We are really excited to announce that the Good Karma Project's documentary is now live and online! Big thanks goes out to Jasan Naran from Nektar Films for putting this together for us. Your a true legend. Click on the videos tab to check it out.
Itfs now been over 3 weeks since we returned to New Zealand and things have been crazy busy since, hence the lack of updates. Itfs been so exciting going through all the content we gathered over the six weeks of the project. We now have all our 14 artists locked in for the exhibition and the most recent update is that Misery ""http://www.misery.com"">www.misery.com is now part of the exhibition. We are very excited to be working with her on the project. Itfs been so much fun showing the New Zealand artists the artwork by the children from Burma, a whole new area of inspiration for many of them. Now itfs time for me to close the curtains and hide myself in my own little documentary world. With over 20 hours of footage to look through, itfs going to be a busy week. We canft wait to get our mini doco on the web as a lead up to the exhibition which opens on the 31st March now
We have had the most incredible six weeks out here working on the Good Karma Project. Now itfs finally time to head home and start work on the next part of the project; preparing for the exhibition, mag release and mini doco. We are in Bangkok airport now and look forward to getting back to NZ on Wednesday. Keep in touch with the blog as we will be back on a solid internet connection soon and will be updating lots more over the next few months! ""http://www.goodkarmaproject.org/img/Bangkok_Airport.jpg
Wefre just about to head into our last week teaching photography at Thoo Mweh Khee and we have had the most amazing time already. The kids are loving photography and after a little lesson in composition, wefve found the quality of images keeps getting better. The school really came to life last week when 500 people turned up for a religious festival that lasted 3 days. The music never seemed to stop, they even started blasting the soundsystem at 7am every morning! Some people walked for 2 days to attend, so it was a pretty big thing around here. Who better to photograph it that our class, they had a ball being photojournalists for the day! On the 16th it was Karen New Year (the Karen are an ethnic group from Burma) and we were lucky enough to attend the celebrations at Mae La refugee camp. The camp is home to over 60,000 refugees and the numbers are rising fast. At least 10,000 people made their way down to the football field to start the celebrations at 7am. It was a pretty exciting adventure for Josh and I, with a 2 hour drive in the darkness and fog to the camp in the mountains. Josh was even invited on stage as a guest NGO, but really it was because he was one of only 10 Westerners there! The dancing was incredible and once the fog lifted, the mountains appeared, creating a stunning photographic backdrop. After a weekend of catching up with people in Mae Sot, we are now finalising the teaching for this week and are super excited about starting work on the art side of the project in Mae Sot straight after Christmas. We hope youfre all winding down for some family Christmas time. Wefre planning spending the day with the Children at Thoo Mweh Khee and the night with a random mix of volunteers at the eDrop Outf bar!
Well, its been a crazy few days sorting out the printing, teaching schedule and students but we have already done three classes! This place is so relaxed, and they are on holiday, itfs pretty hard to tie something down, but we have the kids amped up about photography and they are into it. On Monday we met with the kids briefly about what we are going to be doing over the next few weeks and on Tuesday we had our first photo class. We sent the kids out on a etreasure huntf with a list of 20 different things they had to shoot. Some were as simple as a tree, others were harder like getting Pat and I in the same photo (sounds easy, but not when your constantly 20m away from each other!). They had a ball, and shot through their film in about an hour. The photos were developed for the next class on Wednesday for them to review and check out what each others images looked like. They then chose their three favourite photos and had to write about them in Karen. We had all sorts of efavouritef photos coming through from the kids. Friends featured a lot, and surprisingly we featured a lot too! In the evening, we worked with older students, who practiced their English by translating the photo descriptions for us. Next class is at 3pm today and the kids are already asking about what we are doing! The enthusiasm is really blowing us away. Herefs a couple of photos from the class yesterday. We will put up a gallery on the weekend of some of the kids pictures.
Itfs been an epic four days in Mae Sot so far. We have managed to fit so much in and have met the most amazing people here who all have incredible stories to share. We have mainly been hanging out with Burmese people and have visited 3 of the local schools we will be working at later on. The markets are an amazing sight and wefve been checking them out everyday. Wefve even caught our first sights of Burma with a visit to Friendship bridge, this was a very interesting experience with the Thai Army keeping watch over all the Burmese traders, selling cigarettes and whiskey. These traders are based in No Mans Land, the space between Burma and Thailand, it is often cleared out by the Thai Army, but the Burmese settle back in a few days later! Tomorrow is the Kingfs birthday and wefve been invited to a few parties to celebrate. Then we leave the relative comforts of Mae Sot for three weeks at our first school where the photography begins! ""http://goodkarmaproject.org/img/kids.jpg""align=""middle"" ""http://goodkarmaproject.org/img/kids.jpg""
Kodak have come on board and rocked the world of Good Karma by supplying all the film that the children will be documenting their world on. They are also supplying all the paper for the exhibition prints. We are stoked to have Kodakfs support with the project. They are constantly supporting social change through photography projects around the world. ""http://www.goodkarmaproject.org/img/Kodak_web.gif""
Exams are over, work has been put on hold and we are 17 days away from leaving sunny old Wellington to travel to the outskirts of Mae Sot in Thailand. The job list is currently at 56 items, and we are charging through them at a rate of knots per day Big shout out to all the help and support from friends, donations, sponsors. Every bit is helping us on mission! Recently we have had Kodak come on board with supplying film and Kodak paper for the exhibition. Big thanks going out to them! Here is a cheesy picture of us getting the kids cameras ready! ""http://www.goodkarmagroup.org/img/Pat_Josh.jpg""
VIDEO CAMERA SPONSOR We would like to say a huge thanks to Advantage Computers Ltd http://www.advantage.co.nz"">www.advantage.co.nz for coming on board to help our cause. They are partnering with The Good Karma Project as official video camera sponsor and have been kind enough to supply us with a Sony HD camera for creating the project's.
