Our Press Kit is available here.
One Large has received extensive local and international media coverage:
THE GUARDIAN
One Large art project gives black-owned businesses a boost—$10 at a time
THE GUARDIAN
One Large art project gives black-owned businesses a boost—$10 at a time
Wherever it goes, Katz and Croot hope that One Large becomes an opportunity to do more than speak about race and income inequality. Ultimately, they expect it to also inspire people to pay more attention to their purchasing power and the impact it has. “It’s our hope,” Katz says, “that One Large inspires people to keep interrupting the flow of money out of black communities and to discover businesses in their own neighborhoods that may have been invisible to them."
The strength of the piece is in the conversations, rumination and reflection that results from participation. The power of the piece is NOT in its potential to repair inequity with respect to the black economy. It is a modest piece about one person making one purchase. The project creates 100 engagements with communities; it allows 100 real-time experiences for 100 people.
The project’s methods were an interesting response to the pressing questions asked at the activist artists' conference. By its nature, One Large asserted that participants can be trusted to be equal partners and carry out a project unsupervised by the creators. Though there is a documentation component, One Large highlights that the real work artists must do is as neighbors and citizens, interacting thoughtfully with their community as people in all fields must.
PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE
Artists' purchasing initiative shows difficulty of finding companies with black ownership
Ms. Croot and Ms. Katz said putting a few extra dollars into the system made the experiment a success, but the true accomplishment was in spotlighting just how few and far between black businesses were in some areas. “One of the major outcomes was how difficult [the experiment] was,” said Ms. Croot. “People had a really difficult time finding black-owned businesses and they would email us saying, ’Where do we go? How do we find them?’”
One Large interrupts spending habits, creates new relationships in communities [and can] create discomfort. And the emotionally complex stories of the participants stand as evidence of both the difficulty of talking about race and money and of the role business ownership might play in reshaping cities including Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Ferguson.
"[One Large] creates a very, very small interruption in a very powerful flow of money that otherwise only goes one way — out of black communities.
