What have we done?

Thus far The I.D.E.A. Association has planned and executed 6 cultural events in Kalamazoo.  Each event included participation from the community in the form of collaborative art projects, and surveys.  Each event also included some form of beneficial cultural entertainment (in 5 cases live music, and in the case of the Teen Inclusion Project, climbing).  Through these series of events, IDEA has provided an example of three of it's primary functions as an organization: public space creation, cultural events, and fundraising.  IDEA has also provided an example of how to determine the local social problem for which it will focus it's energies on in a given community.  In the case of Kalamazoo that topic was sustainability/climate change.

As of July 1st, 2009, The IDEA Association is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt non-profit.  Because IDEA did not hire a lawyer for the completion of this project, it was a very time-consuming and meticulous process, but a process that helped our organization and board of directors to more fully comprehend the strategic direction of IDEA.  Special thanks to Nelson Miller and his law school class at Cooley Law School (where Miller is Assistant Dean), for providing us with many well deserved critques and some much needed praise on our Form 1023 application.

IDEA continues to grow and expand as an organization in both scope and capacity.  Besides the October 24th event at the Strutt in downtown Kalamazoo, the ideaassociation.org webspace is a current strategic priority for IDEA.  IDEA has and continues to identify and apply for funding for creation of a web-based local community participatory forum.

Cultural Events

IDEA continues to actively seek out and collaborative with every organization and stakeholder in the community of Kalamazoo. 

The Kickoff

On April 17, 2007, IDEA hosted an initial kick-off event that included a pot luck dinner, live music, and a collaborative art project.  This event, held at art studio's at 432 E Paterson on the northside of Kalamazoo, was well attended and served it's primary purpose to begin educating interesting community members about what The I.D.E.A. Association hoped to accomplish.  As you can see from the initial 'flyer' handed out to participants at this first event, while the mission of participatory social problem solving is still the same, The IDEA Association plan to achieve those results has evolved significantly.  Community members were also exposed to multiple local musical artists, and nearly every participant at the event contributed to the collaborative art project in some way.

Innaugural Participatory Cultural Event

On May 19, 2007, The IDEA Association held it's first participatory cultural event at the Rocketstar cafe, formely located just off the campus of Western Michigan University.  This event included five local bands, and two collaborative art projects.  Event volunteers helped clean the back parking lot of Rocketstar Cafe, where the event was held.  Youth volunteers from the YMCA of Greater Kalamazoo's Project Recycle provided recylcing and composting services at the event.  Participants were also surveyed about what community problem they thought most needed to be solved.

On June 16, 2007, The IDEA Association held another participatory cultural event at the Rocketstar cafe.  This event included local and regional bands, along with two collaborative art projects.  Recylcing and composting services were again provided by Project Recycle at the YMCA of Greater Kalamazoo.  Participants were asked to rank social problems to find the most important issue to focus on.

Art Hop Festival

In October of 2007, the IDEA Association participated in the Art Hop as a featured artist at Pedal's and Posting's in the Mall in downtown Kalamazoo.  This event included the display of all previous community collaborative art projects, as well as live music, fundraising, and a survey asking community members to rank social problems they thought most needed to be solved.

Plein Air and Fete de le Music

In June of 2008 the IDEA Association participated in the Plein Air and Fete de le Music events in downtown Kalamazoo.  Volunteers from The IDEA Association collaboratively painted a downtown landscape from the brick patio of the Arcus Foundation.  The IDEA House Band, a loosely related musical group, also preformed at the Arcus Foundation.  Community members were again surveyed to further determine the scope and direction of the social issue that had been chosen.

Youth Rock Climbing Event

In January of 2009 the IDEA Association, with a Good Neighbor Grant from the Kalamazoo Community Foundation, held a "Teen Inclusion Project".  This event brought together teens from diverse neighborhoods across Kalamazoo (participants were picked up from the Douglas Community Association, Boys and Girls Club Lake Street, Millwood YMCA and Maple Street YMCA.  Teens learned belaying skills and climbing skills at Climb Kalamazoo in downtown Kalamazoo.  Teens also completed 2 of their own collaborative art projects.  Following climbing, teens were taken to the Maple Street YMCA for pizza baked by the Young Chef's Academy, cooked with local ingrediants from the Kalamazoo Food Co-op.  WMU student and IDEA board member Chelsea Thorpe provided a short lesson on sustainable/local food.  During the meal and afterwards, trained facilitators led a discussion amongst teens about the problems they saw within their communities, and what they saw as solutions to those problems.  The entire event was documented by a film crew from the Public Media Network.

350.org Local Sustainability Awareness Day

I.D.E.A. Association is proposing a project to begin as a grass roots effort comprised of local non-profits, businesses, and volunteers, which will begin with an event at "the Strutt" in Kalamazoo on October 24th from 11am-2am. We will be meeting with community members to engage in a dialogue about sustainable development in Kalamazoo. In order to begin to discuss what constitutes best practices in the field of sustainable development, we will be presenting a panel discussion on this topic with a strong focus on audience participation. Our goal is to empower the public to step forward and deeply engage with the panel and presenters. We will record the entire dialogue in order to write a report that summarizes the main conclusions and questions that evolved from the discussion. We sincerely invite you to join us for the panel discussion to speak your mind and also to hear the voices of your community on these issues.

In the case you cannot make it to the event, in the months following, there will be numerous public forums at "the Strutt" (773 W.Michigan) in order to give everyone a chance to speak. The task of the I.D.E.A. Association then will be to communicate with organizations and individuals all the happenings from the forums in order to find out who is interested in donating resources that could help us design and implement a sustainable development project. After we find out what resources we are working with, we will facillitate a public vote to finally decide what kind of sustainable development project will be designed and implemented. The project will help make some temporary jobs while benefiting the community through the positive impacts it achieves.

Feel free to email us with any questions regarding details of this plan.

Don't forget to MAKE YOUR Individual Action Commitment TODAY!

Web Development

We've recently kicked off our Phase I website development, as seen on this website. This website hopes to serve as a single point of contact (SPOC) for all things related to our past, present and future events, fundraisers and causes. We hope to also spur ideas through conversation and interation that can lead at some point to further structural community impacts.

Mission Statement

To develop a rock-solid, easy to use web framework for participatory project management from cradle to grave through crowdfunding and crowdsourcing.