Our friend Matt the Electrician has organized this amazing full day music festival featuring a great array of singer/songwriter folks from Austin and from afar. It will be held at United States Art Authority near Spider House which has plenty of space inside and out on their fantastic patio.

This is a family friendly event and there will be art activities for the kids provided by none other than Future Craft Collective! Meet us there if you can.

Freedy Johnston-10:15pm
Sean Hayes-8:45pm
Libby Kirkpatrick-7:15pm
Danny Malone-6pm
Lee Barber-4:55pm
Ethan Azarian-3:50pm
Matt the Electrician-3pm

Saturday April 11th, 2009
2pm-Midnight

Art Show featuring Lee Barber and Ethan Azarian

Tickets-$20adv./$23 day of the show
Advance tickets available at Waterloo Records and Spider House

Sponsored by www.relaytunes.com and www.forgealliance.org

Another collaborative endeavor of mine is called Future Craft Collective. It’s about reducing, reusing, recrafting and about teaching kids to scrape, scrounge, dig, build and create.

We’ve been holding classes for over a year now in the South Austin studio known as Ramonster World Headquarters. Each month we host about 20 kids ages 8-12 who come here to make stuff together and learn the great life skill of sewing.

In that time we’ve learned a lot about crafting with kids – when to push, when to hold back, when to talk and when to sit quietly in the background, when to make them sit a little longer and when to let them run rampant in the backyard. Perhaps above all else, and perhaps hardest learned, we’ve learned how to truly enjoy the time we spend making stuff together.

With these lessons learned we have created a new format for family crafting called 3-day Projects. They are family-friendly, bite-sized crafty sessions broken down into small digestable chunks. They are laid out with the realities of family life in mind – all the errands and games and parties that accompany such a family life. They are laid out with the hopes that families can find true connection in these projects and can truly enjoy that connection through making stuff together.

These are slow and simple family projects and if you’ve got a few hours to spare over the course of a few days, we’d love for you to check them out.