Grants/CDLD Editions
Describe the project you are proposing as clearly as possible in just five sentences.
CDLD Editions plans to be a free online library of culture and art related publications. These publications will be made, edited and published by us using ISSUU and posted on our Weebly website. CDLD is Laboratorio Dzityá Documentation Center, part of La Periferia Gallery, where we have documented the artistic panorama in the Yucatan peninsula and Mexico since 2005. CDLD Editions will be a new extension to our Documentation Center where we will publish results from the previous 5 years of work in the gallery as well as what we have documented elsewhere (performance art, installation art, interventions, street art, ephemeral art as well as traditional artistic media).
Detail the tangible project output (e.g., paper, blog post, written materials, video/film, etc.; this would be in addition to the final written report that successful grant recipients will be expected to deliver to CC at the conclusion of the project).
The project's output will be a website where we´ll publish art show catalogs, artist books/catalogs, essays, novels, visual poetry and art critique by local and national writers, and other culture and art related documents we gather, compile and edit.
Describe the community you are targeting. How would the project benefit the community?
We are targeting a national and international cultural community. We started out with the CDLD project because there are very few places in Mexico which document and safeguard artistic material (in analog and digital formats), and the few who do don´t give full access to their archives or charge for the information. As an online publishing house we plan to spread information about Mexican art in a free and easy access way, providing the material in Spanish and in English. This online documentation center would help artists, and anyone interested, in obtaining free information about contemporary art in the state and in the country.br />
We consider we are the best people for the job because of the fact that we run La Periferia (www.galerialaperiferia.com) since 2007 and a previous gallery, Laboratorio Dzityá, which ran throughout 2006. We are also part of the first generation to graduate from the Superior School of Arts of Yucatan (ESAY) (majoring in cultural management), and we have dedicated our work to opening cultural and artistic platforms in the state. In these years as artists, curators and cultural promoters we have had a very positive impact in the city and have earned a reputation in the country for being one of the boldest and most propositive cultural spaces, as well as made important contacts, nationally and internationally. The CDLD project is very important to the gallery as it would form a very important element in the national art scene.
How will you measure and evaluate your project’s impact - on your main participants? Other contributors? On the larger community?
We will evaluate it through the numbers: web traffic statistics. We have already uploaded the first publication (to get the ball rolling) and we have already started to see the results. Mainly we want to help out artists, creators and cultural promoters, through these publications, so the results would show from their feedback and how many collaborators we get once we´re up and running.
How many participants do you expect to be involved in your project? How will you seek and sustain their involvement?
We are two people coordinating the project. A large part of the grant is to sustain our work throughout this first part of the project. As far as other collaborators, we have many friends and contacts that will be happy and eager to publish their material with us and help out with the cause.
Describe how your project will benefit Creative Commons' mission to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in "the commons".
Easy. The CDLD virtual publishing house will edit and publish free material by national and international collaborators using the Creative Commons "Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Mexico" license.
Describe what technologies and tools your project will use. What kinds of technical skills and expertise do you bring to the project? What are your technical needs?
As far as technologies and tools, we will use Weebly and ISSUU. The technical skills and expertise we bring to the project is editorial design, proofreading, translation and our long lists of contacts for collaborators. Our technical needs are just our laptops and internet access, pretty much.
What challenges do you expect to face, and how do you plan to overcome them?
We don't expect many due to the fact that we will be producing the biggest part of our material.
How do you plan to sustain your project after the Creative Commons funding has ended? Detail specific plans. How do you plan to raise revenue to continue your efforts in the future?
We plan to start offering publicity on our web page to local and national artistic and cultural organizations, government and private. This first year will be to get the page rolling, stock it with material, and make a name for ourselves in order to get enough traffic to get advertisers interested. Besides that, we would add a "Donations" option on the page.
How can this project be scalable, or have a scalable impact?
The first part would be being able to expand to other languages. We´ll start out with Spanish and then translate them into English for a broader audience. After that we would like to translate them into French, German and Chinese, or as many as possible to be able to reach other communities. Then, we would also like to invite other cultural centers, galleries and so forth engage in the same activities (publishing online catalogs, books, etc.) so we could offer even more free material on our site.
What resources and support do you expect Creative Commons to provide to your project to ensure its success (if any)?
We would like CC to give us a hosting space and publicity to help spread the word about our site. And the grant, of course!
Describe how your organization currently communicates with its community members and network partners. (100 words)
Currently, the gallery and the CDLD use Facebook and mailing lists to spread information (We have a 4,000+ mailing list and over 5,000 contacts on our FB). Besides that, we are linked to many other cultural sites and word of mouth has always worked great for us in the past.
Legal
Yes
