SRSI, Day 3: Quiet Sunday, but things were still happening
It was a bit of a quiet Sunday, but things were still happening down at SRSI. In particular, Julie and Jefferson were hard at work all day, preparing their project, “The Peoples Museum & Fabulations de Windsor.” Above, and in between visits from some neighbours and friends, Julie preps a large piece of paper for a stencil.
First thing in the morning, Pelissier is very quiet.
Michelle met Julie and Jefferson downtown and they immediately set to work.
Michelle stayed out on Pelissier for a while to take the time to document the normally very busy Pelissier Street.
Looking south on Pelissier at the Park intersection. The storefronts for SRSI are below a parking garage and across the street from an apartment building with small shops below.
Inside, here’s the welcome package that Danielle put together for SRSI participants…
These are so amazing — we have to remember to keep a few copies.
While not an exhaustive list, the welcome package tries to give a fun overview of some of the many things to check out while in Windsor.
The food one must’ve been the most fun.
Well, next to this one, I think.
Some leftover diagrams from Eric’s installation of the interior urban park.
Over at 406…
What remains of Eric’s outdoor portion of the interior urban park — we had to remove the larger rows after some folks from the city rightly pointed out we might regret having grass out there after Saturday night.
However, the extension of the sod from the interior to the exterior is very cool. It’d be great to see Eric do a bit more of this.
Jolie’s The Breakroom is taking the day off.
However, it’s back on Monday through Friday this week.
You should stop by.
Jolie is a total sweetheart…
And there are lots of great things to read.
And fun mosaic tables.
And a lovely selection of food.
Including homemade muffins. Given that Jolie is only here this week, we need to figure out a way to draw more traffic down the street. We probably need to get some posters up on Ouellette and University.
Over at 424: Julie’s working table.
And this bucket with paper…
And paint…
Oh, and this blender … it’ll be interesting to see what Julie and Jefferson do with these tools (as we’re very familiar with them).
Outside on their tomato plant, a snail.
And inside, some firewood.
And a map that sprawls across nearly half of the storefront’s floor.
Jefferson sets up his table to start on his part of the project. Apparently, Jefferson and Julie haven’t ever worked together on a project before.
On a table, Jefferson’s tools.
And maps.
Jefferson is making some signage.
He says that he loves to make signage.
Ready to work.
And Maggie stays patiently at the back.
Some flowers taken from Jefferson’s grandmother’s garden — the original plants that these flowers came from were planted 80 years ago.
And some books … I love how everything that’s set up in their storefront is somehow creating quite an interesting story already … I’m so anxious to see how everything connects as they move forward.
More maps, next to the huge floor map.
Some paint makes for some lakes.
Newspapers from Toronto.
Julie working on her paper for the stencil, I’m excited to get to stop by to see what other progress they made.
Meanwhile, 410 got some more paint thanks to Michelle and Cristina, I taped up some more posters, met a few new folks from the neighbourhood, helped a bird, Daragh went out with Simon and Andrea as they collected some plants for Andrea’s project, and tomorrow’s another day, with the arrival of new SRSI projects!!!
This project is generously supported by the City of Windsor: Cultural Affairs Office, Arts Council Windsor & Region, Windsor Pride, and the Ontario Arts Council.












































![SRSI, Day 1: Cleaning up the Storefronts Day 1 of the Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation: we get the keys and begin massive clean up. Vinyl is being cut, walls will be painted, carpets are vacuumed, windows are washed, but still things to do. However, great things are ahead. Josh and Michelle at the very start of the day, before the cleaning [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/IMG_9785-150x150.jpg)
![Recap of the Letter Library Opening Event! It’s been an incredible few weeks prepping for the launch of CIVIC SPACE and the Letter Library. Huge props to everyone who helped out, especially Kiki Athanassiadis & Lucy Howe! There’s a few hundred letters strewn about the space, waiting for you to takeout and caption the city. Stop by over the next few weeks — [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/wpid18599-IMG_0310-150x150.jpg)
![Extended Field Trip #001: Artspace in Peterborough Broken City Lab is heading up to Peterborough, Ontario for all of next week (October 12 – 17, 2009) for an extended field trip to collaborate with Artspace for a series of community and inter-city research initiatives, workshops, and interventions to understand the city of Peterborough, its infrastructures, and its communities. We’ll be blogging extensively [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/peterboroughmap3-150x150.jpg)
![You Are Worth It: Biodegradable Balloons As part of Green Corridor’s Open Corridor festival, I’ll be working with 500 biodegradable balloons with “YOU ARE WORTH IT.” printed on them. The balloons will be filled with helium and some wildflower seeds, 200 of them will be launched anchored throughout the Green Corridor area and handed out to those in attendance next Thursday, June 18th. [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/balloons-printed-150x150.jpg)
![Call for Participation: Regret & Resolve With the start of the new year, we wanted to take stock of the regrets we have about the city or our roles within it, and the resolutions we might make to change this place for the better. We want to ask two questions: What are the things that we know we should be doing, [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/tshirt-crop-150x150.jpg)
![Drift v1.5 Available Now: Some Updates to Help You Get Even More Lost in Familiar Places Great news! Drift v1.5 is available now on the App Store. There are some really useful changes, including a better way to navigate from step to step in your Drift, some light tidying up upon registration, longer sessions to keep you logged in, and some fixes and adjustments to the photo upload process. All of that means that it’s [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Screen-Shot-2012-06-14-at-10.58.38-AM-150x150.png)
![Fusing bags Justin has some process shots, and those will probably be posted at some point, but I figured I’d go ahead and share the product of five or so hours of ironing inside-out plastic grocery bags. So far, I’ve made some envelopes, a box, and some random swatches to see if leftover scaps can be fused [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/bags2-150x150.jpg)
![Listen to the City: Discovering the Histories of Windsor through Conversation Sunday night was the first event of our Save the City project: Listen to the City, and it was incredible!!! We had an amazingly generous crowd of old friends and new faces come out to share their stories of Windsor with us and we recorded close to 8 hours of their hopes, concerns, and personal [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/IMG_9288-150x150.jpg)
![A Set of Informal Questions about London, Ontario We want to know about London, Ontario. We’re doing an exhibition at Forest City Gallery, opening in September, and we’re looking into the wide range of narratives that go into constructing a place — the architecture, the headlines, the people, the memories, the relationships, the rumours — and we’re hoping you can help us out. Whether you’re [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/ATTC-London-150x150.jpg)
![Making Banners at the Labour Lounge We spent Friday night in Hamilton at the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre as part of their Labour Lounge series (organized by once-Windsorite, Andrew Lochhead). In a little less than two hours, we led a workshop and explosion of creativity with some amazingly great 13-year-olds. We made banners, two really great banners that will be [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/IMG_5675-150x150.jpg)
![BCL Report – Oct 9, 2008 On Thursday night, on what was supposed to be a test run for projecting on the side of the Jackman Building (the new drama building at the University of Windsor), Broken City Lab ended up exploring a number of locations on campus armed with a projector, a laptop, and a really long extension cord. Originally, we [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/Broken-City-Lab-is-on-the-wall-of-the-new-drama-building-at-the-University-of-Windsor-150x150.jpg)
![Public Realm at Propeller Centre for the Visual Arts On Thursday, January 21st at the Propeller Centre for the Visual Arts in Toronto, we’ll be doing a projection performance that examines the language and ideas surrounding public space, intervention, urban surfaces, and city infrastructures. As part of Propeller’s Public Realm exhibition, we will curate a text-based list of ideas, statements, and questions, that address the [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/propellerinvite-150x150.jpg)
![How we use this site for research (in-part) Over the last week or so, we’ve added a few new things to our little website here. It’s funny because there’s a lot of research that goes on in the background, in terms of things we come across and don’t blog about, ideas that we email to one another, and documenting our process and posting [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/bcl-sidebar-dec09-150x150.jpg)
![Two Tales of a City: Acrylic Medium Transfers on Fabric Over the past few weeks, we’ve been testing out methods for transferring photocopies onto fabric using acrylic medium for the banner and bunting that will be installed on the exterior of Hamilton Artist’s Inc. Rosina picked up this 1000ml tub of acrylic medium for The Store at SoVA‘s Store. We had some leftover scrap material to [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/MG_0645-150x150.jpg)
![How We Spend Friday Nights: Planning, Writing, and Mapping Meeting twice in a week can make such a difference in terms of how much we can get done. We’re still in the thick of planning for the first event of Save the City. We met earlier last week to go over the basics of finalizing our adjusted budget, put together the first round of [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/IMG_6407-150x150.jpg)

![Sites of Apology / Sites of Hope The details: Sunday, February 28, 2010 (1pm) at 362 California Ave, Windsor As part of the Broken City Lab: Save the City project, and to better understand the city and its rich and failed history, Broken City Lab researchers will host an open community event on Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 1pm to map and invent two [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/BCL-STC-FEB-1024-150x150.jpg)
![Transit Windsor Panels on the Buses! This morning, on one of Transit Windsor’s new hybrid buses, we saw one of the nearly 100 Text In-Transit panels (this is the first panel on this new bus, as far as we could tell anyways). I believe they will all be installed on Transit Windsor’s entire fleet in the coming days. Let us know [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/IMG_2737-150x150.jpg)
![Cross-Border Communication: We’ve Missed You (and other things worth saying) Last night was the second iteration of Cross-Border Communication where we sent a variety of messages from Windsor to Detroit. We started with “We’ve Missed You.” We’ll be doing the final iteration of this suite of Cross-Border Communication tonight (Wednesday) around the usual time (8pm). Some other folks stopped by on our side to see [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/IMG_4629-150x150.jpg)
Amazing! I can’t wait to help out again. I’m covering for Michelle tomorrow, but I might stop by really early.
A man came in today and suggested that I literally write “COME INSIDE/IN… (for coffee, tea, muffins, etc)” on a big sign and hang it. So I made TWO!
we definitely got some foot traffic, but people are still wary about accepting free food and having a seat, they mostly had questions about the project and what we were doing.