The Artist Statement

What
I felt a bit relieved after studio time this morning when we were tasked to focus the 'what and why' of our project in just a few sentences, as the past week I've devoted a great deal of time to developing an artist statement for my project. For me, this is a guiding line betwixt here and April wherein I can explore, but still keep focus.


I initially came up with:

The intent of this project is to work with the student group, the Roosevelt Institute, over the course of the year to increase membership, event attendance, and heighten the Roosevelt Institute's visibility on campus.

I was trying to dig further into the logistics of this, and I realized there's really two groups I'm trying to reach. The first is the people who are interested in topics of public policy. This is what I call 'preaching to the choir.' They already want to do work on policy topics. They are majoring in politics, or history, they are part of other campus organizations like Student Democrats or Human Rights Through Education, they just aren't aware of our organization in specific.

The second—I'd argue more difficult group—are people who are not traditionally attendees to these types of events or groups. Reaching them is more difficult and will take unorthodox methods of advertisement (e.g., guerilla advertisement, video work, flooding the Michigan Daily with editorials).

So, my statement needed revision in light of this, and also to rectify some clunky language:

The intent of this project is to work with The Roosevelt Institute—a campus student group—to increase event attendance and membership, while reaching out to students who aren't traditionally inclined to get involved.

This works better, but it's two steps forward and one back. First, I don't know what recesses of campus the uninvolved students lurk in, so their identification is crucial if I'm to reach them. Also, the statement doesn't speak to what the organization does and propagating that on campus:

The intent of this project is to work with The Roosevelt Institute—a student group focused on independent research of public policy issues—to increase event attendance and membership, while identifying and reaching out to students who are not traditionally involved.

Better, more complete, if not a bit lengthy. The portion within the em dashes feels it could be its own sentence, and in general feels a bit cold:

My intent is to work with The Roosevelt Institute, a campus student group focused on independent research of public policy issues. I hope to identify and reach out to students not traditionally involved with student groups, increase event attendance and group membership, while expanding the visibility of The Roosevelt Institute among the student body.

Closer… that last bit needs some revision. 'Visibility' doesn't speak to informing people what The Roosevelt Institute actually does:

My intent is to work with The Roosevelt Institute, a campus student group focused on independent research of public policy issues. I hope to identify and reach out to those not traditionally involved with student groups, increase event attendance and group membership, while promoting the purpose of The Roosevelt Institute to the student body.

'Promoting the purpose' is a perfect way to put it, but it seems to me I should be able to say it all in one breath if need be:

I want to work with the student group The Roosevelt Institute. In doing so, I hope to involve students not typically active with student groups, increase event attendance and group membership, while promoting the purpose of The Roosevelt Institute on campus.

Why
An artist statement is the synthesis of our reasons why. These thoughts are what motivate us, compel us to work on projects and spur creativity. They are often this confusing mumble of thoughts which we have to break down, logically to find focus.

My reasoning is two-fold. On one hand, issues of public policy—health care, international relations, urban planning in Detroit— are of great interest to me personally. Initially, I thought focusing on one of these issues in specific would make for a good project, but I found difficulty in tying myself to just one of these issues.

I felt, then, I should advocate for a group that already does wonderful work on all these topics. This is really the other component of my motivation, to explain what the group does and differentiate it from other organizations on campus.

The Roosevelt Institute is comprised of individual policy centers (e.g., the center on health care, the center on international relations) that do independent research on topics people within the group are interested in. After analyzing a topic, students then create policy papers, which they are able to pitch to state representatives in Lansing and are also published in a national journal. People can be part of multiple centers, centers can collaborate with one another to put on events.

Each policy center has a director. All the directors meet once a week to communicate what their policy center is doing and coordinate larger events. The directors are also responsible for fielding requests from other campus groups and non-profit organizations. For example, last year The Roosevelt Institute was asked to do research for the Stop The Hike campaign, which advocated a steady tuition rate for students. This year, we're being asked to look into a variety of topics for Great Lakes Urban Exchange, a non-profit organization.

As you can see, it's quite a different group, it allows people to actually change something, not just write about it. Boiling down my reason 'why' to a few short sentences is a challenge, but if I'm made to:

I'm working with The Roosevelt Institute because combines a group focus on public policy and my passion for politics. By promoting The Roosevelt Institute and involving a broad range of people, I am able to also advocate issues that I feel strongly about.

Discovery
I've started some preliminary design work the past few days, the most important of which is a survey of current members.


I'm distributing it to the directors of each policy center this Sunday, so people within the organization should be able to fill one out over the course of the next week and return it to me by Sunday, October 11. I'm hoping the survey will give me a better grasp of what current members are like and help me target similar people that we just haven't reached.

The group also asked me to do t-shirts. I'm currently coordinating prices with a couple of companies, but the big challenge has been the design. I'm a fan of a more simplistic, text based or single image approach, but I expect there to be some resistance to that idea. Many student group t-shirts have very little hierarchy and are just smattering of sleek—or often unsleek—graphics.

The average person will see a t-shirt for less than two seconds. What will engage them enough to ask what your shirt is about? I think having something clear, quick and intelligible may be the best route for that.

Beyond all this, I'm trying to develop a plan to advertise both the regional event that will be held here in November and displaying the group outside just its events, but more on that to come.

What Next
I'll be fairly straightforward, I need to distribute the survey, compile the survey t-shirt, come up with at least two or three solid t-shirt ideas, and talk with the two Roosevelt co-presidents about this event November 13th and 14th.

How I Spent My Time
I spent a good deal of time running between libraries, trying to come up with research on survey development. A&D resource Annette Haines was very helpful in giving me direction. Two books I found useful were The Survey Handbook and also Using Web and Paper Questionnaires for Data-Based Decision Making. Afterward, I went about designing and printing it for distribution.

As for the t-shirts, it's been a lot of sketching. I used a contact of a friend of mine to get a quote on prices for shirts, my goal is to keep them under $15 a head, so they pay for themselves and The Roosevelt Institute need not toss in what little long-term funds it has. I got a quote for $608 on 75 American Apparel t-shirts, so roughly $8.10 a person. It might be hard to beat that.

On an unrelated, but somewhat relevant note, I found out yesterday I'll be having dinner with Paula Scher on October 22nd which will be an excellent opportunity to pick the mind a branding demigod, if only for a brief time.