Combining street art and urban planning, Candy Chang created fill-in-the-blank stickers that say “I wish this was ____.” With support from the Ethnographic Terminalia exhibit, she placed boxes of free stickers in businesses around the city and posted grids of blank stickers and a permanent marker on vacant storefronts to invite passersby to write their thoughts. The stickers are vinyl and they can be easily removed without damaging property. Responses ranged from the functional to the poetic: I wish this was… a butcher shop, a community garden, a bike rack, an affordable farmer’s market, a Chinese restaurant, a place to sit and talk, Brad Pitt’s house, real soul food, a dancing school, full of nymphomaniacs with PhDs, Heaven. It’s a fun, low-barrier tool to provide civic input onsite, and the responses reflect the hopes, dreams, and colorful imaginations of different neighborhoods.
Via Sylvia Fredriksson