Van Slam T-shirts: Bring a Blank Shirt to the Next Slam!

[admin]

Finally, we have Van Slam T-shirts!

The logo is from our oft-repeated admonition to the timekeeper when a poet goes over time: "You rat bastard! You're ruining it for everyone! ...but it was well worth it!" ("since 1996" because Vancity has been doing it for 12 years now")

All proceeds from these T-shirts go towards fund raising efforts for the Vancouver Poetry Slam, helping to send Vancouver poets to major festivals and bring the best poetic genius to feature on our stage.

So you want to pitch in, and get a rad T-shirt in the process, right?

Ok, here's how:

Step 1: Find a blank t-shirt (I bet you have a dozen) and bring it to the next Vancouver Poetry Slam event (every Monday at Café Deux Soleils).

Step 2: Give it to me (Faust McKenzie), along with $10, and fill out some contact info.

Step 3: Come back the following Monday for the next slam, and receive your own hand silk screened T-shirt!

It's that easy!

[rcathome]

The shirts look great.  Excellent job, Chris.

1 suggestion.  I think the Slam team should take a bunch of t-shirts with them to NPS and CFSW to give away.  Just as a general good will thing and to help promote Van Slam.  What would it cost us to come up with say 20 shirts for giveaways?  $100?  $200?

It's a long term benefit type of thing.  One of the things I remember most about Mike McGee before I knew him all that well was all the free stuff he kept handing out at Nationals.  Buttons, CD's and so on. 

If it is $200 for t-shirts and VPH feels that is too exorbitant a price to pay on our limited budget then I would be willing to write a cheque for $200 in return for a charitable tax donation receipt.  Either way...I think it should be done.

And I think it would be fun if the entire team had shirts to wear.

[admin]

Sounds like a cool idea to me. To clarify though, I understand that the main goal of giving out free stuff at NPS is to help raise the profile of Van Slam, but how does this help the community in concrete ways? Could it allow us to bring in better feature poets? Or establish better networks that will allow Vancouver poets to book shows in U.S. cities? I'm guessing it's both of these, but I think it's a good idea to have our objectives clearly laid out. That way VPH, or Van Slam, knows what it's paying for.

I would be willing to put in the time. I like the idea.

Another thing I'll throw out there is that it would be very easy to make 1" buttons. Stickers are a bit trickier. Blim has a workshop on sticker silk screening, but I don't think I'd have time to take the course. Buttons, however, I've made before for my Fringe show. With a couple of people, we could punch out a few hundred buttons in no time renting Blim's button press. It's very easy to do.

[sue]

If we have a button-making party, I will come and help. I also support the idea for t-shirts.

sue

[RCW]

In response to Chris' question.  I guess I was just thinking it would be fun to share.

But handing out t-shirts might end up reminding some touring poets that Vancouver is around and they should check it out.  And it might help our performers stay in the brains of those who book shows else where.  There are plenty of poets and poems flying around and a t-shirt might be one of the ways for poets to be remembered.

RC

[sue]

Photographs of wonderful other-city poets wearing our VanSlam t-shirt will be great for promo - whether that poet is coming to feature, or we just want to show off how great other cool poets think the Van Slam is.
sue

[admin]

Excellent point, Sue!

I think it would a cool and fun and all around awesome idea to give each feature poet a Van Slam t-shirt as an extra thank you for performing on our stage. It would be a souvenir for them. Every time they wore it, they could think, 'oh those Vancouver audiences, they're so rad'. If I were featuring elsewhere, I would think a free t-shirt would be a pretty awesome gift.

And on the fund raising side of things, it would be one more chance to remind everyone that we now have a t-shirt and how everyone should bring in a blank shirt so they can have one.

It would cost about $8 per shirt to create one, and virtually nothing if we can convince people to donate more of their unused blank t-shirts. I try to keep a sample of one in each size, so as soon as I see the feature I could guess which t-shirt to put aside for them.

Anyway, this is just an idea, and perhaps one that needs to be referred to the VPH financial authorities. Just let me know...

[superjill]

I think buttons would be extremely popular.

[Susan]

Chris, I have a bag of assorted tshirts, sweats, etc for the VanSlam shirt project -- how should I get them to you?

[admin]

Awesome!Awesome!Awesome! Thank you Sue! This will be a big help to the project.

I will be at the Slam tonight, so you could bring them there. But I get the (rather giddy) feeling that this might be a BIG bag filled with apparel that you might not want to lug all the way to the café2suns. If that's the case, let's talk via phone or email, and work out a time that we can rendez-vous and I'll take them off your hands.

Thanks again, this is exactly what we needed to kick this fundraising project into high gear!

[admin]

Susan has collected a huge bag of discarded clothing from her workplace and donated it to the Van Slam apparel fundraising project. It includes:

• 3 hoodies (for that street style look)
• 6 turtlenecks (perfect for pretentious pseudo-intellectuals!)
• 7 t-shirts and long sleeve shirts (various styles, sizes, colours)
• 1 lacy faux-lingerie women's top, teal blue, XS (I think Sean has dibs on this one)

This is a HUGE help for us to kick this project into high gear. Susan, you rock!

Anyone else who has clothes to donate to Van Slam, you can always get in contact with me at the next slam.

[admin]

Hey Van Slammers,

Because of Susan's rad-Rad-RAD contribution to our t-shirt project, we now have a lot of stuff that needs silkscreening. We don't hire anyone to make our shirts. Instead they are all hand-silkscreened, which takes a fair amount of work... so I'll need some help!

What we've found in the past is that a three person team works best. That means I need two volunteers to help me.  I'm guessing it will take between 2-3 hours to silkscreen all the materials we have (along with any you bring!). As a bonus, you'll learn all about the process of DIY silkscreening, which is pretty damn cool, and if you bring any of your own shirts, you can slikscreen them for free (normally it's $10 with your own shirt for Community Members).

I'll organize the session for whatever time works best for the people who volunteer. My schedule is very flexible these  days. You can let me know here on the forum, or by calling me at 604.681.2715.

[wenchlette]

memememememe.
I was going to ask you to show me how to silkscreen anywaaaays.

I'm volunteering the spilch too.

[Shannon]

Speaking on behalf of someone that rarely wears t-shirts...I too think buttons is a rad and hopefully easy idea.

Button/perogy making day anyone?