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Only good things happen when two
dozen teens converge on our offices
Twenty-five teenagers filled the Splash Creative offices one recent Saturday morning and it was just fine with us.
The youth were members of MASHA - Memphis Against Sexual Harassment and Assault - a group of earnest young people under the auspices of Bridges, Inc. who formed the organization with the goal to "take down the culture of victim blaming and sexual harassment and assault in our community."
T
he teens held a five-hour planning retreat and we at Splash, plus the Memphis Area Women's Council (MAWC), which shares our office space, hosted.
MASHA is partnering in the community with Memphis Says NO MORE, Le Bonheur Children's Hospital's Teen Pregnancy Program, Culture of Consent at Rhodes College, Knowledge Empowers Youth (KEY), and MAWC.
The MASHA represent
atives met as a full body, then broke into groups, in chairs, on couches, and on the floor throughout our office. Snacks kept energy levels high. Anyone who wants a positive sign about the upcoming generation need only listen to those young voices.
Splash Creative periodically provides its open-design office space located in the Broad Avenue Arts District to nonprofits, art groups and others who need different and creative space for meetings, art exhibits, workshops or retreats.
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The mystery in naming things
How things get their names can be funny or a matter of happenstance or can occur in quite a round-about fashion. In advertising communications, creating names can flop or soar. Often, a name seems all-too-obvious years later.
Coca-Cola (for coca leaves and kola nuts) has roots in the mid-1800s. Consumers of the soft drink soon adopted the nickname "Coke." Yet it wasn't until 1941 that the company finally joined in and first used the short name as an official trademark. Later came New Coke and Diet Coke.
That's naming a product by giving in.
The marketing failure of the Ford Motor Company vehicle known as the Edsel is well known. It didn't live up to its tease as a car of the future, and the name drew a lot of jokes.
The choice of Edsel - after the son of Henry Ford - came about almost by accident in a Ford board meeting, after more than 6,000 other names had been considered, including leading contenders Citation and Ranger. For various reasons, the car lasted only three years.
Naming a product by throwing up ones' hands.
Then there's the story of how the tank got that name.
The armored military vehicle on rolling tracks, first produced by the Brits and the French, is 100 years old this year.
In the early days they were called "landships" in English, and their first use in battle during World War I proved unsuccessful in an attack on German lines. That would change of course.
But how did landship become tank for most people?
The Brits had a war committee called the Landships Committee, but soon decided to change its name for secrecy purposes. To be discreet they named it the Water Carrier Committee. As committees and departments in British government tend to be referred to by their initials, it became the W.C.
That, however, made ordinary people think of "water closet" and to chuckle at the government's expense. Not wanting to be laughed at but wanting to remain obscure, an official decided to change the name from the Water Carrier Committee to the Tank Committee.
Further confusing things for a while, some early landships were equipped with heavy grapnels for removing barbed wire from war zones. Those vehicles were named Wire Cutters, and had the letters WC painted on their sides.
Nevertheless, "tank" soon caught on, and the word now is ubiquitous among military organizations throughout the world and we can't really imagine a better name for the mighty machine of munitions.
We might call that naming by acclamation.
A few years ago, to jump-start the renaissance of the Broad Avenue historic district with a two-day event, we landed on the name
A New Face for an Old Broad. It soared, we're happy to say.
At Splash Creative, we recognize that we are known to most people as just the onomatopoeia "Splash." Sounds fine to us.
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A click, a few ticks,
& you will help
in vital DV research
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Researchers need your help. And you can do it right now, where you sit.
Over time, a survey can show even minor changes in knowledge, awareness, attitudes and behavior concerning important societal issues. The more people take the time to do a survey, the more revealing are the results.
Please take the time to respond to this SurveyMonkey questionnaire for a group of advocates and researchers in Memphis and Shelby County. It will only take about five minutes, but the effect can last a long time indeed.
DV Survey
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We at Splash Creative support and help sponsor the annual Walk A Mile In Her Shoes event each year. The sixth annual walk will be held downtown on October 27, during national Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
The event has become a "men's march to stop rape, sexual assault and gender violence." Men, women and children walk a one-mile route (many men don women's high-heeled shoes each year for the trek). The walk this year begins at W.C. Handy Park on Beale Street.
Registration at the park is $10 ($5 for students with an ID) and participants get a t-shirt and wristband this year.
Splash proudly joins these sponsors for this year's march: Memphis Area Women's Council, Memphis Says NO MORE coalition, and HEALS.
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Senior Arts Series
a success in 1st year
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Creative Aging is a nonprofit agency that for more than a decade has taken the arts and entertainment to senor citizens where they live (in collective residential settings) in the Mid-South. It is the only organization doing that service.
Since it was founded in 2005, Creative Aging has presented more than 5,500 performances i
n more than 60 different communities, touched the lives of 30,000-plus seniors, and along the way paid nearly $1 million in performance feels to local artists.
This year, the organization inaugurated a new series of shows called the Senior Arts Series. The idea was to reach seniors who still live independently, could afford a modest ticket price and obtain transportation during daylight hours to see a performance. Four separate shows - featuring musicians, story-tellers, dancers, actors - were lined up at TheatreMemphis on Wednesday afternoons.
On September 14 the audience was inspired by the Den of Strings trio (Heather Trussell on violin, Joe Restivo on guitar and Sam Shoup, upright bass), and dancers from New Ballet Ensemble.
The final show of the season will be held on Nov. 2. Tickets are only $5.
Take a senior citizen you know on an outing.
And, if you want to attend a great gala fundraising event to make it all possible for seniors in the series, check out Gala at the Gallery.
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