When: June 2008
Where: Cambridge, MA
Institution: Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center

 

At the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center, Cultural Agents installed a stationary show exhibiting works by Paper Picker Press participants. The exhibit involved the audience, asking passersby to read the stories and contribute their own messages. In this space, the Paper Picker Press team held sixteen hours of classes for Boston area summer program participants and their staff. Sessions were broken into two-hour sessions and included forty participants.

 

In keeping with the Cultural Agents Initiative’s mission to activate art as a social resource, the exhibition highlighted photography as a creative agent of change, as a creative practice that can make measurable contributions to the education and development of communities worldwide. The hope was that the exhibition would inspire the replication of such participatory photography projects in the greater Boston area and provide spaces for the Boston community to reflect on the links between the arts and human rights.

Literacy

  • Indicator of development in all fields (economic, political, emotional, etc.).
  • Stimulates imagination in order to comprehend texts.
  • Inspires personal expression.
  • Engages a range of experiences at a safe distance.

Innovation

  • Starts with creativity, a universal human drive.
  • Depends on facts and critical reflection.
  • Requires reinterpretation of given material.
  • Develops best with a diversity of proposals.

Civics

  • Derives from diversity as a source of pleasure.
  • Thrives on admiration of everyone for everyone.
  • Appreciates facts and critical reflections.
  • Recombines materials and experiences.