And while you’re at it check out the write up from Sprout Fund the Schmutz Co. Founders Dave English and Don Orkoskey got for speaking at Making Sparks – a symposium dedicated to the Spark Grant (link at bottom of post).

The Spark Grant is a funding stream that is dedicated to projects that focus on Early Childhood Technology and Media. It’s focused on projects that target kids 0-8 and introduce them to technology and media. The Schmutz Company received a Micro-Spark in 2010 and used the funding to establish a new direction for the company and helping us to achieve profitability. The Schmutz Company actually was able to more than double the grant award in the first 6 months through establishing new partnerships with groups including the Warhol Museum, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, RBI Pittsburgh, JCC Pittsburgh, The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, and many more.

We love the work that Sprout Fund does and love being involved in it! We had a great time presenting and moderating ideation sessions at Making Sparks.

If you’re not familiar with The Sprout Fund please check them out here.

Check out their write up about Making Sparks (and more specifically about the Schmutz Company) here: http://www.sproutfund.org/spark/making-sparks-2011/speakers/schmutz/

This year’s event:
I He(ART) Valentine’s Day
$50, 7pm – 10pm*
Schmutzco Lodge

http://schmutzco.com/

5405 Broad Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15206

Find Tickets and Details at: https://www.grapethoughts.com/

Come to First Night Pittsburgh December 31st to see some of the work we did over the past year on display in the front window of 907 Penn Avenue and work with us on The Schmutz Company’s final animation of 2010! Find out more about First Night Pittsburgh 2011 here:
http://www.firstnightpgh.org/?utm_source=trust-marketing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=first-night-2011

Our New Year’s resolution is to surprise our friends and fans with great big awesome super new types of fun in 2011 and we want you to be involved!  Follow The Schmutz Company and look for our upcoming appearances at: schmutzco.com

Happy New Years!

You may (or may not) have noticed the new paypal donation button on SchmutzCo.com either way – you should probably click on it.

Why should you donate?

First, in the name of honesty, we are not a non-profit so unfortunately you can’t write off the donation on your taxes. The good news though is that we promise we won’t do things like use the money to lobby Congress for higher animation & puppet subsidies. We can promise you we will use the money to support great programing that helps to teach kids the following:

• differential learning
• creative thinking
• story-telling
• collaboration
• project management
• and so much more

When you donate to the Schmutz Company you help ensure that we can continue to teach these skills to kids at venues such as the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, and other venues throughout Western PA, and beyond for just the cost of admission.

Our costs are fairly high – we go through a great deal of paper, tape, markers, and other supplies. We also spend a great deal of time discussing how to improve the process, meeting with partner organizations, and prepping materials. We don’t collect artist fees or even administrative fees for this time – we do this out of our devotion to seeing the projects we provide succeed and meet or exceed their goals.

Your support, no matter the size of your contribution, will go into covering the cost of supplies. Can we count on you to help us?

Video 1: Tina Fay and Justin Timberlake caught at Carl’s Jr.

Video 2: Lindsay Lohan runs down celebs on the beach – watch out Hillary Duff!!!

Video 3: You’ve Won the Oscar for Best Scandal in an Animation!

Video 4: The King of Pop runs down a pedestrian

Video 5: Justin Bieber meets his gruesome end at a Carl’s Jr.

Video 6: Mel Gibson’s Red Carpet Monkey Attack.

Video 7: EXCLUSIVE: The rabid disembodied head of Bea Arthur attacks Carl’s Jr. patron

Video 8: New Footage of Ryan Seacrest’s sexy motorcycle ride with Tom Cruise down the Vegas Strip

Video 9: The Hills Beach Wedding video exclusive

Video 10: See more exclusive footage of the Hills Beach Wedding

Video 11: Bieber Burger terrorize Las Vegas

Video 12: J.Lo spotted helping Banana Boy field a call from Colin Farrell.

Work with The Schmutz Company in the Warhol Weekend Factory to create, animate, and star in your very own celebrity scandal.

Embrace the glamor, the star power, the heady excess as you stop-motion animate your tabloid fiasco. Join us Saturday November 13th from Noon to Four at the Warhol Weekend Factory.

You can RSVP via Facebook here (but it’s not necessary). This event is free with your admission to the Warhol. To participate you only need to come to the Weekend Factory which is located one floor down from the main entrance. While you are there you can check out the Marilyn Monroe: Life as a Legend exhibit.

We’ll be at the Children’s Museum doing more papermation thanks to a grant we got from the amazing folks at the Sprout Fund through their Spark program. We’ll have more on that soon – in fact we’ll have a whole page with info about that soon but in the mean time we’re also updating the look of the website.

Enjoy!

Go here: http://www.locallytoned.org/tone/217

Get the tone, load it on your phone, and take your meds.

You can read about the tone that was done as part of artist T. Foley’s project: Locally Toned

About the Ringtone

Our ringtone is a song by Nicky the Ninny about how he’s not going to take his meds. If you saw A Circus In My Drawers which we performed several times last year then you’ll remember Nicky as the lead puppet who we had to take to the circus. We’ll Nicky is back and we made him to a ringtone. You can *download it from the site for free or have it sent to your phone.

Teresa Foley did an amazing job recording the song and we love the Locally Toned project. To find out more about our tone check out this great blog post that she wrote which also includes some great photos of the Ninny: http://locallytoned.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/ninnytone/

If you’re interested in renting it visit the rental page here or visit the Facebook group to get more information.

We have certain goals in mind for the kinds of programing that we are looking for. We’ve hosted a number of parties at the Lodge and they’ve been fun but have not exactly been what we’ve been looking to host there. We also hosted the Brew House’s Distillery 4 show titled: Unstill’d which helped to show us a direction that we could move in. We’d love to host more art openings, instillations or otherwise. We’ve got a great amount of space and are only a block off of Penn Ave.

We’re  also interested in classes, dance classes, yoga, instructional classes, and the like. If you need a space to host your class please let us know. We have space for small classes on the first floor and larger classes on our second floor.

We are planning to add a larger more powerful projector and screen so that we can screen movies at the Lodge. If you’re a film maker looking to show a digital version of your work to a small audience (up to 45 people) let us know.

Please visit the rental page for more info.