For those of you who keep tabs on such things, this weekend the Project Forever site will be going down for a little bit while some new ideas and new directions are thought out. It's true that PF has been a come-and-go flow of ideas and projects for the past 2 1/2 years, but I think that it was being pursued on too large a scale. To create a real community, a real collective of artists, we need to focus on the local community of arts and writers and go from there. In short, a collective that really does operate on the community level, versus the vast abyss of the internet level.
I have some ideas that have been spawned by a variety of things, including 826Valencia, the BloggersPub concept, and organizations such as Keep Portland Weird. Some of these ideas are mixed in with the unification and help-your-neighbor concept of getamission.com, and still more with the idea of true community from personal conversations and personal travel.
So, again, some ideas are floating around — and I am completely unashamed of the Collective floating from one idea to the next, borrowing from here and there, and quoting Bono if need be, because it is something that is true to us, true to the spirit of the Collective, and something will grab hold.
Project Forever (if it's still called that in the end), is being reorganized, but the sense of vigor and will is as strong as ever. For the community aspect of things, the Collective has writer and poet Dave Hart in Seattle, and musician Ryan LaRue in Portland to help get things going. For a time, for awhile, I will look at things in Phoenix. I am excited about the potential that Phoenix has — I think that Portland and Seattle realize their potential, but Phoenix has been keeping itself in the shadows a bit, but progress has been made in the last few years. That can change.
Conclusion with a deffinite direction? Not sure yet … still looking at ideas. However, for all of you on the Phoenix.BloggersPub feed, let me know if you want to be part of a collective of writers, painters, muscians, poets, idealists, and community dreamers. Let's talk and see where things can go on this local level. E-mail me at jeff.nash@gmail.com , and we'll go from there.
Ideas?
Sharoute 