chalkboard interviews

We wanted to do something that would both, a) Engage the community in defining the problem and sharing their experiences, and b) Produce something that could then be disseminated more broadly and used to educate/communicate with folks outside South LA

This idea was inspired by the work of Candy Chang, a public artist who does a lot of cool stuff in cities - “Before I Die is an interactive public art project that invites people to share their hopes and dreams in public space.” from (http://candychang.com/before-i-die-in-nola/)

We arrived to a bus stop located across from St. Patrick’s

Catholic Church. The coordinates were Jefferson and

Central. We chose this location because we

ascertained that Sunday 11am-noon

could possibly be an optimal time for foot traffic along that intersection.

When we arrived and set up our chalkboard kiosk (which included a wooden painted sign and

balloons), we met an older loquacious woman who was very generous with her answer to our public

health query.

The same older woman was accompanied by her grandson who was pretty withdrawn. She was explaining project to him while

he had his headphones on,

trying to get him to do it

This was then followed by another conversation between two older women about healthy foods, talking about tamales and foods with a lot of bread cheese aren't healthy, one woman said she's been eating less bread and more fruits and veggies and she's lost

weight"

4. Lessons-problem isn’t that people don’t know what’s healthyand what’s not-if we do it again, make sure to check relevant local schedules, i.e. church service!-might be less imposing to have 1-2 people rather than 3 at once- balloons catch kids’ eyes!