Public Xmas Cards in Windows: Experiments in Place Making

Richard Ing, 2012: Experiments in Place Making. London: RSA.
http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/581451/Experiments-in-place-making-case-studies.pdf

"Arts & Social Change is a project that belongs to the Citizen Power Peterborough programme. Citizen Power Peterborough (CPP) is a two-year programme of action supported by Peterborough City Council and RSA. The aim of CPP is to build connections between people and communities, get people more involved in public life and encourage active citizenship."

"Arts and Social Change looks at the role of arts and imagination in creating new connections between people and where they live in order to strengthen participation in community life in Peterborough.
This programme involves a wide range of projects that place artists at the centre of re-imagining the possibilities of what a place could be and how to create this together."

"The artist has to create a project design that is sensitive to local needs and that offers more than a targeted workshop approach. Ideally, their intervention should act as a catalyst for social and even political engagement. Although each experiment is small scale, it should serve to show how a more lasting change might happen."

EXPERIMENT 1: PUBLIC CHRISTMAS CARD

"On the morning of 15th December 2010, the residents of Crawthorne Street and Monument Street in Peterborough awoke to find a handwritten Christmas card on the doormat. Opening it, they found seasonal greetings from two local artists, a question and a set of five colour-coded cards. The question was: What gift would you most like to give this Christmas? Each of the cards bore a single word in capitals: PEACE, HOPE, GOODWILL, LOVE and COMMUNITY. On the reverse were some instructions: Place this card in your downstairs front window, with the COLOURED side facing out, and leave it there for one week.By Christmas Eve, 31 out of the 81 houses in these two streets had displayed one or more of the cards. Passers-by might not immediately spot what the cards said, as the chosen word was printed unobtrusively, in a lighter tone of the background colour, but the neighbours here would know"