Another market is in the books

For those that witnessed my previous market presence, this one looked very different. My previous booth was focused on activating anger as a way to pull people out of apathy. I still believe anger can be a helpful if misunderstood ally, but the wider environment has evolved (my previous booth was before the general election) and so I felt that this time activating more anger is not helpful or desired. For this market I went a new direction, and engaged the community through a collaborative art piece that was made over the course of the day by market attendees.

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Unlike certain loud and powerful men, I believe that our current moment requires more kindness, more empathy. Ultimately we must change the culture that normalizes and encourages extractive, inhumane relationships. And the first step to changing culture, is to change ourselves and our way of relating to each other. Thus, the community art piece titled “Kindness Makes Us Stronger” was born.

Kindness Makes Us Stronger

The concept is simple; at the start, the piece is just some strings hanging from a stick. Over the course of the day, I invited people to think of a kindness that was offered to them, or that they shared with someone else, and tie a knot between two of the strands while they thought of it.

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The best part of the art was hearing about the kindnesses people thought about over the course of the day. I was humbled by the breadth, variety, and generosity of people in the community. It gave me so much hope, knowing that people really are out here acting from a place of love and collaboration. My biggest hope is that it inspired those people to continue the thread of acting in kindness, despite or perhaps because of all the fear and uncertainty we face.

The final piece is nothing I could have come up with on my own, and honestly kind of chaotic. But, isn’t that just like life? And does it make it any less beautiful?

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All in all, it was very successful and I hope to bring this back for future markets. If you’d like to explore the idea of social fabric further, the Social Trust Index is a really cool resource.