As I mentioned, my "Trending Now" presentation was meant to provide (mostly visual) inspiration for some of the main aspects of CURA we are working on at the moment (i.e. putting the event together, promoting it, and promoting CURA).
I thought I would do this by researching other instances in which art and action have been combined into events, advertising, or publications.
The most obvious instances of this that I thought of were Allan Kaprow's happenings in the 1950's. I thought I would speak briefly about this because it is the most famous instance of participatory art that engaged the audience. I then tried to look at modern instances of this and how they might benefit us and our event. What I found out is that some big trends actually belong to the "happenings" category: flashmobs, subway parties, performance art, international pillow-fight day, etc... Basically, it seems that there is a trend of people coming together to be engaged in the process of creation itself. I thought this was important to think about in putting together a "Live Magazine" event.
For me, this brought to mind the process of creating a magazine, as well as the questions "what goes into this process?" and "how could an audience actively participate?"
*Designing a cover/ layout: there should probably be a stand where guests can be involved in someway or another in designing the cover
* Finding content that responds to the magazines mission/ prompt: there could be a stand where guests actually write short pieces of flash fiction that respond to a travel prompt, such as "Where are you from?". Selected pieces would then go on the magazine or CURA page, social media (...)
We also need to find actions that correspond with our mission of social justice, but are also fun. So I tried to look at other websites/ publications that had a mission of art and social action (I guess most of them were much more action oriented, but still interesting), in order to see what kinds of actions they proposed to readers who want to get involved.
The first website I found was http://www.adbusters.org/spoofads. Adbusters, has the mission of turning advertisements and capitalist ambitions against themselves. I though a fun action could be making people come up with slogans of social action (similar to the famous graffiti of May 68). This might be interesting because it brings people together for the general cause of keeping activism and awareness alive in an age where apathy is setting in.
Going along with this, a really interesting website I found (which is actually a book, but offers many selected pages to look through) proposed one action per day of the year to help "change the world" http://www.365act.com/actions/27.html. Some of these actions were very appealing, such as exchanging material goods that you no longer need with friends in order to stop over consumption. The actions span from AIDS awareness to environmental justice.
Another website I found, that is probably much more radical than we are willing to go (or that Fordham's image will allow us), but could provide inspiration for action all the same was http://www.sniggle.net/index.php. Or very interesting just to look through/be aware of.
On a different note, I found the website: http://agit-pop.com/about/ whose mission is also social action and awareness. Here, I found a very interesting promotional/ publicity idea for the future which was to create a simple, informative game about CURA's mission or the charity they are working with (i.e. the Doe Fund).
Finally, in terms of finding ideas for the party, I went to Pinterest for Travel Themed Parties, just to look at the pictures and get inspired http://pinterest.com/ashleynicolephotographer/travel-themed-party-ideas/. This gave me the idea of some very simple, inexpensive prizes or for-sale merchandise at our event: customized CURA traveler's log notebooks and luggage tags. This would also serve as easy publicity and promotional material.
In researching the party's "Choose Your Own Adventure" theme, I of course didn't come across anything remotely similar (probably a good thing!), but I did find this humorous Tumblr with the failed endings of "Choose Your Own Adventure". I thought that these could be cute to use as postcards or posters for the party. http://youchosewrong.tumblr.com
Thanks!
Camille Haimet