Elm Street Interactive Area
Saturday, October 5 1-5pm
We’re closing Elm Street to cars and turning it into a dynamic arena for interactive art making and activism. Please join in — work with our amazing HONK! artists to create something for yourself or for the Sunday Parade. Learn about some urgent issues with the grass roots volunteers and organizers working on community issues. Help amplify messages for positive change and activist causes with art!
Elm Street Arts Activism Profiles
The 2024 Elm Street Arts Activism Area includes installations and hands-on activities for all those passing by. It is a chance for local artists and activist and community groups to share with the general public their ideas, concerns, images, words, creations, and strategies for a better world. This year Elm Street artists will offer opportunities to engage in projects about equity and voting rights, climate change and ecological crisis, and the war on Gaza, by making banners, flags, cardboard parading costumes, and chalk art, or participating in an installation about Palestinian identity.
We are honored to have the following artists and activist groups participate in this year’s Elm Street Activist Art Area as part of the Honk! Festival: Alex Adamo, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, Eli Nixon, Farah Barqawi, Sarah Sumanti Tahang, The Puppeteers Cooperative, Extinction Rebellion, and Topping from the Bottom.
Alexandra Adamo
Alexandra Adamo is a multimedia artist and the creative spirit behind Alex Makes Art, where she crafts intergenerational community experiences through the joy of making. As a craftivist, she is passionate about sustainability and sprinkling some “zhuzh” into everyday life. Alexandra believes in the magic of crafting as a way to connect, inspire, and have a little fun along the way!
At the Elm Street Art Activist station, Alex Makes Art will be creating a patchwork of carpet samples onto a second-hand vinyl. We will invite participants to visually mend this piece together using handspun wool thread, highlighting the tremendous gathering of people who unify for this unique experience in Somerville. In addition, we’ll have a mini library featuring embroidery techniques, art in activism, and some local zines to inspire and educate attendees. Parallel to this community banner-making activity, which will be featured at the front of the Honk parade and serve for many years to come, we’ll utilize bamboo rods from an installation at the 2024 Cambridge Science Festival, Bio in Bloom, to create individual flags for participants to use during the parade and beyond.
www.alexmakesart.com;
IG: @alexmakes_art
Citizens’ Climate Lobby
The Citizens’ Climate Lobby is a global grassroots advocacy organization focused on policies addressing the global climate crisis. At Elm Street this year the CCL Boston chapter will present a “Parachutes for the Planet” project to generate a collective imagining of a liveable world by encouraging passersby to paint their visions of a liveable world in two large parachutes. CCL states “if we cannot imagine it, we cannot create it, and so sparking imagination is necessary to generate the healthy and thriving future we all want and deserve.”
motherearthproject.org/parachutes
IG: @ccl_inclusion
Eli Nixon
Eli Nixon builds portals and gives guided tours to places that don’t yet exist. They collaborate on imaginative interventions through cardboard constructionism, theatermaking, drawing, and choreography of low-tech public spectaculah. They are a Rhode Islander living on Narragansett Land and a former organizer of the PRONK (Providence HONK) parade.
I’m offering up my cardboard craft support through this watermelon attire building station because it’s the way I know how to resist, to build community, and to transform ourselves- (through rudimentary means!) into symbols of solidarity with the people of Palestine. Alongside a multitude of non-symbolic action that is required to free everybody, my efforts as an artist and workshop facilitator are directed at creating temporary space to practice collaboration, transformation, abundance, and amplification of shared concerns and enthusiasms—through DIY absurdist costuming…
www.elinixon.com
IG: @ramshackleenterprises
Farah Barqawi
Farah Barqawi is a Palestinian writer, educator, performer, and feminist organizer. She works across multiple genres and mediums, from written words, to podcasts, singing, and theatrical performances. She is fond of books, recordings, notebooks, and printed material, and they always find a way into her practice. Farah lives in New York City, where she strives to connect with her communities and get involved in the causes she is passionate about.
At Elm Street, Farah Barqawi will be facilitating the step-in-and-out workshop “Erasing [Erasure];” a writing workshop that employs the “blackout poetry” technique to create new narratives and poems to honor the peoples of Palestine and Lebanon, currently undergoing ethnic cleansing and erasure. Using different markers and washi tapes, participants will erase biased journalistic narratives from US media prints, by striking out words, phrases, sentences, or even entire paragraphs. Via this reversed erasure, they will be able to create new poetry, prose, or letters that address and acknowledge the current disrupted livelihoods and losses in Palestine and Lebanon.
IG: @farah_barqawi_
Sarah Sumanti Tahang
Sarah is a dedicated community engagement specialist with over 10 years of experience in education, with a passion for making connections through arts-based approaches. Her work centers around creating inclusive spaces where students of all backgrounds feel valued and empowered to share their stories through various art forms.
I am doing the community chalk mural around voting rights to foster a deeper understanding of civic engagement and the importance of every voice in shaping our society . Through this collaborative art project, students can express their perspectives on the significance of voting, particularly how it has been a tool in advancing civil rights and justice. With this mural, I hope to spark conversation and encourage youth to see themselves as future advocates and participants in the democratic process.
IG: @your.pamphleteer
The Puppeteers Cooperative
The Puppeteers Cooperative works in community puppet workshops, pageants, and parades, and also runs a giant puppet lending library, all in the service of helping people to make giant street spectacles from simple everyday materials.
Extinction Rebellion
Extinction Rebellion is an international non-violent movement focused on raising the alarm about the climate and ecological crisis, pressuring governments to act, and inspiring people to get involved. At Elm Street XR’s theme will be “Join the Critter Rebellion!” The group’s interactive activities will include endangered species mask making and coloring pages, as well as an open invitation to the community to help create posters for the Critter Rebellion and to join Extinction Rebellion’s contingent in the Sunday Honk! Parade.
XRBoston.org
IG: XRBoston
Topping from the Bottom
Topping from the Bottom is a Tuba and Euphonium performance art piece made up of former members of the Polite Organic Orchestra and the Saxual Healing International Tuba Symposium. Whether you suffer from a Broken Harp, a Sharp Personality Disorder, Saxual Dysfunction or Trombone Trauma, or just want to serenade your Honk crush in the most spectacular fashion ever, Topping from the Bottom provides a once-in-a-lifetime healing service for all Honk attendees and musicians, one Bb at a time.
Testimonials from happy serenadees:
“This reminds me of my extra-terrestrial childhood.”
“I felt like I was inside one of those music boxes, slightly nauseous but unable to step away because my feet were permanently attached to the spinning platform.”
“That was the musical experience I never knew I wanted or needed.”
