A match made in creative heaven.
Motion Poems is a non-profit dedicated to the creation and free distribution of “motion poems” — poetry films. Motion poems started with animator Angella Kassube and poet, Todd Boss. Angella approached Todd after a poetry reading and said she would love to animate one of his poems.
It took me half a second to say, Sure! I’ll send you everything I’ve ever written. Within a week and a half she came back with all of these cool drawings and ideas.
Todd Boss
Motion Poems began as a self-funded collaboration between a poet and an artist, then branched into a matchmaking service for artists and poets to connect and collaborate. Todd Boss, Co-founder Executive and Artistic Director could see great potential in growing the genre of “motion poems” and embarked upon the route of setting up a non-profit organization to make this happen.
Creators:
Todd Boss — Co-founder, Executive, Artistic Director
Country:
Minneapolis, Minnesota, US
Interview Date:
March 12, 2019
Link to Project:
Funding and Business Model:
501c non-profit managed by a Board of Directors with the co-founder, executive and artistic director, Todd Boss
The Creators:
Motion poems started with Angella Kassube and Todd Boss. They met when Todd was reading his poems at a poetry reading. Angella approached him afterwards and said she was an animator and would love to animate one of his poems. “It took me half a second to say, Sure! I’ll send you everything I’ve ever written. Within a week and a half she came back with all of these cool drawings and ideas.”
Together, the pair started the project as a “matchmaking service” — she reached out to animators and filmmakers and he reached out to poets to see who wants to play.
Todd came from a non-profit arts administration background and so saw the value and potential in having a wider impact of developing motion poems/poetry films as a genre. He wanted to formalize the project as a non-profit, get some funding, and be able to get themselves paid. Todd got the papers together, got a board together, and gathered people with a background in non-profit experience to help guide and direct them. They were fortunate and landed some big grants right away. Angella is not as much involved in the project currently. She was not interested in expanding and developing the project in this way.
The Project:
Motion Poems is a non-profit organization that partners and collaborates with filmmakers, producers, for-profit and non-profit publishers and literary organizations and educators. They produce and freely distribute motion poems — films created as interpretations of poems.
Motion Poems hires a guest producer each season and partners with publishers and literary organizations to obtain free rights to the poems. Filmmakers are offered a small stipend of $1000 per film, although they hope to be able to offer more to filmmakers in the future. They also create lesson plans in-house which they freely share. On their website, they share lesson plans created and sent in by teachers who utilize their poetry films as educational resources as well as films created by students.
Todd explained that each guest producer, always a woman, brings her own ethos to the project, reaching out to her filmmaking community. “This is a way of keeping things fresh and new and changing and expanding their roster each year.” They also partner with new publishers and literary organizations each year. With the material they gain access to through these partnerships — “we shovel the poems out to the filmmakers — dozens and dozens until they fall in love with something.”
The filmmakers have full creative control over the films. It’s always a surprise for the poet, usually not a good surprise, which we prepare them for. But it’s a gamble they are willing to take. It’s one person’s interpretation, not a translation of the poem.
Todd Boss
Angella, co-founder with Todd, envisioned a project and place where artists and filmmakers could express themselves creatively. Filmmakers and animators often have to support themselves with daily jobs which don’t allow them to have full creative direction. Motion Poems offers this creative space.
Filmmakers go to art school, filmmakers are artists, but in the necessary jobs they do day to day, the creative direction isn’t theirs, it’s from the client, to the client, for the client…and it drains the soul from their artistic practice. MP gives them full creative control.
Todd Boss shares Angela’s secret
Filmmakers are given a small stipend of $1000 which Todd acknowledges is nowhere near enough for the creative resources they are pouring into it, but it’s at least a little bit. They have hopes to someday be in a position to be able to pay the filmmakers more. MP puts on an annual premiere for them, promotes them through the monthly launches and through their Facebook. Poets walk away with a film, exposure, and people who have engaged with their work. MP gives the filmmakers access to a poem as script which is rights free and that’s really important to them. MP has tapped into a need, a creative need for filmmakers. Every week, a filmmaker is reaching out to Todd to collaborate with them.
Into the Future — New Ventures
Poetry will always be at the core of what we do — it’s surprising/unexpected that it’s poetry that has worked as the core of these ventures.
Todd Boss
This is a transition year, Todd said, shifting from what they have always done which is creating films. They are going to continue creating films but are now branching out into public art.
They’ve created an app, in partnership with a local media company who’s very excited and interested to partner with them and their innovative ideas. MoVA is a moving virtual art museum for the rapid transit line in Minneapolis-St. Paul. During the ride, viewers can hold their phones to the windows. In this AR experience, viewers will see what they could be passing, what they could be seeing out the window — artworks bigger than can fit in a museum.
Motion Poems is putting out the call soon to artists for innovative, creative art for this initiative. “It’s not a difficulty of partnering with artists and having to tell them what to do, the artists will come up with the wonderful ideas, it’s just a matter of partnering with great artists.”
Todd Boss
They are hoping to launch the app this summer. This venture came from the project, Chaos on the Green Line which was a VR experience using Google Cardboard. During the ride, the GPS triggered the Virtual Reality experience and you moved through it, virtually in a 360 environment. That was highly intensive.
MoVA is an AR experience. Todd has reached out to the local art museums, hoping to partner with them so that someday, “this line is sponsored by this museum”…. As Todd envisions it, the museums could use these as annexes for artwork that is bigger than can fit into a gallery. Todd feels this experience could expand beyond this rail line . “Flip the right switch and this could work on a New York transit line”.
Other smaller new ventures
Hot House — a 48 hour pairing of 4 poet/filmmaker teams. This initiative was funded through a Kickstarter campaign. Teams were challenged to create a moving poem within that time frame.
It’s an effort to capture some of the thrill and the surprise of the collaboration that happens between poet and filmmaker.
Todd Boss
Eppy awards — first ever Epiphany awards. Poetry filmmakers from outside Motion Poems collaborations have been invited to submit up to 3 films each. Six prizes of $500 each will be awarded in three commentaries — adaptation, innovation, production.
It’s a shift year, not sure in the end which initiatives will turn out to be the most sustainable, most successful ventures.
Todd Boss
Road to Sustainable Funding
Todd has learned that it’s Important to have a diverse mix of funding — corporate, foundation, personal, earned income.
It’s a constantly evolving, changing landscape, it’s important to be able to pivot and reach out to new partners and opportunities.
Todd Boss
He notes, It’s always a struggle to keep enough money coming in — “Priorities change, it’s a challenge in contested election periods, year after year,… and with natural disasters and humanitarian crises, people are giving money to those causes of course”(Todd Boss).
Todd has found that it’s easier to get funding for new initiatives — grants for flashy, sexy big immersive and augmented reality projects. It’s an ongoing struggle to maintain operating costs.
Diverse Mix of Funding
Recently, they have been able to get earned revenue from consultations and speaking, which is increasing the organization’s sustainability. In addition, they have a support button and a list of their donors on the website.
Funding partners include state, corporate sponsors, foundation grants, arts organizations and personal donations. Motion Poems is funded, in part, by an appropriation from the Minnesota State Legislature with money from the State’s general fund. They list sponsors of specific seasons:
“Season 5 is sponsored in part by contributions from HDMG, Gentleman Scholar, The Mill, and MPC. Season 6, an all-female-poet season, is sponsored by VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts. Season 7 is sponsored by Cave Canem.”
Major Funding Contributors
Horncrest Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight 1Foundation, Lowertown Future Fund, MRAC, Saint Paul Foundation, Springboard for the Arts, St. Paul Cultural STAR, Toro Foundation
They charge admission for the premieres. Locally, they have been able to co-host their premieres with the Walker Art Center, and the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival, thus able to present at these galleries for free. But in New York that’s been more challenging for an outside organization to find a venue.
In LA, is where many of the guest producers come from and where many of the filmmakers come from. They run crowdfunding campaigns. “hey, help us share these films with the world” They’re able to raise money, rent a big warehouse, have catering and host a party.
Todd Boss
They sell screening packages to organizations wishing for Motion Poems to provide a themed curated program of the films with promotional materials.
Currently MP is in the process of revamping and recruiting for an expanded Board. Up to now, they’ve had a basic Board of 6 to 8 members with non-profit, foundation experience.
We would like to have the people we haven’t had — corporate members, legal members, philanthropic members — these are the people they would like to have around the table. The greater their collective capacity, the greater Motion Poem’s capacity.
Todd Boss
Why Free Access?
As a non-profit, they are always thinking about access to the work and who is able to access it. And, as Todd says, “there’s the instinct to share, a childish instinct to say, ‘see, look what I made’” and you want to get the work out to as many people as possible.
As a poet, Todd recognizes that there isn’t a commercial market for poetry.
There is no precedent for motion poems, it’s a new, hybrid form. Need to show people that poetry can be transformed in this way, into a film, get people interested. You can’t charge them for something they don’t know what it is.
Todd Boss
Todd hasn’t come from a background where he has been aware of Open licensing or Open Educational Resources. Motion Poems has been built upon a foundation of primarily free access.
Free Educational Resources
As Motion Poems gathered a following, they found that college teachers, poetry teachers were reaching out to them, telling them how powerful their films are for teaching poetry. Sara, their communications person has an education background so she wrote lesson plans that are freely available. It is important to MP to make their material as accessible as possible to educators — at the high school, early college and grad school level. Creating a motion poem is a deep read of a poem, a personal interpretation, an adaptation. They designed a curriculum for creating motion poems for grad school. Student created poems created from the lesson plans are linked to the website, and teacher initiated lessons and suggestions are welcomed and shared on the website as well.
This is a transition year, shifting from what they have always done, creating films. They are going to continue creating films but are now branching out into public art.
They’ve created an app, in partnership with a local media company who’s very excited and interested to partner with them and their innovative ideas. MoVA is a moving virtual art museum for the rapid transit line in Minneapolis-St. Paul. During the ride, viewers can hold their phones to the windows. In this AR experience, viewers will see what they could be passing, what they could be seeing out the window — artworks bigger than can fit in a museum.
Keys to Success to Carry Forward:
Todd explained that he is always learning, always taking forward what he has gained from/learned from in developing Motion Poems. They have a new, separate initiative of collaborating with composers and poets. He will take into that what he has learned from developing Motion Poems.
Artistic freedom for the artists — tapping into that creative need of artists is powerful.
Collaboration — vision of collaboration is essential. Todd hopes that that would continue beyond himself as Executive and Artistic Director.
Collaboration is not an intuitive process for most, you learn by doing. Powerful sparks come from collaboration.
Todd Boss
