29 July 2010

I am finding it really hard to explain precisely what the Virus Project is. It’s something that has taken me some time to really work out for myself and decide how to communicate the idea properly. So, at long last, I will try and give you a more in-depth look into the ideas and philosophies behind the Virus Project.

The origins of the project date back to a year ago when the original idea was formed, which those of us who were there at the beginning now realise was only the tip of the iceberg. Like so many others it grew from a basic desire to put on an event where I could play my own favourite music and do my own thing. But this simple idea then took on a life of it’s own.

Personally I have always been interested in a variety of subjects; film, art, politics, sociology, photography, parties, Words: Will Poole
Pics: Will Poolefestivals and more. I have always had, like so many, a burning desire to help others achieve their goals. I’ve always been an optimist and a bit of a dreamer, but it wasn’t until I attended the Burning Man Festival that I saw the possibility of dreams being put into action. The experience of staying in the middle of the Nevada desert is test enough, but with the ethos of self-reliance wrapped neatly together with the idea of looking after one another and living within a gift economy, my eyes were truly opened.

It was a few months later that the actual idea – to hold my own event – hit me. I was on the phone to my girlfriend when it came, and that is the only real memory I have. She was on holiday in Spain at the time, and I wondered if she thought it was a stupid idea.

The idea was to build our own community of creative people. This community would work together to make its own art, music, media, events and anything else we thought could benefit its members. The community would be open for anyone who wanted to be involved, and you would need only the desire to put in some effort and the community would give back tenfold. This community would understand that not everyone has equal access to learn all the things they want to, so the community itself would try to do its best to accommodate them and create access to workshops hosted by those that are able to teach those who are unable, and then having them repeat the process to new people as they got involved.

This all sounded really nice on paper – as a fantasy, it was almost perfect. My girlfriend, also an optimist, thought so too and excitedly asked me when I was going to start this undertaking. “Wait! You can’t actually think I’m actually going to try and do this, do you? You must think I’m mad!” But she was dead serious, and this made me have second thoughts.

I always wanted a small side project to try and achieve, even though I thought it impossible, it could be fun and one hell of a laugh trying to see what we could get away with. But the problem with ambitious ideas like this is they take lots, and lots, of money. I, on the other hand, was a poor youth on his second gap year, and soon to be a university student who would be struggling to pay for bread, let alone being able to start up his own company with staff, equipment and other huge costs involved. I needed help if I was going to even get this idea out of the concept stage and into development.

Like most people do when they need help, I turned to my friends for advice. The scariest thing was that they took me seriously too – an entirely new concept for me. Not only were they happy to give a few pointers, but some even wanted to help and to get involved as well. So, straight away I was one step further than I had originally thought possible. Having them on board, I began in my free time to work on a scheme and with my battle plans sketched out and my friends behind me, I set out to take on the world.

You can never really tell how hard anything is going to be until you actually get around to doing it. Actually putting your ideas into practice takes up a lot of time, especially if your plans involve world domination and all that jazz. For somebody who was a lazy, useless, youth like myself, this was a whole new idea. If I was to actually get past step one I needed more help, more even than my friends could provide, which meant putting out the word to everyone else. Doing that in itself was a full-time job, but before I could ask them to help I had to work out what it was that we actually wanted to do. Friends can put up with half ideas and incomplete plans, but strangers won’t. They want to know what you get out of it, what they get out of it and what the whole point of doing it in the first place is. So away I scuttled, back to the drawing board to hone my ideas and get them down on paper. I came away from the whole ordeal exhausted but satisfied. Trying to work out what to say was almost impossible, as who would believe, “Yeah, build a community and… err… make shit and party!” So, weeks later I came up with a rather more in-depth proposition. You can find it on the welcome screen of our website, as it has now been revised. It was my first attempt at really getting people to understand what we wanted to do.

The idea had begun to take on a more structured form. The platforms within this community were now given the responsibility of being springboards for talent. I came to believe that the best way to learn anything is with practice. Practical, applicable experience is something highly sought after and puts you above the rest when it comes to any sort of job application. So these launch pads for talent would now have something to offer. The project would be made up of a music label, a magazine, a variety of events, an online radio station, film production, a photo agency, practical workshops and exhibition spaces. Each team would have their own aims, goals and methods of working within the Virus community as a whole. Making sure that the platforms could compete in a consumer market and make reasonable revenue – which would be directly redistributed internally to support the Project – would be a task of epic proportions. Each one would need its own leader to direct and look after it, and so the task of finding experienced, willing volunteers began.

When the website for the Virus Project went live late last year we were flooded with requests to join. We were really quite taken aback at the response. From these requests we were able to filter the most experienced people and allocate them positions within each area to help run the teams efficiently. Most humbly declined the offer. The responsibility of running any department was a massive undertaking, let alone doing it whilst having a full time job to contend with, but some shared my vision and were only to pleased to accept (the poor, poor bastards…Ed).

Those that did accept have been working hard with me ever since, and for a large part of the last year we have been putting in the infrastructure to support the project and the volunteers who join. What had started as a side hobby was, by now, a full time job for me. The Virus Project became something I both loved and hated at times. It has pushed me to breaking point, but through huge amounts of time and dedication put in by everyone involved we are getting close to what can only be loosely described as ‘the beginning’.

Now that things have started, core questions have been asked about the Project’s future. Money is possibly one of the biggest issues and things which we must contemplate. I never wanted to make huge amounts of money out of this and I don’t think that it could really work as a profit-making business, so I took an early decision that profits would be invested back into the Project community. Early on, we understood that our ideas and plans would also affect the industry around us – especially other events – so we tried our best to work out a structure that would not only benefit others in the industry, but through pushing for success have a positive outcome for ourselves. We realised that, even though we wished to make our own community, we are intrinsically tied to the one we are already a part of and that only by improving the wider society do we have any hope of succeeding in our ultimate goal. And this is simply to have the greatest possible positive input into the world in which we all live. It is through many diverse mediums that we strive to succeed in this goal.

Website:
www.virusproject.netSo what is the Virus Project? Well it is the creative output of our combined effort to learn, teach, create and share, for the benefit of the people around us and ourselves. The Virus Project is just the structure and platform we use to do this. It is the ever-changing, ever-evolving tapestry we build with the hope it may just make the world a little bit better for everyone. And for me personally, the Virus Project has become a way to make a dream a reality.

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