December's round-up of notable London-based crowdfunding projects, with not a Christmas cracker in sight.
3D London Illustration
The best way to experience London in three dimensions is arguably to go outside and wander around. The second best way may be to get involved with this interesting art project from Laura Jordan, a graduate of the London College of Communication and highly talented graphic artist. Her project involves a unique form of 3D imaging brightly lit by an LED light box, making a London of holograms your brain will demand you reach out and grab at like a dog pawing at its own reflection.
Laura needs only another couple of hundred quid to get the project over the line, which should be no bother with 10 days to go. Rewards include invites to the private viewing of the artwork (it doesn’t say where that’ll be in the Kickstarter) and signed limited-edition prints of the final work.
Nilly's Brownies
Are female cub scouts still called brownies? If you have no idea what that means you're too young to be reading the internet, get to school. Nilly's specialises in scrumptious, moist, fudgy brownies, at which point we underline that we’re very much talking about chocolate cakes here, of which Nilly’s are among the best. Their Kickstarter is designed to raise funds to open a new shop dedicated to their chocolate treats, somewhere nice and central where their team of two bakers and a baker's helper can work their magic.
Brownies are unsurprisingly the focal point of the pledge rewards on offer. There are brownies of different flavours and hues, and brownies in bigger quantities, and even a reward involving two brownies every day for an entire year, by which point you’ll be starting your own nausea-driven crowdfunding project to have the place shut down again.
iPhone bottle opener cases
Eventually, smartphones will be able to perform actions from babysitting to installing pacemakers, at which point we’ll reflect ruefully on Stephen Hawking’s recent claims that technology will render humanity redundant. That seems some way off, however, when phones can’t yet even perform such a simple task as opening a bottle.
Step up the bottlocase to push technology towards its next big evolutionary step. This is a case, for iPhones in the first instance, that includes a bottle opener. The rewards for helping get this ‘How did we not know we needed this?’ project to market are generally based around bottlocases in different colours and quantities. Fund this, people, and within a decade we’ll never have to wipe our own backsides again.
A music photography exhibition
Some people probably don’t give a monkey’s about music, dead inside as they are. They’ll probably have even less interest in the photography of music and musicians, but if there’s anyone who could convince them to change their mind it’s Londoner Chris Patmore. This Indiegogo project is hoping to raise money to put on an exhibition of his exceptional work, some of which you can see on the project page itself but a far better taster of which you can get from Chris’s own website.
Chris captures the spirit of live music better than anyone and deserves to have his work shown to a wider audience, so head over to the project page to help him raise the measly sum of £1,200 and while you’re there feast on rewards such as signed, numbered prints, in frames and out, plus the chance to have Chris shoot your own band in his inimitable style.
Strawberry Hill House Ice Rink
Everyone loves an ice rink, though we’re never quite sure why there aren’t more tales of fingers being sliced off given how often beginners find themselves prone as pros hurtle around them. It’d seem a little unfair to promote one rink as the best over the rest, but Strawberry Hill House’s Crowdfunder is so filled with entertaining hyperbole it might actually be the best in the entire world, including Norway.
Previous incarnations of this ice rink have had ‘the friendliest and most helpful marshalls’ and, without doubt, ‘the best ice’. The rink continues the tradition of an old East Twickenham rink which was described by somebody using the superbly capitalised phrase: ‘the Most Famous Ice Rink in the World’. Rewards for helping get this global standard-bearing skating experience up and running for another year include tours, season tickets and even exclusive use of the rink for a session.
An honourable mention...
Finally, a quick plug for a project we like a lot but which we’ve covered once already - World in London, which you can read all about here.
