators. Letters were also slipped under the doors of my neighbours, and last but not the least, one to Emily Thornberry, the MP for Islington South and Finsbury.

While I am not expecting any Member of Parliament to have the time to collaborate, I am keen to invite one of my local politicians to a workshop and get their perspective. Apart from that, we have had a good response for several interested people, thanks everyone.

The growing list of collaborators will be up soon.

Spread the love: My Video Call

Here’s the short video, briefly introducing the project, and inviting collaborators. I am thankful to the people  who have expressed interest, and we are still looking for more people to join. Do spread the love and pass it around.

The Power of 8 - Call for Collaborators from anab jain on Vimeo.

Letters to the Local Councilors

We have just started a letter writing campaign to invite collaborators to join the project, and I started with my local politicians.

I have been keen to explore what their work and motivations may bring to the project, and ideally would love to have one of them on board. And so, thanks to this, my first letters were sent, in the shape of online email forms, to three local councilors. I am not sure what to expect, but would love to get some response, even if it were an opportunity to discuss our ideas.

Sunday Morning Shootout

The talented Steven Onaniunan and I are working together to design different strategies for inviting collaborators on the project. This morning we shot a head-on video of me, almost like a short advert which I will upload after editing/compressing. It was fun, but a bit unnerving to be in front of the camera rather then behind, reminding me of the Yellow Chair days!

In the Imperial College Newsletter

With many thanks to my friend Alan Outten, the Power of 8 call for collaborators featured in the Imperial Volunteer Centre Newsletter.

Hoping for a positive response…