The Cineroleum is a project by Assemble architecture studio that transformed an abandoned gas station in the UK into a cinema. The project was different than other redevelopments because it was self-initiated and cost-effective; Assemble completed the project using over 100 community volunteers and locally sourced materials. In fact, almost none of the original station…

The City of Northfield is transforming its sidewalks into poetry — literally. The Sidewalk Poetry Project, launched in 2011, has been imprinting poems into residential sidewalks ever since. Each year, Northfield residents are invited to enter their poetry into a competition. A jury then selects their favorites to be added to the streets. This project…

Since Americans continue to live in a society underpinned by the lingering notion of the American Dream, where people work hard for themselves to achieve success, community gardens uproot this common ideology by instead underlining the importance of the collective–of sharing not only food and labor, but also community values, knowledge, and camaraderie. While community gardens are not…

On Mother’s Day in 1987, 430 Minnesotan women all over the age of 60 gathered in Minneapolis under the direction of artist Suzanne Lacy in order to combat media conceptions of older women by asserting their importance and underutilized ability as an older demographic. Lacy’s two-year project investigating the experiences and perceptions of older women…

Artist Patrick Dougherty creates sinuous stick structures all over the world, drawing inspiration and whimsy from his childhood spent playing in the woodlands of North Carolina. While these structures are meant to cultivate a playful rapport with the viewer, they also create necessary tension between the permanence of a structure and its submission to nature….

Artist JR is traveling around the  world in order to document the resilience of women who live in areas rife with conflict and violence. For his project, titled “Women are Heroes,” he conducts interviews with women from all over the world in order to document to their stories, then creates photographic portraits of them. His…

Racial prejudice is what kept Jesse Jackson from being a viable presidential candidate in 1984 and 1988. This issue was swept under the carpet at the time, but David Hammon’s aggressive brings the issues into pure daylight by plastering a whitewashed version of Jackson on a canvas. “How ya like me now?” a famous rap slogan…

By reenacting an important moment of historical revolution, the collective Chto Delat? (What is to Be Done?) demonstrates how the socio-political concerns that incited protest in the past continue to erode participatory democracy today. Exactly one hundred years after the first Russian Revolution, the collective organized a restaging of the uprising at Narva Gate in…

Laura Melnick’s Seed Art successfully and sneakily addresses injustices of American politics that many have become desensitized too. It is seeds and children’s books that call out polarized political issues at the Minnesota State Fair.  The placement of her work is intrinsically democratic because of the wide range of people that come in contact with…

You can see a man throwing a flower rather than a grenade. There are tallies painted on a wall representing Zehra Dogans 2 year and 22 month sentencing. The face of Steve Jobs is painted on a wall in Calais, France where refugees sleep in tents outside. These images and many more are by Banksy,…