These days lots and lots of artistic projects are aimed at improving human interaction in public space. Montréal’s Museum of Possibilities (Musée des Possibles) is such a project, but a special one, that seems to be a physical life-sized version of the recently featured online crowdsourcing project Give a Minute. The urban authorities asked Melissa Mongiat, Mouna Andraos and Amélie Bilodeau to give shape to an installation that should inspire people to give their vision on a new public space in the city’s newly built Quartier des Spectacles.
The artists came up with a spectacular one-day urban intervention that invited passers-by to share what they would like to see, do, or who they would like to meet in this space, and together explore all possibilities.
People were asked to pick a piece of paper and write down what they would like to see happening in that space in the future. Every ‘museum entry’ was attached to one of the 500 colorful balloons that gave shape to the pop-up installation. Furthermore, visitors received a set of stickers to stick to balloons with ideas that they like. “This voting helped to turn ‘possibilities’ into probabilities and gave the client (the City of Montréal, J.B.) concrete data on public interest”, explain the creators. The dreamy look and feel of the Museum of Possiblities seemed to really attract the public to share ideas, visions and perspectives, and this project might be a neat example of how to engage people in city-making by inspiring them.

Read the original article on Pop-Up City

Credits:Musée des Possibles

Related content : Montreal, participative democracy, urban renovation