Cooper the Fox, Mascot for Coop Kids

We are lucky enough to be part of a group of local organizations who have come together to create a community calendar hub called Coop Kids.

The page quietly launched last night after a few months of preparation and meetings and response was pretty swift. Within half an hour, we had enough fans to secure a user name for the page, so that we could give out an address that looks like this: www.facebook.com/coopkids rather than like this: http://www.facebook.com/#/pages/Cooperstown-NY/Paperkite-Creative-Workshops/183742475331. (PS – if you’re reading this, why don’t you slip over to the Creative Workshops page and fan us up so we can get our custom user name).

Today, it has twice that number, and I expect it will continue to grow as we begin publicizing it in earnest.

This is one of those grassroots projects that grew organically out of a sincere desire to do something useful for the community: Namely to provide a place where families could find comprehensive listings of kid-oriented events, and where all the various organizations in town who offer children’s programming can communicate to find greater strength in collaboration.

Paperkite was involved on two fronts, both as a programming provider (because of our creative workshops) and as a communications facilitator.

Representatives from the initial organizations met last fall to begin the dialogue. Everyone was enthusiastic about the project, although there were reservations about getting involved in something that would add another layer of responsibility on already busy schedules.

After collecting notes, ideas, concerns and other thoughts from the group, we explored different directions the project could go.

Should it be a print calendar? A combination print and online calendar? How would we handle costs and responsibilities? Could the whole thing live online? If so, who would administer the site? How would we build it? Who would pay for hosting and design and day-to-day maintenance of the site?

We quickly dismissed the idea of a print-only piece as being both too costly and labor intensive to be sustainable. And since the goal was to create a truly comprehensive resource, we acknowledged that we could never do that in print.

Instead, we would use small printed promotional fliers (design donated by one affiliate and copying donated by another) to publicize the online space.

We explored different logistics for getting online, and ultimately decided that Facebook was a good way to start, since a Facebook fan page had all the functionality we wanted (multiple admins, events calendar, discussion forum, interactivity with the audience), it was free and – this is the best reason of all – people are there already. We don’t have the challenge of instilling a new habit of checking a new website.

I hope that this idea grows over time and eventually perhaps even outgrows Facebook. For now, it’s an excellent example of grassroots collaboration that benefits both the collaborators and their audiences.

We would like to thank all of the collaborators who have made this happen:

The Farmers’ Museum

Fenimore Art Museum

National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

The Clark Sports Center

Cooperstown Art Association

Cooperstown PTO

The Brookwood School

The Smithy-Pioneer Gallery

Friends of the Village Library

Cooperstown Chamber Music Festival

Cooperstown Performing Arts

Paperkite Creative Workshops

This Friday, millions of people around the country will throng to big chain stores to buy $12 plasma TVs and stock up on 50-cent cashmere sweaters.

We don’t begrudge anyone who wants (or needs) to save money this holiday season. We’re right there with you. But the long-term cost of throwing the better portion of your economic weight behind chain stores far outweighs the short-term savings.

For example, one local-first study showed that when you spend $100 at a locally owned business, $68 stays in your community. When you spend the same amount at a chain store, only $43 stays in the community.

OK – no one wants to hurt local businesses, but we’re all watching every penny. How does keeping that $25 in your community directly benefit you?

It makes for a stronger economic ecosystem. Dollars spent at the locally-owned retailers support the shop owners and allow them to offer their employees competitive wages. More importantly, your financial support enables them to be more responsive to your needs and stock the kinds of things you would otherwise buy at the big chains.

If you want a different view on that stuff, have a look at this fast-paced little film:

The Story of Stuff

The folks here at Paperkite are passionately committed to vibrant, sustainable local economies. Over the next few months, we’ll be talking a lot more about this subject and about how we’re working to make a difference in our own community.

In the meantime, have a great Thanksgiving and think local as you head into the holiday frenzy.

Over the weekend, Paperkite was lucky enough to be part of an event in our community that brought together local arts and recreation groups who offer programming for children and families. Close to 200 people gathered at the Fenimore Art Museum to attend to a concert by Uncle Rock, listen to a reading of original ghost stories written by 3-6th-graders, do crafts and watch paintings in the Museum’s collection come to life with the help of some costumed interpreters.
We live in a small community that is blessed with a wide variety of cultural resources. With such a small population, competition is steep, not only for funds but for a basic share of attention. You can plan an event for a year, but if it happens to coincide with almost anything else, your attendance will suffer greatly.
Meanwhile, families who are looking for something to do often rely on word of mouth and a lot of happenstance to learn about events.
So when we heard about an initiative to bring those groups together to create a comprehensive events calendar, we couldn’t wait to join the effort.
As parents, we’ll be thrilled to have that resource for ourselves. As creative teachers, we’ll be glad to have another venue to promote our workshops. And as members of the community, we think this effort will make arts, culture and recreation more accessible to everyone in the community.
Paperkite is donating our services to help get this collaboration off the ground and online. We’re set to launch in the next couple of weeks, and we’ll give you a peek behind the scenes of all the hows and whys of what we did.

It’s not just us – things are getting more and more interesting around our home-base of Cooperstown and the surrounding communities.

Most people know about Cooperstown because of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. The opera crowd has long been familiar with Glimmerglass Opera and its stellar summer season. The Fenimore Art Museum and The Farmers’ Museum are two other little gems that have been touted by national media such as the New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today.

We’re big fans of all of our traditional cultural attractions. Susan and I even serve on a committee at the Fenimore and Farmers’ Museums to increase appeal to young professionals, which we joined because the committee meets in places like Brewery Ommegang (disclosure).

So there has always been something going on here. Even in the bitter, snow-drift-covered winter months, there’s usually something to do if you look hard enough.

But in the past six months, there are suddenly so MANY things to do it’s hard to keep up.

The Smithy-Pioneer Gallery is proving that you can bring some seriously new culture to a town’s oldest building (here’s their website and their Facebook page, which is more active).

The “Fen & Farm” (short for Fenimore and Farmers’) has continued hosting some wonderful cultural events, such as the Cooperstown Chamber Music Festival, as well as a stunning season of exhibits at the art museum, including Walker Evans photography and “America’s Rome.” They’ve also added weeklong immersive daycamp experiences for kids at The Farmers’ Museum, art classes for kids at the Feminore Art Museum and great events such as Taste of the Sublime (full disclosure: my husband works there, and I am friends with many of the other folks there, so I have first-hand knowledge of just how dedicated and passionate they are about what the museums stand for).

Just a few miles south of Cooperstown, Foothills Performing Arts Center is bringing in one amazing act after another from NYC and all over the country. Under new leadership, the team there has focused its mission on providing theater and entertainment that is just not available in this community.

Disclosure: Foothills is a client of ours, and we are honestly humbled by the work they’re doing. Instead of maintaining the status quo and wishing for the staff and money to run the type of venue they dream of, they jumped in and did it. And if it means their executive director is clearing martini glasses at Thursday’s cabaret night, that’s what they’re committed to doing.

And now, just outside of Cooperstown, the new Rangjung Yeshe Gomde meditation center has opened under the leadership of Phakchok Rinpoche. The center’s first weeklong retreat will happen Aug. 30 through Sept. 5.

Honestly, I could go on and on. Every day, it seems like we see one more activity, event or exhibition that makes us slap our foreheads and say, “What a great idea.”

What excited us most, though, is that we believe this type of cultural and creative activity is self-regenerating. Two art galleries don’t split each other’s potential in half; they double each other’s potential.

And in this economy, it’s going to be the creative, collaborative and innovative communities that thrive.

The short version is this:

We offer creative marketing services with a conscience to businesses and organizations driven by a passion to improve lives and communities. That means non-profits, arts and cultural organizations, museums, schools and businesses of all sizes that are driven by a cause.

We maintain a small and selective client list so that we are able to give each client the attention it deserves.

We also support and nurture creativity in our community through workshops in all types of creative arts. The workshops provide children and adults with new avenues of learning and expression, while giving talented creative teachers a financially sustainable way to share their gifts.

Of course, the story of how we got here is more complicated, and more interesting.

Paperkite operates on a very simple ideal: The work we do should make a difference. Not only should it make a difference for our clients’ bottom lines (that’s a given), but it should contribute real value to the world.

It’s a pretty radical idea for an industry that brings into the world such things as Alex the Stroh’s dog.

How we aim to do that is a little different as well.

You don’t have to count the alcoholics on Mad Men to know that ad and marketing “creatives” have long struggled with the meaningfulness of their work. For me, personally, I have frequently felt a tension between creating something and marketing something that someone else has created.

That’s because traditional marketing is pretty icky – like tapping strangers on the shoulder in the middle of their suppers and shouting in their faces about a product or service they probably don’t need.

If you’re interrupting good people’s lives with spammy, irritating campaigns, it’s never going to feel as good as creating something new and valuable, helping people solve real problems and performing a genuinely helpful service.

We want our work to make people feel good – that includes our clients’ customers, our clients and ourselves.

If you think we would be a good fit for your marketing needs, drop us an e-mail at hello@paperkitecreative.com. We would love to talk.

Image by Lisa Yarost, via Flickr Creative Commons

From the outside of a chrysalis, it looks like the caterpillar has created a peaceful, snug little room in which to rest before emerging as a butterfly.

The truth is far more dramatic – radical, even.

Like most of us, caterpillars spend the caterpillar portion of their lives growing. As they grow, they shed their old skins, and become slightly larger, slightly different versions of their pre-growth selves. Then one day, something tells them that simply shedding the old skin for a larger version is not going to do. Something tells them that what they require is a grand, brilliant and utterly seismic shift.

You and I know what’s coming, but maybe the caterpillar doesn’t. Certainly her caterpillar cohorts don’t, and they don’t understand her restlessness.

“Just shed that skin like always,” they tell her. “You’ll get bigger and bigger. One day, we’ll be huge – the largest caterpillars to roam the land. We’ll devour mighty oaks in one chomp!”

She’s not interested in that, though. She has this idea that things could be really different. Really different.

So instead of shedding her skin for a new one that’s more or less the same, only larger, she builds herself a safe place to create something almost inconceivable.

Inside, everything breaks down. Literally.

Her legs and antennae and her hungry little munching mouth all break down. For all practical purposes, the caterpillar is dead – toast. Or, more accurately, soup. What’s left is a formless ooze that contains the essence of what it means to be a caterpillar, which happens to be identical to the essence of what it means to be a butterfly.

It’s absolutely not that remarkable. It happens every day. It may be happening just a few feet or yards from where you are sitting right now. But try telling that caterpillar how ordinary it is.

Try telling the butterfly that what happened to her was run-of-the-mill.

Fables are usually packed with a point, and this one is no different. The lesson here is that remarkable, unforeseeable change is both deeply meaningful and entirely achievable.

That’s the standard we’ve set for ourselves at Paperkite Creative Communications. A few of us have been working behind the scenes – in a chrysalis, if you will – brainstorming, dreaming and planning. Over the couple weeks, we’re going to introduce ourselves in a bit more depth and explain more about our vision.

We hope you’ll follow. And we hope you’ll add to our momentum.