Grant Funding

The Seattle Bicycle Music Festival would not have been possible this year without funding from the City of Seattle’s smArt Ventures Grant, which has helped greatly to offset many expenses. If you’re at all interested in making a project like this happen, or even if you want to work on another large-scale community art project, you should look into this grant!

Also, starting next week, I will be taking a grant writing class. I’m hoping to be able to apply for some other grants that will help us make the Seattle Bicycle Music Festival even bigger and better next year!

Got Photos?

It was such a great event, and a beautiful day for the event! I can’t thank everyone enough for coming out and making the day a huge success!!!

I saw a lot of cameras out at SBMF on Saturday! If you have photos that you want to share, please add the links in comments. And if you post to Flickr, please tag the photos “SBMF2010”. It will help tremendously to keep things together.

UPDATE: Here’s a video filmed by Tom of Seattle Bike Blog during No Rey‘s performance. He shot it while he was powering the pedal-powered generator, so it’s a little shaky. But it gives a good feel for what it was like to participate fully in generating the great music!

Building the Music Festival

We’ve been hard at work, building the Bike Bar, which is the bicycle-operated sound stage. It’s going to be a fold-able trailer, that we can hook five bicycles up to and power the sound system.

Here’s a shot of Jon welding, with Dan working in the background:

And Joe, cutting metal tubing:

I can’t thank these guys enough for their time and energy they’ve poured into building this equipment. They’re pretty amazing!

For more photos of the construction and past activities with SBMF, check out the Flickr set.

More Volunteer Opportunities!

The time is nigh. We have a lot to do still, and we’re making all the final adjustments and getting things together. Our crack team of engineers – Joe, Jon, and Dan – have been busy building a pedal-powered stage, all by hand. It is quite impressive, actually. DJ Ryan’s pulled out the stops with his sound system and has helped purchase some essential components. Miriam’s been right there, helping with all the administrative stuff we have to do and basically acting as my right-hand woman. It’s a great team that we have working together. But there’s still more to do!

We’re going to meet every night this week after work (5:00pm until 9:30pm) to put some finishing touches on the pedal-powered stage. But what we REALLY need help with is painting signs. I have a bunch of cardboard and some paints, so if you want to come out and help decorate some fabulous signs and create a banner to hang behind the bands, that would be awesome! All you need is some old clothes you don’t mind getting paint on and a little creativity.

We’ll be meeting at Jon’s house: 2336 N 63rd St., Seattle, WA 98103

Call Sylvie with questions: 619-861-7011

Volunteers!!

Art by Eric Shalit, http://www.tubulocity.com

We’re still looking for a few great volunteers! If you have any interest in helping build the system, or decorate signs, or post fliers around town, or gather materials, come participate in our weekly parties meetings! We (usually) get a lot done, and I try to provide some bribes in the form of tasty treats, cold beverages, etc.

The engineering meetings happen every Monday, 6-8pm (you’re welcome to stay later though). They will usually take place on Capitol Hill, unless we need to go to a location with more tools and welding capabilities. In that case, we’ll send out updates and let you know where the meeting will be held.

Depending on the number of volunteers we have and the amount of work that needs to get done, we might have an additional meeting night to make signs, deliver fliers to local bike shops, pick up supplies, and take care of organizational tasks. But don’t let that scare you off, we’ll make sure you enjoy yourself and get well fed & beveraged.

Contact Sylvie at seattlebicyclemusicfestival@gmail.com if you’re interested in helping out!

Rain, Rain

My friend Nouella Johnston is in this amazing band, People Eating People. I met her riding bikes, of course! The band just put out this awesome video for a new song, “Rain, Rain”.

Enjoy!!

Print your own posters and flyers

If you want to help spread the word about the Seattle Bicycle Music Festival click here to print you own 3″x5″ flyers

Graphic designer Molly  McLeod has donated her time and skills to create a bomb diggity poster; click here to print your own

So Much Going On!

If you’re like me, you’re almost overwhelmed by how much stuff happens in Seattle in the “summer” months. “Summer” is a loose term, indicating less the actual temperature and presence of that mass of incandescent gas and more of the awesome events happening all around town. One event happening next weekend, June 26, is of course our first fund-raiser — the Rawk & Roll Alley Cat! While this is technically a street race, it’s more of a scavenger hunt to find as much random music trivia-related stuff around Seattle as you can. So if you’re not a racer, never fear! If you’re a lover of music trivia, this race will suit you just fine. And afterwards, we’ll have a big party with a live band, some cool prizes, and a lot of awesome people!

If however, you find yourself in Georgetown on Saturday between the hours of 2-7pm, you should totally check out Artopia! I’ve been for the past several years, and it’s always a great time. You’re guaranteed to see something new and exciting. And if you like exciting, dangerous stuff, go check out the Power Tool Drag Races! Seriously, this is pretty amazing. The good people down at Hazard Factory always put on a great show, and I’m really bummed I’m going to miss it this year. So if you’re not into bike races or want to do something that’s all-ages and totally exciting, check out the Power Tool Drag Races! Then come on up to Cafe Metropolitan on Capitol Hill, grab a beer, listen to some music, chill with the bike racers, and support the Seattle Bicycle Music Festival!

Ramping it up!

So I’ve found a band to play our first event! The band is called The Ride, such a perfect name for our event. They’re really good… check ’em out! Details for the bike race are coming together nicely, now I just need to find a venue to hold the after-party! Any ideas? I’ve got a few in mind, just gotta get them nailed down.

I spoke to David Mozer yesterday, of ibike.org, which is our umbrella organization. David has kindly offered to use ibike.org to act as the Seattle Bicycle Music Festival’s funding agent. I’m really excited about this, and we spent about an hour yesterday talking about fundraising ideas and how this will all work. I think it was probably the first time in my life I was actually excited about talking finances! I see so many possibilities here for something to be really spectacular, can’t wait to get it running!

One slightly annoying thing, someone flagged my craigslist ad looking for graphic designers for removal! Wahtevs. I just wanted to pass out fliers at the Seattle Green Festival & the Punk Rock Flea Market tomorrow… A couple friends have said they’d help, and worse comes to worse, I’ll draw something by hand and photo-copy it, all old-school-like. Who needs photoshop anyway?

Call Out to Artists & Musicians

For the first in a series of fundraisers before the Seattle Bicycle Music Festival, I’m planning an Alley Cat race: Rawk&Roll!

Musicians!

We need you!!!! Wanna help us rock out after the alley cat? Are you interested in playing any of the other fundraiser dates? Want to come to the big festival at the end of summer? Are you a bad-ass dj that can mix it up & make people shake their booties on the dance floor? Lemme know! Seeking musicians of all genres.  Send me a link to your music page (or contact me if you want to send a demo CD via snail-mail).

Graphic Artists!

I need help designing bad-ass fliers for the race, and spoke cards, stickers, maybe even a silk-screen for shirts and patches. If you can design something, let me know!

Here’s the specifics of what I’m looking for:

The festival kick-off and first fund-raising event is an alley cat race & music after-party. I’d like to get something done for that ASAP so we can start posting on various websites, blogs, forums, etc. about the event.

Race details for fliers:

• Rawk&Roll! alley cat
• Saturday, June 26
• 2pm sign-up, 3pm depart
• Meet @ Mobius (waiting for confirmation, so this is TBD)
• $5 race entry
  
• optional: ($8 suggested donation for after-party entry for non-racers; free for racers… still determining after-party venue & bands)
• -3 minutes off final time for wearing a band t-shirt, -5 minutes final time for racing in full Rock & Roll costume!
• WordPress address & seattlebicyclemusicfestival@gmail.com
  
• PRIZES!
• BEER!
• MUSIC!

The flier should scream “Rawk&Roll!!!” somehow. It should ideally be able to look good on both 8.5″x11″ paper AND 4″x6″ to be handed out & left in shops around town. Try to use something that would look good in black & white to keep down printing costs.

Spoke cards: include basic info (race name, date, Seattle) but these should be something you totally want on your bike!

Posters: I really like this image, but I am waiting to get permission from the good people at Bicycle Music Festival to use it. I’d like to see something with “Seattle Bicycle Music Festival 2010″, the dates (June 26 Rawk&Roll alley cat race, July 17 fund-raiser concert, Aug 14 fund-raiser concert, Sept 18 Seattle Bicycle Music Festival main event), and contact info (WordPress address & seattlebicyclemusicfestival@gmail.com). 8.5″x11”. Also, something that could easily be converted to b&w for cheaper printing would be great. We can prolly print some full-color posters, but damn, those things are expensive!

Stickers: Similar design to the posters, but with only contact info included, and smaller.

T-shirts / patches / whatevs: Just “Seattle Bicycle Music Festival 2010” and a super cool design. It can be similar to the posters & stickers or something totally different & exciting.

Have fun!!!