Artist Access Grant

My goal is for people to care enough about Superior National Forest to want to protect it. How can we measure winning hearts and minds' Most people experience my work through social media (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook), my web site (chuckumentary.com), collaborations with non-profits like Friends of the Boundary Waters, or via traditional media coverage. When I post each set of photos from April through November 2023, and with a live-streamed event in December 2023 summarizing the entire project, I will encourage folks to donate to Save the Boundary Waters and share their actions. Ultimately I'm asking people to go beyond just admiring the beauty of a photo, to taking action to protect the environment depicted in the photo. Social media offers some quantitative measures of impact - number of likes, retweets, and comments. What people say and comment, either publicly or to me privately, offers a qualitative measure of how my photographs have impacted them. Since I will be posting a set of 3 photographs every month for this project, my hope is that awareness and impact will build over time - especially at the project's conclusion. Likewise, getting coverage from TV, radio, and newspapers will be a measure of success because it shows that my work resonates with a wide audience. I'd love to be able to track specific donations to Friends of the Boundary Waters as a result of this project, but don't yet know if that will be possible. However I am asking people who are moved by this project to share what action they're taking - whether it's a donation, or writing a letter to the editor, or simply including a donation link if they share one of my photos. The goal is to encourage meaningful engagement.