Mission: Explore The Man Behind The Project
With every project, there’s a project owner: an individual, an organisation, or a group of individuals. We want to unveil who’s behind the projects that you love, find out more about them, and learn more about their project.
Daniel Raven-Ellison is the front man behind Mission: Explore Food. Daniel and his team have worked hard at developing quality links with people within their immediate communities and have interacted well with their supporters.
In Daniel's words:
“Crowdfunding is inspiring, not just as a way of accessing resources, but also to create a community of support around what we are doing. More people can be a part of what we are doing and that's great for everyone.”
We managed to tear him away from promoting his project and found out more about Mission: Explore, why he thinks geography is largely misunderstood, and how he and his team have gone about rallying the crowd thus far.
Misssion: Explore Food
Hi Daniel,
Hi,
How about we start by learning more about Mission: Explore and who’s behind it. Would you mind sharing a bit of your own personal background and your involvement with Mission Explore...
I'm a member of The Geography Collective. We're a creative group of geographers including teachers at all levels, the illustrator who brought you the War on Terror board game and other geography activists. It all started with two of us, Alan Parkinson and myself, in 2009 when we came up with the idea for Mission:Explore.
Essentially we think that geography is awesome but largely misunderstood. Too many people for too long have experienced 'geography' like it's some kind of military punishment.. a mixture of memorising places, checking out oxbow-porn and getting cold counting banks. I see geography everywhere and see people using it in everything they love.. from going to places on holiday to making places to party and making homes to seeking thrills we are all space explorers, time travellers and place-makers who enjoy experiencing and thinking about places. Geographical thinking is also crucial if we want to tackle climate change, eat good food and deal with other important issues.
The other thing we are concerned about is the erosion of outdoor play. The fact that children are playing outdoors less is well documented in research and in the media. Play is vital not only for mental and physical health of individuals, but also the wellbeing of communities and society as a whole.
Mission:Explore is our effort to tackle the risk aversion that keeps so many children indoors. We make inspiring and playful outdoor activities that encourage children to question their world.
Food is a really important issue. From where food comes from and how it's cooked to eating in a healthy way and having great challenges to burn off all that energy, we strongly feel that Mission:Explore Food will be a unique and important contribution to children's understanding of food-related issues. We want kids to playfully learn about slow, organic, vegan, fair and other kinds of food as well as get to grips with tough issues like how animals are slaughtered. We're co-producing the book with City Farmers who are a young and dynamic organisation in Lambeth who help deprived families and children grow and access food. We're a strong team!
Have you all been rallying the crowd or are you the sole driving force for your PleaseFund.Us campaign?
I hold things together, but there is a big team behind all the books. We work collectively and collaboratively together on most of what we do.
Books? How many have there been?
Mission:Explore Food will be our fourth Mission:Explore book. The first three were written by The Geography Collective, with children picking many of the missions that are included in it. The first three books were published by the wonderful Can of Worms Kids Press. The book we are crowdfunding for, Mission:Explore Food, will be distributed by Can of Worms but we're keen to build a community of support for the next book by crowdfunding it.
Is this your first crowdfunding campaign? How familiar were you with the process before you uploaded your project?
Yes, this is the first time we've tried to crowdfund a project. We have been aware of crowdfunding since the Age of Stupid crowd funded their movie. It's a great model and something that we think is inspiring, not just as a way of accessing resources, but also to create a community of support around what we are doing. More people can be a part of what we are doing and that's great for everyone.
Were you skeptical about any part of the process when uploading your project?
No.
Pitching the right levels is tricky and we will find out if we've got it right or not in 40 days time!
We really love your video; it's original and creative. A lot of people are put off by the idea of making a video pitch for their campaign. How did you go about making yours? And what advice would you give to people who are in the process of making their own?
I made our video using illustrations from our books. Our illustrator, Tom Morgan-Jones, is a fantastic artist and having his artwork has really helped us to get across our image, what we are about and the overall feel for the project. I made the film through stop-motion animation. I simply took lots of photos on my iPad using iStopmotion and then added some words over the top. It's an unprofessional video that is far from perfect, but hopefully it gets across a little about who we are.
In terms of advice? Do something you feel confident about and comfortable with.
Your pledge rewards are great. We particularly like the £50 and £100 rewards: Giving backers the chance to really feel a part of your project by offering to include an illustration of their choice or their face in the book itself. We often tell project owners that the more a project has to offer, the better. Did you always know this is what you were going to offer? And if you were to back this project yourself, which pledge reward would you go for?
I think our fruit basket for £10,000 is the best reward, don't you? (<:
We spoke for a long time about different levels and what we should offer. Our rule was that people who contribute now should always get a better deal or something more than those who buy the book in the future. We spoke for some time about having a £1 starting option. We decided that we would start at £20 because we wanted to encourage those who wanted to support us to actually get the book... but I'm undecided as I think I may prefer to have more supporters and less money at this stage..
We think that having your face illustrated into a children's book is a great deal for £100. That said a £500 investment and getting eCopies for all the families in your organisation... or as a donation to a local school.. is a great offer. We're hoping more people will come in on this level soon.
The fruit basket does sound tempting!
We also regularly tell project owners not to rush and to make sure they're really happy with their project before they request for it to go live. Did you experience any difficulties when shaping your project, or was it pretty straightforward? What should other project owners pay particular attention to?
It sounds obvious, but think through everything you need to say very carefully and provide as many examples as you can. We've only just uploaded some sample pages.
As we mentioned in last week's blog- we love the interaction you've had with your followers (such as Denise from Insch Butterflies and Nature workshops). Was this down to you promoting and sharing your page purely via facebook? Or are there other reasons for this?
We have worked quite hard to develop quality links with people within our immediate communities (geography, education and play). I hope that when we post to Twitter or Facebook that people listen to us because we are doing some interesting and creative work that genuinely supports what they do. In these cases I think they have found us through Facebook (but maybe via Twitter or our blog), but I hope the reasons for the positive comments is because of our depth and reach.
There's still plenty of time until your project deadline. Have there been any difficulties with your crowdfunding experience so far? And has there been a highlight? Do you have any tips for project owners about to embark on their own campaigns?
Things are going well. We've got lots of time still, but I'd like to be halfway there within the next 20 days. If we achieve this then I'll be confident that we will hit the target. Knowing we could lose it all is a worry!
Tips? Not yet... ask me again in 40 days.
.jpg)
You already have 27 backers, and are 12% fully funded. Do you have any game plan for the rest of your campaign?
We are really keen to reach out to organisations who would like to sponsor the £500 option. This is a great deal and can see every family in an organisation getting a copy. This could be thousands of free copies. This is going to be our focus for the next few weeks.
Amazing. Well we wish you all the best with your campaign. You've done an amazing job so far. Thanks for your time Daniel
Thank you very much. Fingers crossed!
Comments