Each year Vans hosts Custom Culture, a design competition for high school students across the country with the goal of raising awareness for diminishing arts education budgets across the country. For the contest, students are given four pairs of blank Vans and are challenged to create designs, with the winning submission receiving a $50,000 grant for their school's art program. This year, Juxtapoz headed down to Los Angeles for the event, to see the shoes for ourselves and chat with Kevin Bailey, President of VF Action Sports Coalition and Vans, about artist collaborations, promoting arts education and how important it is to encourage creativity and self-expression.
Alex Nicholson: How many years has Vans been holding the Custom Culture contest?
Kevin Bailey: This is the seventh year. Amost 3,000 schools participated this year, from all fifty states! We started with just 300 kids the first year, maybe 25 schools.
Kids were always drawing on their backpacks and Vans with Sharpies and Wite-Out when I was in school, and someone was always really going for it on a pair of white slip-ons. Is that where this idea came from?
When you think about it, checkerboard Vans started with this. It started with kids drawing checkerboards on the side walls of their shoes. I drew on the side of my canvas shoes when I was a kid, I didn't know I was an artist. Paul Van Doren used to let you bring your own fabrics in, no matter what they were, and he'd make shoes out of them. Customs just fits so well with who we are, to let this become a platform for kids to find a way to express themselves. We're able to say, "Okay kids, here's a couple pairs, show us what you got!" And we can show them that there are people that aspire to do what they do and that their work is worthy of national recognition.
At the same time, we can say, "Hey world, we don't give enough money to arts education and we keep cutting funding in America." In our eyes this is a way to raise awareness for that. Seven years in and we're still pushing it, we've given over $600,000 dollars back to the arts. And then you count in how brands like Journeys has helped, what truth® does, and what Americans for the Arts has done to get this going. And we take at least one of shoe from the winning school, create it and sell it. The funds from that go right back into Americans for the Arts to keep the ball rolling. It's just a real feel-good moment and now we're watching it expand. We have a surf shop in Virginia Beach that does their own contest and Brazil has been doing their own contest for three years!
Funding for arts education has felt the brunt of cuts for a while now, from the California budget crisis to the recession. It has gotten to the point that many schools have no art classes at all.
It's been totally brutalized.
How important are artist collaborations to the brand?
We've been lucky enough to collaborate with so many over the years. It just is amazing to think of these artists that have viewed us as a canvas for them. From Robert Williams saying, "I want to do a project with you," to Murakami last year. What was his quote? "Vans are like water, it's just there." When we heard that... wow. He's just such a unique dude and he only wears white Vans. He's like the living legend of Pop art today and he's the happiest dude in the world. We're very lucky that those artists choose us without it becoming some huge contractual gig. They just say, "Hey, you guys are about creativity and self expression. We see you do that. We want to be a part of your brand."
Takashi Murakami x Vans
And that's the same Southern California spirit that birthed surfing, skateboarding, and other scenes that Vans grew out of.
True, and it wouldn't be the same if we tried to fabricate it. I think that we'd lose some of the right people, because people would make decisions for the wrong reasons, versus organically wanting to be a part of who we are. That, to me, is the beauty of the way we approach this.
Staying authentic.
Especially with fashion, I think people have started to say, "You know what, I want to get back to authenticity, something that matters, and that's a classic that I feel has roots."
As Vans expands globally, how do you approach exporting those aspects of Southern California culture?
That's a really good question and it's something we watch out for, because I think one of the things brands do is make that mistake. When I first came to Vans and we were struggling, one of the things we talked about was how we could sell California, glowing golden sunshine up your butt, and make the world all warm and fuzzy like Huntington Beach. And that, to me, was the entirely wrong thing to do. Youth culture is so digitally connected now and people know so quickly what's going on all over the world. The brand is about being a global platform for creative expression. Let people express who they are, and be inclusive and welcoming. Celebrate art in any form. I think the worst mistake we could ever make would be to try and export Southern California.
It's such an interesting time for art and fashion. Styles and ideas are able to have influence instantly, in all regions of the world.
It's just a big mashup, and it's accelerating faster than ever. And that's the beauty of action sports, they're inclusive. You celebrate what others are doing, you don't care whose shoes he's wearing or what T-shirt he's got on. We're inclusion. Art is inclusion. Vans and action sports are inclusion. There's no need to segment, separate, and differentiate.
And those are the same ideals you want to instill in the students participating in Custom Culture?
It's letting these kids recognize that what they feel and how they choose to get it out. That's what matters. They don't have to hold their feelings inside, they can just spray the world with them and not care. It's okay to just be who they are. Not everyone likes everything but that's alright. And you know, if they're inspired from something, maybe by a kid's work from another school, maybe they collaborate on something someday. That's part of what's fun about this project; they're forced to collaborate with each other. Our four pillars are so meaningful to us, and we still believe this can be bigger. It's a part of who we are, but the biggest part of this is getting the world to support arts education. I don't want to sit here and lob silly quotes, but we all know how important it is. In this world of innovation, art, creativity and design play such an intricate role. Those are the people that are going to change the world.
What would you ultimately like this event to inspire?
I just would somehow like for us to have more social awareness to the broader influence of creativity in markets. To force change in funding of education. I have teachers in my family and I watch how they struggle to be able to provide supplies just to get through basic education. Things like music and art get passed up. As a kid, they had that, those programs existed. I had those when I was little, and if we don't provide them with those platforms, I think we lose a certain part of being human. So I'd love to see more awareness on the broad scale for the underfunding of arts education, in America and in the world.
