PROJECT CANVSA

TEAM CANVSA

Left to Right (Standing): Navina, Annabel, Justine
Lying down: Keith

We are a bunch of students currently in National Junior College's Integrated Programme.

Keith is the usual eccentric artist with a keen eye for anything aesthetic. As current president of the NJC Art Club, his mission is to spread the message of aesthetic beauty in this world, killing one ugly at a time.

Navina is the lawyer-in-making, ever ready to rebut(t) with a bite. The current president of ILDDS is extremely proud of her heritage and so are we of her!

Annabel is the drama-mamma, having honed her skills as the only two-term drama president in the history of NJC. Currently in NJC debates, she packs a mean punch in every word.

Justine is a nice girl (and she wrote this whole bunch of crap).

VERY SPECIAL ARTS

Project Canvsa is a collaboration between NJC and Very Special Arts (VSA).

Very Special Arts Singapore (VSA Singapore) is a charity launched in September 1993 to provide people with disabilities with opportunities to access the arts for rehabilitation and social integration.

VSA Singapore is a patially funded affiliate of the National Council of Social Service (NCSS). It is also a non-funded affiliate of Very Special Arts International [USA] and her network of organisations in more than 83 countires.

Click to visit VSA site

OUR STORY

The whole project was born in June 2006, out of a competition called Social Enterprising Youths, which was organised by NUS Students Union. We won the 1st prize for the competition, with the best business proposal for a charity organization.

And so now, we are busy busy busy executing the project. As for December 2006, we have completed the first run of 30 shirts, all fully sold in time for X'mas.

2007
Monday, January 1, 2007 : 4:16 AM

ITS 2007!!!

Time for batch 2 =)

Mass Production in a tecnologically (un)advanced world
Sunday, December 24, 2006 : 7:57 AM

Merry christmas everyone. Its been a rather jolly year working with everyone on this projet. Somewhere along the line, Canvsa became a term synonymous with pride, alot of hard work, and inevitable love. Really, printing T-shirts with the disabled taught me alot of things.

But that aside, three days ago, the team embarked on the journey of mass production. And it was tough. While this run in with the silkscreen was not an official activity for VSA, it enabled us to use this opportunity to refine our process and higlight certain feasibility issues.

First of all, the three simple steps of not spoiling a perfect t-shirt:
1) Do not jump around in excitement when your squiggy is dripping with orange paint.
2) Do not be a child with paint. Try not to get your hands stained with wet paint. But if you really have to, do not touch every t-shirt in sight.
3) Do not (I SAY THIS IS A KEY LEARNING POINT FOR ALL FUTURE PRINTING PROCESSES) let annabel near nice white t-shirts, because they may have orange splotches afterwards. Justine totally agreeeeeees!

Yes. Hopefully all future processes will be less calamitious.

Another thing we realised is that printing 50 shirts with four coats in one day with only two people working, and not having a proper place, and not being able to sit down, and having a random amount of problems such as losing the squigys, and to only order the exact amount of shirts therefore giving no leeway for mistakes ,and starting at 12 and ending by 7 plus having a lunch break in between therefore not having enough time, is like saying this sentence in one breath.

So yea, it was bloody difficult, and my back was aching from all the standing. For JU it was no easier. I guess in the future we'd better make sure we have the manpower. and we need the processes and systems. We need to figure out an efficient way of doing things and then pass it down.

Most of all, we really need to clear admin stuff.

But we'll be leaving that for after the yultide cheer.

--Bel

Process of collaboration
Saturday, December 23, 2006 : 8:34 AM

Silk screening is an extremely effective and easy process of design printing on tee shirts, which is why our group came up with this idea of having the disabled artists from VSA print and design their own t-shirts to sell.

The main process of this project focuses on us helping to give these artists a head start, to essentially transfer the skill of silk screening to them so as to enable them to use it in the future, by collaborating with VSA.

A trial workshop was conducted by us for the artists to introduce them to this method of printing tee shirts. We guided them on how to print the tee shirts and helped in giving them the confidence which they needed in the designing and printing process.

The beauty of silk screening is that a mistake (eg a splotch of paint on the t shirt) can actually turn out to create some sort of funky avant garde design on the tee shirt which many people would pay for. Our main target audience is the youth of Singapore, thus we also taught them some basic designing techniques and taught them to keep their designs simple, designs which would attract youths to buy.

In this trial period, we even bought all the materials for them and even provided them with free white based tees to print on (courtesy of Annabel’s relative). We were beside them all the way during this first trial answering any queries or doubts in which these artists had and aiding them in any way possible.

The result: many of them enjoyed themselves thoroughly and funky tee shirts were produced by these disabled artists.

Keith the noob

Labels: process

First batch of shirts
Friday, December 15, 2006 : 7:29 PM

Spent the whole of yesterday at Keith's place working on Project Canvsa! Just some pics of us wearing the shirts we made together with the artists from VSA.