Stephen Farley's Favorite Places Project




		The Intimate Component
What is a favorite place? The public component About the artists The host site Funders and partners Home page Entire contents copyright © 2002 by Stephen Farley. All rights reserved.	There are two basic components to this project: an intimate component focused in the neighborhoods adjoining the 29th Street Greenway in South Minneapolis, and a public component involving teenagers and the general public from the entire Twin Cities area. The intimate component consisted of trained artist mentors--Stephen Farley, Usry Alleyne and Barry Kleider--working with eight high-school-age youth drawn from the diverse neighborhoods surrounding Intermedia and eight elders from the Southwest Senior Center. The youth worked six hours a week for 15 weeks. They were paid in order to allow for a greater diversity of ethnic and economic backgrounds. (Many underserved youth must earn money after school in order to help support their families.) The artist mentors trained the youth in photography, interviewing, transcribing, historical research, and computer graphics as they used a new computer lab located at Intermedia, learning artistic skills, literacy, and vocational skills along the way. Each youth partnered with one elder as each explored the other’s favorite places in the Twin Cities in the context of their life histories through interviews, photography, and historical research. The elders also learned digital photography, interviewing, and drawing in collaboration with the teens. A highlight of the process was a series of field trips during which all participants traveled to each favorite place, and each photographed his or her partner in their favorite place. After the photographs were printed, the partners wrote their impressions of the process and the photo. These prints and quotes are being exhibited in a gallery show at the Southwest Senior Center, published in a catalog, posted on a website, and possibly enlarged onto permanent glazed ceramic tile murals to be installed in pairs along the 29th Street Greenway. It is possible that this project can be repeated in the year 2052 with today’s teenagers taking the role of the elders, and a new crop of teenagers engaging them about their favorite places. Visit each participant's favorite places online by clicking here. The teens and elders have also collaboratively completed a group self-portrait mural. To see some photos of that project, click here.