Uncovering Durham, NC, residents’ most passionate dreams—articulated in one word per person—for their city’s future, community art project STITCH is in its final stretch of a Kickstarter campaign, which is set to end on
Sunday..
“Love,” “blessed,” and “yeasty,” are a few of the 276 words that emerged as more than 500 people added their own and voted on words garnered by a simple question, “In one word, tell us what you’d like to see Durham become.” From the mayor to young schoolgoers, words gathered by hand by asking directly or through an online form came together. You can see the word cloud at http://www.orangutanswing.com/stitch.
STITCH is the name of the project underway to collect the community’s voice for what it would like to become, and make that into something tangible. That’s where the April 8 launch for Kickstarter comes in. It’s a crowdsourcing platform to gather microfunds through which the organizers—Akira Morita and his wife Dipika Kohli, who are co-owners of their own creative studio, seek to generate conversations around how art is perceived in the community, gather support for the local artists, and change the way things are done normally. STITCH is a way to bring the creative process of discovery and play into a public forum.
Can the team gather enough interest from local citizens to art direct original new artworks by some 20 local artists that will be inspired by STITCH’s Top 50 words? That’s the question the Kickstarter will seek to solve.
