Brokelyn

BK Farmyards' Kingston Ave. vision

You gotta root for a group that’s teaching Crown Heights high schoolers to farm. That’s BK Farmyards‘ plan, anyway, but they need some help. After feeding six people for 12 weeks on 600 sq. ft. in Ditmas Park last year, the land-transforming BK non-profit is partnering with the High School for Public Service to start a 1-acre farmyard on the school’s Kingston Ave. grounds. The farm will be one of the area’s few local food sources, and its young caretakers will learn a bit about food and the environment (they’ll also get their hands dirty with some actual… dirt). But fruitful dirt doesn’t come cheap, so BK Farmyards has set up a page on the funding platform Kickstarter to help bring in some much-needed financial aid. Read the rest of this entry »

Daniel Goldstein. Photo courtesy of No Land Grab.

Here’s your easiest route ever to associate producer status on a documentary film. The Brooklyn-based studio Rumur has spent the last six years producing Battle of Brooklyn, a documentary chronicling Daniel Goldstein’s fight against the Atlantic Yards development project and his effort to save his home at 636 Pacific St. Now Rumur is short on cash and time, and the studio needs some help to save its own project. With the help of the funding platform Kickstarter, they’re trying to raise $25,000 by December 1 to receive a matching grant that will meet the rest of their needs. You can pledge $1 (or more, they prefer) at Rumur’s Kickstarter page. There are several donation levels and each gets you a copy of the movie and Rumur swag like T-Shirts and DVDs. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re still licking stamps on artists’ grant applications, there’s a new web site that may be worth your time. Kickstarter, a new site based in Brooklyn, is a “funding platform” for artists, inventors, journalists, musicians and other creatives who can post a video to attract $5-and-up pledges. Current cup-shakers include singer April Smith (left), whose slickly produced video has attracted more than $6,000 to seed her next album. There’s also Floating Doctors (a medical crew that visits remote areas via an eco-friendly boat), the creator of a puppet-cast TV pilot, and an artist who charges $1 for every square inch of her work. And so on. Read the rest of this entry »