49: When you change tribes, the tribe changes you

Play this first, it wasnt a random song selection, read on and you will see why

“Kind is about community”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. When I came to curiousness I didn’t expect it to be such a community. Something about the way Scott and Will feed off of each other’s energy and then give that same energy back to the class everyday just gave it a different feel than every other class I have taken.

Graham and Oliver are my two friends in the class. We all met last semester in our intro to mass comm class but you wouldn’t know we have known each other less than a year if you ever hang out with us. Something about the daunting project 54 (which I have still not completed) brought us together. We hang out almost everyday like high school girls and text each other constantly about funny things or all the bullshit life throws.

We decided I am the Visionary, Oliver is the execution and Graham is the Tiny Dancer (complete with drunkenly singing the Elton John song on floyd one night).  We all spend most of our time laughing and the rest of the time having conversations I wouldn’t feel comfortable having with most people. The openness of the class translated into openness with each other. With Curiousness ending it feels like the end of an era, but I can say with no doubt that this tripod isn’t going anywhere.

This little tripod never would have happened without curiousness. It brought out the most kind part of all of us and that is friendship. It changed me in an unexpected way, entering into this tribe of a class. A quote it reminds me of is from some movie I don’t remember:

When you change tribes, the tribe changes you.

This is us at the beginning of the semester:

This is us on Halloween. Oliver and I are Wayne and Garth, Graham is a pile of Laundry

and this is us at a medieval party:

thank you scott and will for facilitating us. we hope we make you proud

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48: Kind Community Gardens

Kind gardens would be a good way to involve the community and to create a healthier world. They could even taste good if the things grown are food. 

Gardens are empowering to people. Seed to sprout to final crop is something that has been in our DNA since the cavemen years. Many people have gotten out of touch with this idea of being close with the Earth. Kind seems to be on the right track by being simple and natural but could take it a step further by providing gardens for communities to come together in and grow things. 

 

47: Biodegradable Wrappers

Kind cares about the environment, this we know. They target people that also care about the environment. They also care about being healthy and being good for the community. Something that would encompass all three of these things would be having biodegradable wrappers. 

Biodegradable products are safer for the environment because they break down naturally and just become mainly fertilizer for whatever piece of Earth they end up in. This is also healthier because biodegradable products contain little to no harsh chemicals. 

 

46: FOOD DESERTS

Food deserts are areas mainly in inner cities with impoverished populations that lack fresh and healthy food. Many people in these areas are able to get food but it has to be cheap due to their low incomes and is usually processed. The calories are high and the cost is low and the nutrition levels are low. For more fortunate families they are able to pay more for more nutritious produce. 

Food deserts are a growing problem in the United States. Some food banks are trying to focus more on how to get donations of fresh produce and healthy options for the people that depend on them for meals. 

Kind should help with this issue by partnering with farms to help a system of volunteers to grow food for the sole purpose of being donated to areas that would otherwise not receive healthy food. Shalom farms in Goochland, VA does this. They rely on volunteers and everything they grow is donated to inner city Richmond. 

Kind should also sponsor projects that teach people how to grow their own food. It is empowering and the product is much healthier than anything a corner market could give to a family in need.

45: Kind poem from the soul (of a very exhausted 21 year old girl)

Im gonna be twenty one in a week, semester fly over me like a dream

another semester down, another closer to leaving this place, makes me wanna scream

memories of this fall term are clustered around granola and taking time for granted

pulling all nighters now that it’s coming to a close and I’m tired and cranky and slanted

I need a little holy water to wake me up and wash off the cigarette smoke and sweat from work and walking around the city

I gotta get home and drink more water and wake up and read all my shit and try to look pretty

This healthy snacks brand is quite the oxymoron since I’m really far from pulled together

I need to stop smoking and stop procrastinating and smile at work and call my mother

I need to hike like I did last year but that me seems like a million miles away

just a little version of myself cramped in the back of my head like a different actress in a different play

confronting a little granola bar is a little tricky and its getting under my skin

branding this thing keeps making me think about the brand of the person I live in

am I as free to interpretation as Kind?

could anyone project 54 me these days or am I to remain undefined?

44: Bucket list

A long time ago I used to eat Yoplait yogurt. I don’t know why I ever stopped but I remember they used to have little things on the underside of the tops. I think they might have been little messages you could write to your mother or something. ANYWAYS I think that Kind should have people do something similar. 

We may not be ‘bucket listers’ but we all have dreams or things we want to do that seem further off in the future and hard to get to. They are little adventures we would love to see ourselves going on. Kind should invite people to send it things on their bucket list and print them on each wrapper. 

One way to connect with people buying the product is to ask them about themselves. It is a little hard to go door to do but really the idea is just to get people thinking about something they want to share about themselves. Bucket lists vary from person to person and the reasons behind them will surprise you. Giving people the spotlight to share something like that is a good way to get them thinking about getting it checked off the list. They may even grab a Kind bar for the road. 

43: kind got a blog

I love tumblr! Cliche, yes. But it is kind of like how Brandon Viney told us we have to be the mother birds taking in a bunch of different things and spitting the best stuff out. I get to munch on tumblr stuff all the time and collect on my own tumblr what I feel expresses me and what I found interesting. 

I made a tumblr for Kind and reblogged a few things that I think express the brand

 

http://kindgotablog.tumblr.com/

42: Street Art

In keeping with enhancing the community I think about the street art festival. The RVA street art scene has really taken off. With the street art festival we see a plethora of styles in using an interesting canvas (most recently the old bus depot) to express themselves and really say something to the community. 

For the events to be sustained and to be successful it takes funding and convincing. With the convincing it isn’t too hard since Richmond has become full of quirky and artsy people that really want to say something. 

With funding however, I think Kind would be a good sponsor of street art ventures. Street art is a way to express what people have to say in to the people that live in the same little world they do. It is a chance to say something to both a crowd, loudly and a stranger, intimately at the same time. This is good for the community. It helps develop the culture, it causes a little bit of a stir, in a good way. 

http://www.rvastreetart.com/

 

41: Kind Ticket to Yoga

People like free things. Even people that care about saving the earth and eating healthy and helping the community.

A great way Kind could encourage both being healthy and bringing the community together is to partner with yoga studios and let people use Kind wrappers as vouchers for a free yoga class.

The yoga studios would be able to bring new people in and Kind is associated with a cool promotional thing. Trying yoga is also a healthy thing for minds and bodies which makes for healthier, more connected communities.

40: Kind Playlist

Confession: I am obsessed with soundtracks (especially in trailers and commercials) I watch new trailers every thursday to see if anything has a good score or song along with it. My dream job is to be the guy that makes the soundtrack for movies.

So that being said I decided to make a playlist for Kind. These are necessarily my favorite songs but they are songs that I feel like I would hear in a short film by Kind or in a commercial or that their ideal buyer would listen to.

Glory – Radical Face

Old Pine – Ben Howard

What is My Life – George Harrison

Donkey –Ola Podrida 

This Will Be Our Year – The Zombies