It all started when I went to UC Berkeley and saw their bulletin boards covered inches deep in paper upon paper, announcing this or that around campus. At that time, I was participating in the Exploring Leadership program at the Coro organization, and we had to come up with a community project and apply for a grant. I love the idea of public art, and seeing those bulletin boards made me want to have something like that at my own school. So I wrote up my grant proposal complete with budget and goals and sent it to the non profit Youth Ventures, who gave me 900.00 to do the project.
After a couple months of bureaucracy, administrators telling us we couldn't do this or that, and the summer passing, Angela and I simply decided to hijack a blank bulletin board in the science wing of our school. We took paper from the gigantic roll in the Peer Resource bungalow and hung it up with rules stating "Write whatever you want, draw whatever you want, but respect free speech, or the board will be taken down." Basically, administrators told me that any obscenity would have to be taken down immediately. We knew about this task and decided to label it "public easel" and see what people came up with.
Angela cut out construction paper letters, and within a week and a half the board was full. We put up another sheet, and that filled even faster.
At first people were just writing phone numbers, or tagging their names. There is interesting writing, though some of it doesn't make much sense. (And a lot in Chinese. "Wo de zhong wen hen hao" is the only thing I could read - it's a very Asian school) But I like the anonymity of the board and the way it lets students say anything they want, even if it is their phone number with "call me for a good time" attached. To try to get people into doing complex things with the board, some friends and I set the example of really drawing on the board. I attached my "Blind Drawings done in Calculus" sheet. I like how it's turning out. My only problem is that people write and draw on top of each other.
This task is an ongoing completion: I don't think it can ever really be done and through with. I'm not sure what I should do with the 900 dollars, since at first I thought the board would have to be in a locked glass case like the art display ones, but now it's not. Angela and I are talking about ways to expand the project. A Take Something, Leave Something Box perhaps? Markers attached to the board? Themed poster suggestions? We don't know yet. Its evolution continues.