Color ME Pittsburgh - Collaborative Art & Digital Installation

In honor of MLK JR and the unfinished work we all are called to do -

Working with longtime friend anu jain, in early 2014 we launched the Color ME Pittsburgh project. This was a city-wide collaborative installation we designed to facilitate discussions of race, social justice and inequality. We commissioned a local artist to design a large portable map of the city of Pittsburgh which showed the many distinct neighborhoods, many of them with strong ethnic roots and identities. These identities are what gives Pittsburgh its distinct cultural charm, but there is inequality across these neighborhoods. Furthermore, the unique topography of Pittsburgh - rivers and hillsides - contributes to isolation and segregation, sometimes making it harder to share common resources and concerns. We wanted to talk to people about the issues facing our region and we wanted to talk not only people already engaged in the conversation, but to EVERYONE because these issues affect everyone.So, to talk to Pittsburghers, you have to go where Pittsburghers gather. And we did!

We took our map and bins of small stickers to the Three Rivers Arts Festival, First Night, student festivals at the Carnegie Museum, CMU, and the Carnegie Library. We were guests at the Assemble maker space for a month. We attended the local awards ceremonies. At each venue, our mission was simple. Ask people to put a sticker on their neighborhood and tweet a selfie with the hashtag #colorMEpgh and a hashtag of their neighborhood's name. We had participation from Pittsburghers from every neighborhood - even the Mayor of Pittsburgh, Bill Peduto, (shown about pointing to his neighborhood). Along with the map, we had large sheets of paper with question prompts: What do you like about your neighborhood? What would you like to improve? Not surprisingly, in more affluent neighborhoods, people loved their playgrounds and park spaces; in more economically challenged neighborhoods, people bemoaned the lack of public transportation and local grocery stores. Patterns emerged. But what also emerged was the joy and pride EVERYONE took in their neighborhood. Home is home. People don't want to leave their neighborhoods, they want to improve them! And that is what we've been working to do!

My favorite aspect of this project is the amazing digital record we have of the beautiful, diverse faces of Pittsburgh. Look up the hashtag #colorMEpgh on Twitter and see what I mean.