“And then, all of a sudden… an art project [gets] all key stakeholders…participating.” -Heidi Quante

HQ: My name is Heidi Quante and I primarily work in the realm of creative communication. For the last year-and-a-half, I worked with 350.org, the largest international grassroots climate change organization, to use creative communication to educate the public about the impacts and solutions to climate change and ideally to spark them into action.

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“Before [The Alley Project] there were many murders in a in a three-, four-month period…And what’s incredible about this particular project is that residents can see [crime] actually move away. Now it actually feels peaceful. That’s what’s amazing. This place, you can stand here and it feels … peaceful, and it’s because of TAP.”

Dan Pitera, advisor to the TAP Gallery, Associate Professor of Architecture, Director of Detroit Collaborative Design Center

Check back soon to see an interview with founder Erik Howard and professor Dan Pitera as they give a walking tour of TAP.

Wheatpasting by Joe Caslin as part of a project entitled “Our Nation’s Sons.”

“The aim of the project ‘Our Nation’s Sons’ is to use portraits drawings as a tool to provoke and question current representations of young men in today’s society. The media openly ridicules and demonises this generational group. By using words such as NED and CHAV we continually push young people out of society and slowly beat them into apathy. I want to change this.

I enlisted a group of young lads from the local area to help with this street art project. I named the lads the Tyros, a latin word meaning learner or apprentice, and we set about making our mark on the city streets of Edinburgh.” -Joe Caslin

Follow @joecaslin

“You might not be an expert in political science…and you may not be a traditional and trained artist, but everyone has access to the same tools…where art comes form, which is imagining things…When it comes to imaging great ideas, that is…accessible to everyone.” -Jose Serrano-McClain, founder of Trust Art, community organizer at Queens Museum of Art

  • Support Trust Art and buy tickets to their May 4th Triennial Event
  • If you want to participate in the next round of Trust Art projects make sure to sign up on their homepage
  • Follow @TrustArt on twitter

Images courtesy of Trust Art and Queens Museum of Art.

“This fence was installed in case of riots provoked by mass falsifications during upcoming elections. Sorry for the temporary inconvenience.”

Meet Partizaning, a website and public project seeking to create a new social art movement. On March 4th, they launched their English website (eng.partizaning.org) in Debalie, Amsterdam, during Welcome Back, Putin! – a festival showcasing Russia’s leading art activists.

Their projects have included:

  • Car Impounding: an event organized to kick start an automobile intervention in collaboration with Flacon Design Factory on February 27th. The idea was to deal with the issue of growing car ownership and the irresponsible attitudes of drivers towards pedestrians, the environment and their city. Volunteer participants received sticky labels that resemble official traffic and parking violation tags - and invited members of the community to stick them on badly parked cars - aka blocking crosswalks, trolly and bus paths. The goal was to create a sense of shame among drivers to raise awareness.
  • Wiki Parliament: a response to the crisis in Russia and ideas of political representation. It emerged following the November 2011 elections and the many protests and meetings held thereafter. It lets all enthusiasts and/or professionals connect and work on the basic text, which should serve the interests of the overwhelming majority of users and citizens. People can supplement the main proposals, or create separate articles based on you areas of expertise, interest or knowledge – especially related to governance and lawmaking.
  • The Residence: a container which has been installed at 4 different locations across the city, and currently sits at the Flacon Design Factory. It is an artist’s studio, and a repository for materials necessary to create works in the city: paint, tools, a bicycle trailer, a mattress, a small supply of food, boards, plywood, cardboard, paper, buckets, and boxes. It was part of the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art.
  • Want to get involved? Join them at the event ‘Delai Sam’ from 14-21 April 2012. OR you can join the Car Impounding intervention through their group on facebook or by picking up labels and instructions at Cafe Moloko at Flacon. They also invite street artists to work in the shipping container/mobile street art studio - the Residence, currently located at Flacon. 
  • Follow @Partizaning on twitter, and on vimeo, and friend them on facebook, and visit their English or Russian site! 
  • Email them at partizaning.org[at]gmail.com for more information or to collaborate on projects.

Below is an interview with the members:
Make / Anton Polsky: activist, art-historian, designer.
Igor Ponosov: street artist, curator of The Wall project (Winzavod).
Sonya Polskaya: art-historian.
Shriya Malhotra: urban researcher, english editor.

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“It’s a different way of understanding art. It’s not something you’re contemplating in an exhibition space, this is something that people can come and experience.“-Camilo Godoy, intern at Immigrant Movement International

All images courtesy of Immigrant Movement International