OUR BIG BOOK BET
Books change lives. We know one that certainly has and another that just might turbo charge that!
This is the remarkable story of two books found in Oxfam charity bookshops.
Check out the chat Nick had here on the BBC Radio and TV news about the campaign we launched on #GivingTuesday, to find a generous donor who will match fund the first work we need to do to start scaling STEAM Co.
Click here to bet for it on GumTree or you can donate to our GoFundMe appeal here
THIs INCREDIBLE STORY
Starts outside the Oxfam bookshop in Swansea on a rainy night in November as yo can see in the short film here.
We had a great day when we flew down to Swansea, South Wales in #StarShip22, landed and queued in the pouring rain outside an Oxfam bookshop with speakers playing a disco remix of the Eurythmics banger 1984.
All to buy a book for £495. But this isn’t any old book.
Pulped fiction
Back in 2016 the Swansea Oxfam bookshop posted a sign begging people not to drop off any more copies of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ by Dan Browne as they’d been inundanted with them.
(With 80 million copies sold worldwide, they had to end up somewhere didn’t they!)
A conceptual artist David Shrigley saw this and tracked down 6,000 copies that he had pulped to make paper on which he printed George Orwell’s 1984, as it is out of copyright.
The wonderful discovery, the big reveal, if you ever get to see a copy, is that he re-used slip covers and hard back boards of the collectors illustrated edition of The Da Vinci Code for his copy of 1984.
It was beautifully presented, wrapped and came with a limited edition and signed print.
Sadly David Shrigley was, according to his studio manager, “too busy” to attend the sale and sign the books for everyone who had queued in the rain for hours (or maybe he was just a bit hungover from the private view the night before!!!)
Regardless they sold out of 250 copies in 2 hours, taking around £125,000.
Which is exactly half of the £250k we need to ignite the #CreativityRevolution23 with the #OurMillion23 appeal - to ultimately raise ‘a million quids to inspire a million kids to aim higher than high, powered by their creativity and community’.
WE GOT A COPY
It’s a stunning piece, a work of art however you look at it.
But we have to sell our copy to raise money for the #OurMIllion23 appeal
Well not selling it as such, more wagering it.
We’re prepared to give it away.
All this has inspired us to create a conceptual art work of our own, with a book connected to an Oxfam bookshop that changed our life, and many others.
THE BEST BOOK HE'D EVER READ
The co-founder of STEAM Co. is Nick Corston and back in 2016, his 83 year old dad Peter gave him a copy of a book - ‘Rocket Boys’ by Homer Hickam - that he’d found in the Oxfam bookshop he volunteered in in Ludlow, Shropshire, saying it was the best book he’d ever read, and he’s read a few!
Nick finally got around to reading it and saw potential, needing an idea for a stage show at Camp Bestival that summer.
Rocket Boys tells the story of four boys growing up in a dead end coal mining town in West Virginia in the 50’s who look to the sky one October night and, on seeing, the Sputnik satellite, decide to learn to make rockets and end up for working for NASA.
Peter said he’d emailed the author, but not had a reply. Nick told him not to expect one, having seen it had sold 6 million copies worldwide and been made into a Universal Studios film called ‘October Sky’ (which is an anagram of… ?)
Within a few hours and fuelled by a glass of Merlot, Nick had made contact with Homer Hickam on Twitter who gave him permission to share the story at Camp Bestival that summer, joining him on a high tech cardboard intercom call as you can see below
ROCKET KIDS ARE GO
The show was such a success that we took it on the road and have delivered Rocket Kids sessions in schools right across the UK since and to this day.
The session consists of:
All school assembly - shring Homer’s inspiring story
Creative activities - rocket making/firing, cardboard modelling and coding
Real dynamite rocket launch - to get everyone buzzing at home time
OUR ART PROJECT - #1984in23
Suddenly we had two books in our lives, both connected to Oxfam books shops and that show the power of books to connect and change lives.
After a couple of days in Swansea that saw Nick stumble across a dystopian witch hunt and culture wars story fresh from 1984 he embarked upon a journey worthy of a Dan Browne page turner:
After a few nights camping in a former copper mine in the centre of Swansea, Nick found a parking spot that was perfect to project a message onto the walls of the city’s castle
He then visited a former coal mining community in a South Wale valley where he discovered how a former Blaenavon miner name of Hayward had gone on to found one of the country’s leading art galleries in London and how a descendent of the village’s Iron Master (aka Lord of the Manor) is now a leading art activist photographer and lecturer at the Royal College of Art.
In Sunderland where STEAM Co. ran a regional launch event back in early 2016 and Darren Henley, CEO of Arts Council England had called for a ‘Creativity Revolution’ he saw a ‘Makem that Made It’. After working with a local school, Nick ended up on the BBC 6 O’Clock news
A few days later, he visited another former mining community in Yorkshire where, at the bottom of a coal mine, he had a harrowing experience with a 4 year old child.
We’re working on a film of all this.
But FIRST
Right now we have a book to sell. Two in fact.
OUR BIG BOOK BET
Because David Shrigley took £125k that morning in Swansea.
And because that’s half of the amount we need to ignite the #CreativityRevolution23 our children, our communities and our country so desperately need, by getting the first three of our Pop-up Creativity Day Art Trucks and fully funded STEAMsters on the road.
We’re selling our own conceptual art work.
(According to the Tate gallery website, ‘conceptual art is art for which the idea (or concept) behind the work is more important than the finished art object’ and have we got a story?)
We are offering to sell both these books and the ideas and stories behind them and have put them on GUMTREE HERE for £125k - well a match fund pledge that could see someone get both of the books for nothing.
If someone will pledge £125k for the books, we’ll go out and try to raise the other £125k by the end of January 2024, which is traditonally when we launch our new year of activity. This year was about #OurCreativity23.
Next year is #STEAMpower24
If we DON’T raise the £125k, our match funder can keep the books and their money. We’ll keep what we’ve raised and do what we can with it
If we DO raise it then we’ll have the £250k we need to get our first three Art Trucks on the road in Shropshire, Cornwall and Yorkshire running a year of free creativity days in schools and communities, at fetes and festivals to prove our creative community engagement model can work.
We’ll also kick off the #RocketKidsClub that Homer Hickam has generously offered to be the Patron of and start live streaming a weekly #RocketKidsShow on our YouTube channel with special guests, creative activities and updates to keep kids inspired after we’ve visited them.
When we’ve shown it does work we’ll then go out and raise the other £750k to get up to 23 more Art Trucks and STEAMsters on the road.
So there you have it, the closest thing to a business plan we’ve ever written.
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
If you want to pledge a match fund to get these two magical books either way or just chip in?
Donate to our GoFundMe appeal here Click here to bet on the books on GUMTREE
If you need any more convincing of what we do and why, check out the film below that McLaren and their sponsor SmartSheet made for us at the British Grand Prix this year, filmed in Shropshire and London to help us ignite a Creativity Revolution.
We did offer them and their super star driver Lando Norris, this match funding opportunity, hoping they’d be keen to turn all the Brand Buzz we generated together into some Lasting Legacy in their home country and they asked for this proposal
Sadly but after they spent 6 weeks considering it they came back to us and said they’d “unanimously agreed not to give us any funding, having given us enough”, which we couldn’t argue with so here we are, ever optimistic that someone will help us here.