CAPs Friday 23/4/10

As promised, here come Yara’s updates on The Green Initiative!

 

The green lens was a photography and art exhibition organised by The Green Initiative. It was by far our largest and most important event of the year, and the most time consuming (planning wise); but it all paid off.

 

The main aim of the event, initially, was to showcase the entries into our photography competition, which showed the effects/measures to tackle climate change. Though the competition was announced in June, entries didn’t start to kick in till October.

Securing a gallery at a decent price was one of the hardest issues we faced (at one point we thought of having an informal ceremony in public!). However, we came to a deal with one of the galleries in Kuwait: free venue, so long as we leave our frames behind for them to keep. The whole frame thing actually turned in our favour; they offered us 20 frames to use, which fit 40 of the 90 or so exhibits.

 

From over 150 entries, the Green Initiative team had to narrow down the entries to showcase only the best. Partly cause some weren’t that good, and partly because the gallery could only hold so much in the main area. After 18 hours of archiving and filtering, the photographs had been chosen and uploaded on to our Flickr, for David de Rothschild, TGI’s mentor, to judge. (The 100mb/month limit was a pain, photographs had to be uploaded December – February!)

As the gallery opening date crept closely, times were becoming crazy, and one problem became larger and larger every day: prizes. The photographs were in 3 categories, and so we had to award 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in each category; 9 in total. After contacting numerous electronics stores, department stores, and other various random people, all we got were replies that the budget simply wasn’t enough this year for them to sponsor the prizes.

 

Then, an angel was sent from above. We found out that one of the team members’ mothers was in charge of customer care for the largest importer of foreign labels. Of course, we got straight to it, and managed to get £500 worth of vouchers for our winners.

My heart didn’t rest till I physically saw the vouchers, 2 hours before the event!

 

One of the conditions for offering the venue for free, was that we’d have a prominent VIP open the gallery; a pain to find. Having friends who are daughters of diplomats really paid off, and we managed to get a member of the royal family, and an activist for the rights of the disabled to officially open the exhibition. She hailed it a success.

The biggest flop of the night, however, was me forgetting to carry the vouchers during the opening ceremony, and so we had to announce the winners later on in the night, which actually turned out to be a good thing, as some of the winning photographers were late!

 

Yara