Things we worried about:
Things we discovered:
We trusted participants to carry out their agreement. They trusted that there was no subterfuge on our part. Those who pushed back believed we were listening. Participants assumed good intentions. This fact seems stunning in its unlikeliness, given the mistrust on all sides of our current national conversation about race. It makes us feel hopeful, excited.
- being white artists making work about the black economy
- whether anyone would participate
- how the project might be misinterpreted
Things we discovered:
- each participant became a site of performance/art/engagement, and that is inspiring
- each business became a site of performance/art/engagement, and that is complicated
- while we are not the authors of the stories on the site, we feel a great deal of responsibility for the voices here. How do we resolve our role and theirs? As much as we learned about ourselves making this work, the work still isn’t about us
We trusted participants to carry out their agreement. They trusted that there was no subterfuge on our part. Those who pushed back believed we were listening. Participants assumed good intentions. This fact seems stunning in its unlikeliness, given the mistrust on all sides of our current national conversation about race. It makes us feel hopeful, excited.