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 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.

So, I have some news to share today that I'm not particularly excited about, nor particularly happy about; that due to a lack of money, I've had to postpone CCLaP's live-events schedule to spring of 2007, versus this Friday when it was supposed to kick off. It's a frustrating decision for me, one that I put off until the last possible second -- after all, we were less than a thousand dollars away from being ready to start the live-events schedule, and I was really hoping that we might have pulled off a miracle there in the last couple of weeks. But alas, no.

Of course, this isn't all bad news; I've decided in fact to move CCLaP's publishing schedule, originally slated to begin next spring, up to the present day. So for the majority of you who interact with CCLaP (all you website visitors, that is), not much will change here; we'll still be featuring great creative work from brilliant artists around the world, and also sharing news and tips from the rest of the world of the underground arts. In fact, for those of you who live outside Chicago, you actually may be pleased by this announcement; it means not only the usual short stories, poems, essays, photos and more here at the site, but also a continual series of full-length electronic books being published by us too, all of them available for free, none of which contain crippling digital-rights management (DRM) software.

It probably goes without saying that it's been a stressful week for me; that's why I've decided to take just a bit of a break from CCLaP, perhaps a week or so, to regroup and get in touch with the authors and artists who I've been talking with this summer. As always, I appreciate the support that many of you have given the center, and hope that you'll continue to visit here this fall and winter.