Below is an article courtesy of The Dickinsonian, published September 17, 2015.
Gabrielle Fleming ’19, Contributing Writer
The Idea Fund is in the midst of creating a public art project that they will unveil at their Annual Dessert on Wednesday, Sept. 30. Idea Fund Executive Director Gibson Holland ’16 and 2015 Idea Fund Summer Fellow Lizzie Wilford ’16 are bringing the collaborative video art project to fruition this fall.
Holland pitched the idea for a collaborative art project to the Arts Collective in the fall of 2014. When Wilford, an Arts Collective member, became a 2015 Idea Fund Summer Fellow, Holland tasked her with remodeling the collaborative art project idea that had not made much progress the previous school year.
Wilford decided to pursue a video project because she felt videos are a form of art that require many different skills, such as storytelling, music, and illustration. She considered the medium to be the best way for a number of clubs around campus to contribute to the project.
The Idea Fund began work on the project on Monday, Sept. 7 at their first Monday Monthly Meet Up. At the meeting, they sponsored what they called a Creature Creation event.
“We collected some awesome, random recycled materials from the Center for Sustainability Education (CSE), and asked everyone to create a creature, name it, say what it ate for breakfast that morning, give it three random characteristics, and mention anything else about the character,” Holland explains. Members of Exiled, Arts Collective, Run With It!, Belles Lettres, and CSE have contributed to the final product.
All of the participants in the project are divided into small groups with one representative. Wilford and Holland structured the groups so that each has a writer, video editor, illustrator or artist in another medium. This structure encourages many different modes of expression to make the clips as diverse and ingenious as possible.
Each group has adopted several of the creatures that were created at the first event and will incorporate the creature into their video clip.
“We know of the large amount of talent on this campus and we want to combine it all together and make something great,” Wilford said.
Holland and Wilford would like to showcase the project beyond the Idea Fund Dessert. Wilford hopes to have the videos projected on televisions around campus, and Holland said that there may be additional showings around Carlisle as a way to engage more viewers and introduce the creative talent of Dickinson’s students to the community.