CCLaP

Greetings, if this is your first time to the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography; my name is Jason Pettus, CCLaP's Executive Director, and I welcome you. I thought I would take a moment, for all of you who are new, to explain exactly what the center is all about, and what exactly we do. This information is also laid out all pretty-like in a PDF brochure, for those who would prefer reading it that way; simply right-click on this link and choose "Save Link As..." to your hard drive.

CCLaP's mission is to connect underground artists of outstanding quality with the audience eagerly seeking these artists; we do this by maintaining a uniquely personal relationship not only with our artists but with our audience as well. It's to both groups that we seek advice, project ideas, tips on who to feature, even hosts of our live events, workshops and clubs. And instead of maintaining separate membership and artist-development programs, CCLaP combines the two into one, bringing both artists and patrons together in not only a professional but social way.

CCLaP's specific list of products and services can be broken down into the dozens, but roughly fall under one of the following groups:

Live events: Those we usually charge an admission fee for, unless otherwise noted. Includes the weekly CCLaP Slam; monthly CCLaP Showcases; monthly CCLaP Sessions; as well as special events. All events, unless otherwise noted, are $3 for the general public, free for both Members and Fellows.

Creative work: A growing collection of artistic work on display, made by both Members and Fellows of CCLaP, as well as fans and audience members. This collection will also be turned into merchandise, starting later this year, that will be sold online and in general gift stores in the Chicago area; it is the main way our for-profit center plans on paying our bills.

Community events: Those that are usually free to the general public, unless otherwise noted, most also organized and run by our Members and Fellows. Includes workshops on both artistic and business issues; a series of discussion and hobbyist clubs; an entire series of intelligent family events; as well as our special "CCLaP After Dark" series, specifically for those over the age of 21.

CCLaP Online: Special online features we offer only at our website. Includes a regularly-updated podcast; an ever-growing collection of frequently asked questions; a collection of over 30 RSS feeds; as well as a special section called the Sandbox, where artistic work is released under a special Creative Commons license, for other artists around the world to use legally in "mash-ups." This section will also eventually include the "Cafe Network," a new social network CCLaP will sponsor, linking visual artists with the cafes and other retail spaces in Chicago that feature artists, as well as the audience looking for both these artists and venues. It will also eventually include a wiki, maintained by our Members and Fellows, entitled "The CCLaP Guide to Being a Self-Sustaining Artist."

Publications: Starting early in 2007, there will also be a publications section to the CCLaP website, where you will not only be able to download the latest eBooks for free, but also directly order and pay for our latest paper books, to be FedExed or mailed straight to your home. (CCLaP is currently seeking a publications intern for the 2007 winter semester; to get an early jump, contact us now.)

Regular events start in September 2006; CCLaP is currently hosting a series of special one-time events throughout the summer. To learn more about any of these products or services, please click on their category in the sidebar menu.

Come this fall, CCLaP's family-event program will kick into full gear, including events on at least a monthly basis organized by the center's staff. For now, though, we are more than ready to start accepting our first event proposals, by all of you in the Chicago area who might be interested in organizing and running one.

What do we mean by 'family-friendly?' Well, the hope anyway is that it be a smart event, literally meant for an entire family; something that engages both the parents and children, something that lets them both grow as individuals and mature as a unit. This being Chicago, of course, we imagine that events will follow a traditional seasonal schedule: that is, during the winters here, family events will mostly be indoor activities like readings and crafts, while during the summer our events will include more field trips, scavenger hunts, stamping events and the like. The point of CCLaP's family-event program, like all the rest of our services, is to act as a laboratory; to let people in the community try new things, take chances, put together events that they think others might enjoy.

All community events are run by our Members and Fellows; or non-Fellows can run a family event as a way of qualifying for a Fellowship, if they prefer. To propose one, simply contact the CCLaP staff; if accepted, the center will pay for all your publicity and promotion, as well as help you find an appropriate venue if you need assistance. For those who are interested in just the news here about the family-event program, we have a special HTML page that always shows the latest, as well as a special RSS feed just for those entries.

Come this fall, CCLaP's community club program will kick into full gear, including events on at least a weekly basis, some actually organized by the center's staff. For now, though, we are more than ready to start accepting our first hobbyist and discussion club proposals, by all of you in the Chicago area who might be interested in organizing and running one.

What do we mean by 'club?' Well, that's simply a community event (that is, free for the general public), where those with a specific interest come together as a group of peers. Perhaps that might be for discussing the arts or politics, where a different book or subject is picked for each month's salon; or perhaps all of you share a common hobby, like knitting or rubber-stamping, origami or model-making. Or perhaps you're interested in starting a local chapter of a national organization, but need help organizing and promoting it: a Chicago chapter of Great Books, for example, or Socrates Cafe, or the Esperanto Society. The point of CCLaP's club program, like all the rest of our services, is to act as a laboratory; to let people in the community try new things, take chances, put together events that they think others might enjoy.

All community events are run by our Members and Fellows; or non-Fellows can run a club as a way of qualifying for a Fellowship, if they prefer. To propose one, simply contact the CCLaP staff; if accepted, the center will pay for all your publicity and promotion, as well as help you find an appropriate venue if you need assistance. For those who are interested in just the news here about the club program, we have a special HTML page that always shows the latest, as well as a special RSS feed just for those entries.

Come this fall, CCLaP's community workshop program will kick into full gear, including twice-monthly workshops for working writers organized by the center's staff itself. For now, though, we are more than ready to start accepting our first workshop proposals, by all of you in the Chicago area who might be interested in organizing and running one.

What do we mean by 'workshop?' Well, that's simply a community event (that is, free for the general public), where something of interest or importance is being taught to a group of others. This could be artistic in nature -- how to be a better writer, how to be a better photographer -- or perhaps focus more on the business side of things -- how to read a contract, how to pitch to a gallery owner. The point of CCLaP's workshop program, like all the rest of our services, is to act as a laboratory; to let people in the community try new things, take chances, put together events that they think others might enjoy.

All community events are run by our Members and Fellows; or non-Fellows can run a workshop as a way of qualifying for a Fellowship, if they prefer. To propose one, simply contact the CCLaP staff; if accepted, the center will pay for all your publicity and promotion, as well as help you find an appropriate venue if you need assistance. For those who are interested in just the news here about the workshop program, we have a special HTML page that always shows the latest, as well as a special RSS feed just for those entries.

I know I've been bugging some of you a long time about this now, but the day is finally here: CCLaP is now ready to start featuring your creative work, in all media. To send something for consideration, simply email it to us; or point us to a place on the web where it already exists.

The main point of sending us work, of course, is because of our Fellowship program; anyone who gives us the right to publish three original pieces, in fact, automatically qualifies for free admission to all our live events, or free copies of our first ten books as an out-of-town alternative. We then use this material to not only drive more traffic to this website, and not only to promote you and your work, but also as the basis for our merchandise program, coming later this year, which is the way our for-profit center will end up paying most of our bills.

Remember, you are not giving up final rights to this work by becoming a Fellow; you are still free to do whatever you want with it, just that you're giving us the right to occasionally reprint it as well. Also keep in mind that your work is never edited without your permission, and that your name always appears when it's published. (If you do want us to edit your work, by the way, simply ask; it's a free service we offer all Fellows.) And don't forget, we also ask artists to consider publishing at least one of their pieces in our Sandbox as well, in that case under a more liberal Creative Commons license, so that other artists around the world can use that piece in their own "mash-ups."

We accept just about every type of artistic work out there, from poems to book reviews, photographs to scanned paintings, MP3s and videos as well. No level of expertise or experience required; we simply ask that it be something interesting, something you don't mind having your name associated with. We here at CCLaP look forward to seeing what you all have been working on, and with sharing that work with the rest of our global audience.

For those who are interested in tracking just the newest creative work here, by the way, we have a special HTML page that always shows the latest, as well as a special RSS feed just for those entries.

I know it's a little early to be talking about this, but I wanted to get an entry up here at the website about the upcoming CCLaP poetry slam (known simply as the CCLaP Slam), for those who are interested. Right now it's set to begin on Tuesday, September 19th, and to be held every Tuesday after that.

And what is a 'poetry slam,' I hear many of you asking? Well, it's a joke of sorts, a gimmicky bar trick invented by a fellow Chicagoan named Marc Smith in the 1980s, as a way of getting a drunken late-night audience to be quiet and listen to poetry; over the years, though, it has turned into a legitimate competition, one with even an annual national tournament. The slam itself couldn't be much simpler: before the show starts, a number of random people in the audience are selected, who then become the "judges" of that night's slam. Poets, then, get on the stage one at a time, and have three minutes in which to perform an original poem or monologue; the judges give them a score from one to ten (highly influenced by the cheering/booing audience around them), with the higher-scoring poets moving on to the next round.

The CCLaP Slam will work the same way most traditional ones do, but with two major exceptions: that judges will actually give two scores, one for writing and one for performance; and in the case of our slam, scores will be kept secret until each round is completed. We at CCLaP feel that the slam is perhaps just a bit too weighted on the side of performance ability instead of writing; that's why we've instituted the scoring system we have, to help those competitors who may be excellent with the pen but not so hot yet on a stage. And we also believe that publicly-announced scores after each poet lead to a situation called "score creep;" where judges feel an unnatural pressure to keep increasing the score for each subsequent poet, in order to keep the howling drunken audience members at bay. By keeping the score results secret until each poet is finished performing, we hope it will lead to judges casting much more honest votes for how they think each poet did.

Six competitors will be allowed into each CCLaP Slam; after the first round this will be dropped to four poets, and then to two for the final round. The winner each week will receive a small prize, either in cash or as a gift from one of our sponsors. Weekly results will also be tallied; come May 2007, the eight Chicago poets with the highest cumulative scores will be invited to the CCLaP city finals. From those eight, four will eventually be chosen to represent CCLaP at the 2007 National Poetry Slam (or NPS), being held next year in fabulous Austin, Texas. Although this can't be promised at this point, we are also hoping to subsidize team members' expenses to the national tournament, to the point where they will only need to pay for their food and drinks while there; if possible, we will also be setting up a 10-day spoken-word tour for the team, on a straight line from Chicago to Austin in the week and a half before the NPS.

Oh, and don't forget that the slam is merely one part of a much larger overall event; each evening, in fact, starts with a 45-minute non-competitive open mic, and also contains a 30-minute featured performance, either by a local veteran or touring out-of-towner. (Out-of-town artists, by the way, can simply contact us to learn more about featuring at the slam while visiting.) The entire event lasts approximately two and a half hours, typically from 8 to 10:30 pm.

CCLaP is currently seeking a great venue for our poetry slam. Do you know of one? Please let us know! Please bear in mind that the venue needs to possess the following traits in order to be considered: a dedicated back room to hold the slam, away from the general crowd; both cheap drinks and expensive ones; within four blocks of an el stop; and perhaps most importantly, a barstaff who actually wants the slam there, and will hopefully even get up and perform themselves on a regular basis. We offer a very simple deal for any venue who's interested: that we charge a small cover fee to attend ($3; free for Members and Fellows), and the venue keep all other revenue made at the bar that night. We are also seeking either one person or a team who would be interested in hosting the CCLaP Slam each week; please contact us to express an interest.

All events are $3 for the general public, free for both Members and Fellows. If you're interested, by the way, in just tracking the news here about the CCLaP Slam, we have a special HTML page that always shows the latest, as well as a special RSS feed just for those entries.

More about poetry slams: 2007 NPS Austin; Poetry Slam Inc (national organization for the NPS); Chicago's Green Mill poetry slam (the one that started them all); Chicago's Mental Graffiti poetry slam; Kurt Heintz' An Incomplete History of Slam.

Well, here's some good news for those of you who have missed it; that I now have the time again to start regularly updating my Favorites page at insanely popular photo-sharing site Flickr.com. This has always been one of my favorite things about Flickr, in fact, and is what garnered them such big praise even from the beginning; that on top of simply sharing photos at their site, you can add a rich set of information to those photos (including now the ability to tag them to a map; here, for example, are ones from my account tagged in the neighborhood in Chicago where I live), have new photos delivered via RSS feed, keep track of your favorites from other photographers and more.

In effect it turns all members of Flickr into potential one-person curators as well, using their "Favorites" page as a virtual art gallery, where they alone are to program who's featured. It frustrates me sometimes that we don't currently have the budget to do all the things for photographers that I want; but at least I can start with that for now, with simply pointing out some of the amazing, mind-bending, thought-provoking photographers I'm always coming across, in the thousand or so new photos I peruse there every 24 hours on a good day. This fall, we'll be getting some of those people signed up here as Fellows, and featuring their work here at this site; and then some of them booked into our upcoming cutting-edge Flash-based online gallery, including MP3 audio interviews with the artists concerning each piece, and a full-color PDF catalogue/book to go with each exhibit. Later this winter, hopefully we'll add the 3D, real-time virtual gallery within the videogame Second Life; and then about four to six years down the line, if everything goes well, us finally opening our own permanent physical space here in Chicago.

Anyway, feel free to follow along with my Favorites page there at Flickr, if you want to check out some of what I think are the finest photographers in the entire system (both professional and amateur -- there's a miniscule line there, which is something else I like so much about the service). And needless to say, if you're a photographer and feel like having your work featured through CCLaP, by all means let us know; although we're headquartered in Chicago, we actually feature artists from around the world.

And speaking of one-person virtual galleries; when are one of you young enterprising programmers out there going to build a better interface for Flickr favorites pages? Flickr publishes an open API, after all, which means that third-party developers are welcome to build their own interfaces and applications; hey, Flickr even helps promote them once they're done. It'd be cool to see someone build an interface for people's favorites, that was both more useful and more creative than Flickr's current offering; one that displayed titles, descriptions and artist names, that let the member display them in a certain order, etc. Even better, marry it and a little PHP to a social-app service like Ning, and let the entire community vote on people's favorites, in effect creating a network-wide favorites page as well, like Digg but for photos.

Ooh, actually, the more I think about it, the better of an idea that's seeming. Anyone want to teach me APIs and help build it with me? I'm not joking; I've been wanting to build my first app at Ning for a year now, but simply couldn't think of something worth the time to program. A voter-based favorites system for Flickr, based off everyone else's existing favorites pages, all of it fueled off a public free API, sounds like a good idea to me.