I remember being told a little while ago that Brad Pitts brother Doug got a bit of a raw deal in comparison to the swoon-worthy heart break kid of cinematic fame.
First of all. Doug. Ahahah. Doug Pitt. That is such a sour way to be given unto the world – with a name that mocks itself. But that’s not the half of it. He’s looking like a cartoon character in comparison to his brother and he’s struggling to make a name for himself. Have you ever heard of him, for example?!
Have a look!
The Pitts!!
This is something that we’re still not sure about as a collective. Recently published findings show that although we’ve remained constant with our donations over the past 20-or-so years, we’re still only giving 0.4% of our “household spending”.
Donations to charity make up 0.4% of household spending, exactly the same proportion as in 1988, according to the research by the University of Bristol and City University London. [...] based on information from 205,935 UK households.
There remains the expected leap-frog between classes, as-well.
The poorest givers donate more of their income to charity than the richest, it was discovered. The richest 10% give 1.1% of their total spending to charity, while for the poorest 10% the figure was 3.6%.
What, though, does this tell us? Charity donations are made up, in part, by donations made without prompting from the charities themselves. There are those that might have run into a larger amount of cash than they’re used to dealing with, or those that have suffered a loss or fallen on terbulent times and come out fortunately that will be willing to give up some of their cold, hard cash to ease the suffering of others. In the most part, though, it is down to the voice of the individual charities to create enough of a buzz that we hear it through the white noise of profiteering organisations that would have us believe that our lives would improve for whatever reason should they recieve our money.
It seems wrong that the “responsibility” should rest on those that are already doing the most for the needy, but that is no more than an afterthought in the day-to-day life of the individual who will be dealing with his/her own difficulties. This is why there is such a struggle for those responsible for changing the way we think about charity and how we can donate.
Companies like oxfam rely on charity to keep on going, so it goes without saying that they’ll strive to keep up the advertising drive, despite announced cuts from the government.
It said: “For Government and policy-makers, levels of individual giving are one indicator of involvement in building the Big Society, and of increasing importance as a source of support for voluntary and community organisations at a time when statutory funding is being cut back.”
With the government taking on more reponsibility for the cause despite telling individual organisations that they’re out in the cold, we are expecting some interesting concepts to come to the fore.
A pretty effective use of grains of rice. This is an artwork entitled “Of All The People In All The World” and unfortunately you won’t be able to see it up close and personal as the show stopped touring late last year, but this is something that I’ve had stashed away in a link-drawer somewhere, and I really wanted to share it.
The premise is that every single grain of rice represents a person, and the images that are conjured are spellbinding. Have a look!
USA:
Moonwalkers:
We grabbed our pictures from here, but you can see the artists (Stan’s Cafe) homepage here, where there is a load more information and a couple of videos.
This is about as “simple but effective” as it gets.