CAROLINE WOOLARD
Trade skills and organize projects together at OurGoods.org
Date: Friday 9.18
Start Time: 4:00pm
Location: Einstein Auditorium, Rm. 105, Barney Building
OurGoods.org is an online community of artists that facilitates barters of skills, space, labor, and art objects. The site matches barter partners, provides accountability tools, and tracks projects.
OurGoods addresses the shortage of available funding for creative projects while building community, facilitating dialogue, increasing exposure, and building the skill base of the creative workforce. At the heart of OurGoods is the person-to-person exchange: I write your press release; you design my postcard. Beyond that, the site offers a dynamic online environment in which artists can follow each other’s creative development; organize “under the radar” artistic activity of their community; develop mutually supportive relationships offline; and learn new skills to enable their own work and the work of others. OurGoods makes the creative workforce’s depth and breadth of skills accessible, so that an artist can organize and complete an entire project without cash funding. The concept is visualized here: www.OurGoods.org/howitworks
From Septsember 11 to October 24th, please visit the OurGoods exhibition: Works for Barter Only in Bushwick. The OurGoods team invited a select group of artists to contribute works or services for barter only. Offers will be accepted for a wide range of goods: from a Martyna Szczesna photograph to Claire Taylor Hansen’s embroidery services, from 3D renderings by Kate Cahill to pickles from The Andes Sprouts Society’s farm and residency. If you are interested in any works or services, please make an offer in the booklets at the exhibition: Works For Barter Only, part of Plan B at Nurture Art (910 Grand Street in Brooklyn).
www.ourgoods.org/howitworks
www.ourgoods.org/workdress
www.ourgoods.org/team
Caroline Woolard moved from public seats and subway swings to OurGoods with a grant from The Field. The OurGoods website is being developed by Carl Tashian (senior site engineer at Zip Car for the past five years), and skinned by graphic designers Rich Watts and Louise Ma. Jen Abrams, who has self-produced shows for over ten years through a real-time exchange system, offers invaluable wisdom.
