Are you an artist or designer that wants to spread your love of art to the streets? Now you can do just that and get paid for it with Kineticity! They only one rule - Please Touch The Art. Their interactive place-making project is open for submissions here.
Kineticity was born out of a 2016 Dallas Festival of Ideas pitch contest to bring citizen ideas to action by empowering local professionals and students to take part in shaping their environment. Social Venture Partners (SVP) Dallas facilitated the “Ideas to Action” phase of the contest, providing coaching, feedback, and support to the participants. This culminated in five finalist groups presenting their ideas to a panel of judges for an opportunity to pitch for $25,000 of seed funding at SVP’s annual bigBANG conference, supported by the Sapphire Foundation. The Kineticity Leadership Team Chelsea Miller and Michael Rosson won the final bigBANG pitch; with their ‘Physical City’ action plan, then Kineticity emerged as the winning project title.
In developing their pitch concept, the team posed an initial question: Why are cities made for cars instead of people? Original ideators Michael Cheever, Lizzie MacWillie, Rita Meno, Chelsea Miller and Michael Rosson had spent six months honing a creative solution to help locals physically connect with their city to develop a deeper connection with local communities.
Kineticity is a series of interactive, pedestrian-scale, art installations that will be placed between neighborhoods to entice visual interest and curiosity that can only best be appreciated through human interaction. The objective is to help promote and encourage walking and cycling as preferred mobility options, thus improving the experiential quality and appreciation of public space.
The interactive focus of each project creates ways for individuals to meet each other, grow their perspectives, and turn strangers into neighbors.
The project is now live with its call for submissions, in two categories: professionals and students. Those submitting to the professional category may be artists, experiential designers, architects, engineers, or anyone who has the desire to make Dallas a more playful city. College students of any major may apply and creating a team for project completion is permissible. Each category winner receives a prize of $1,500, along with a $7,000 budget to bring their idea to life.
Idea submissions are due May 30th. The six top winners and project locations will be announced within a week following the due date, the decision will be made by a board of six members who have a range of creative and community development experience. All submissions will be anonomized for the first round of judging. The finalists will be required to present their idea in June for a final round of judging. All project guidelines can be found at www.kineticity.org/build. Questions can be asked at Kineticity.Dallas@gmail.com.
As part of the project rollout Installations, interactive way finding trails, and maps showcasing Dallas’s businesses and art that encourage play will be available in Fall/Winter 2017 for the public to begin interacting with Kineticity across Dallas.