Home Β» Jon Henry Engaging the Community. By using this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn more by reading our Privacy Policy. A student in the M. Jon has been working on two community based projects while in residence. The first, Communi-Tea is ongoing throughout his stay.
The second. This has particular resonance as a GIF repeats ad nauseum, which is exactly what Jon was doing all day long. It was also intended to be participatory with curious onlookers invited to join Jon in a circuit or two.
I ended up at the historical museum and I learned that the traffic circle is the oldest one in Virginia. For the Communi-Tea project, Jon placed fliers around Amherst, and took out an ad on Craigslist inviting people to have tea with him.
The questions are basic, get-to-know-you questions. The conversation part, the key prompts that he asks people are things like: why do you live here? What would you need more of to stay here? Jon wants to produce a document to present to local government that will aid them in determining what people really want and what it would take to retain them. I learn about related things, objects or performances through conversations. The social practice becomes like research for making and inspiring future projects.
It also usually creates a feedback loop for another project. The idea is that these individual objects or the performances will lead people back into the social projects. This has helped him to work out the kinks and fine tune the conversational aspect of the project. In addition to the performance pieces, Jon was also making assemblages with Googley eyes using them to create a figure on a slab of wood.
