SeattlePrintmakersCenter

pp150617  Why I want Arts and Culture Designation for Uptown  And why I’m offering Uptown a game

His long range goal is a printmaking center, an art, culture and technology incubator for future generations, so as he volunteered to be on a committee to get Arts and Culture District designation for his neighborhood his mission was to design a fun game.

Artist’s statement: Why I want Uptown to be an Arts and Culture District

The City of Seattle's mission in creating Arts and Culture Districts is to ensure that the organizations and individuals that produce verve—referred to as the geese that lay the golden eggs—remain healthy and vibrant for future generations.

In other words, Uptown’s residents, businesses, organizations and civic entities can get help from the City to produce verve that will last a generation. Think of forming an Arts and Culture District as Uptown’s first step in a 20-year plan.

As a longtime resident of Seattle, living in the Queen Anne neighborhood, and being part of the arts and education community for fifty years, I can look back at the history of relationships among artists and organizations, institutions, businesses, and the City and I could tell you what I have seen. If only we had the time. Some artists say they work best under a deadline. I’m one who does. I set my deadlines far into the future—ten, twenty and, if I live so long, thirty years.

Time, however, is running out and time is like real estate—there is no more of it. When you blend time and real estate, the importance of Arts District designation becomes important to artists’ economic survival. Strange as it may seem, artists can, I have seen, thrive when they participate in the City’s management.

As an artist, property owner, and a mini-business I want to grow, I think Arts District designation for my neighborhood—Uptown—is a good thing. That’s why I am working on the game, “Loosey Goosey Does Uptown.”

Why play games?

There is a lot of talk about games. My guides in regard to games include Confucius (“Better to play games than do nothing at all’), Jane MacGonigal, author (Reality is Broken: Why Games Make us Better and How they Can Change the World) and James Paul Gee (What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy)

Seattle is big on games—from the Mariners and Seahawks to Big Fish and Halo—and technology companies like amazon.com have game economy designers on staff. Uptown is probably the home neighborhood to members of the game industries that add to Seattle’s economy. In my plan for the Northwest Print Center there is a game company in the plan; and it’s because of this that I offer a game to assist in the application creation.

My challenge to Badminton Royale #6

With Loosey Goosey Does Uptown, (LGDU) I pretend that I am competing with the only other offering to help achieve Arts and Culture designation: The Badminton Royale #6. I say LGDU has purpose beyond a one day badminton game that gets someone a bottle of whiskey.

Also, I’m serious about games with purpose; and my purpose is to get Art and Culture designation to benefit Uptown for the long haul of twenty years—a board game of enduring value and which may lead to the biannual Golden Egg Award. LGDU is a team-building game to deepen neighborhood awareness of one another and unify our work for economic benefits.

Badminton Royale has a head start on my game plan. According to the Seattle Times, it started in 2008 as a tailgate party for On the Boards and grew into “a highly organized, competitive, day-long set of matches with smack-talking and fancy racquet moves to match the outfits.” The trophy was a bottle of Jack Daniels.

LGDU will be a 90-minute long session that blends history, culture, architecture and notable figures in a match of knowledge about Uptown and its art and culture assets. Two eight-person teams compete with each other in bouts of trivia and little known facts about what has happened in Uptown, what is happening, and what is planned to happen. The trophy will be the Golden Egg Award.

The object of the game is make Uptown’s self-image deeper, higher and wider through its residents, businesses, organizations and civic entities’ awareness of facts and stories.