I looked up the word “animate” and discovered that it means, literally, “to bring to life.”
I love that.
And I love that I got to play with animation, literally, over the past few months, with amazing Jamaican artist Renée Campbell.
Renée and I have been collaborating to bring to life the story of communities visioning together about who and what they will be now, and who and what they will be for the children of their grandchildren. Communities daring to believe in healing centered economies and non-extractive loan funds and birth centers in every neighborhood. Communities creating space to make that vision real now, time to build things together, and courage to steward resources guided by their vision.
We were honored to animate the idea of Blueprint Collaborative, which is, in a nutshell, a way for community networks to calculate for themselves what reparations wealth they want to access to fuel their vision, and to set the terms for resources they have decided to govern.
Renée and I experimented with images and ideas, struggled to generate creative breakthroughs, and learned a lot together. In Renée’s words:
What I've always loved about animation is its ability to tell a story and connect with audiences on a deeper level. We really leaned into this story telling ability by using pictures of real places as backgrounds. Walking the line between imagination and reality ended up being a creative challenge but I'm really proud of the end result.
Animation -- bringing things to life -- is fun and hard and amazing, and definitely something we should do in community.
Let's keep asking: What are we animating -- not just thinking, challenging, planning, wondering -- but truly bringing to life?
Check out a clip of art in motion. Video coming soon!