Street vending is a great way to situate ideas in a public context. Mobile, flexible, and with minimum overhead, we can provide educational and promotional material about our local art and design scene, and also practice a business model that gives back to our community.
The S’mores cart activates public space and in turn promotes a healthy urban environment. It becomes a focal point of community dynamics, and acts as a catalyst to the already present elements of public space. The grant aspect of the project continues and distributes this activation by supporting others in a similar process. This work can inform, interact and contribute to the public environment of Kansas City.
Our goal is to provide s'mores and other food items, along with merchandise, possibly created by local artists and designers, on the cart for sale. We then intend to offer financial assistance in the form of micro-grants ($200-$400) to prospective artists and designers specifically working in public environments.
We would like to include local artists, designers, curators, architects, urban planners and people we meet on the street in our selection process. In addition, we hope to generate feed-back about the projects we want to support by promoting prospective beneficiaries on the cart.
Here's some questions relevant to this project, and the state of urban cultural production;
How is art related to processes of urban and social transformation?
What role and function have processes of participation?
How can social creativity be triggered in a particular environment?
In what way can creative processes have an effect on a local environment?
How can one become involved in the sphere of collective action?
Is the transformation of the city open to projects?
What relationship exists between cultural policies and territorial planning?
Can local contexts be part of the global cultural speech?
These questions are at the source of this project. We intend this encounter with our local economic and social landscape to be a site for crafting community interaction and identity. This includes exploration of the for-profit system as a mode of generosity, in addition to offering an opportunity to spark conversation on the street with our community about art.
