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Entire contents copyright © 2002 by Stephen Farley. All rights reserved.

The public component consists of a public call for stories and visual artifacts from the favorite places of all residents of the Twin Cities area; and a four-week intensive program with ten high-school-age youth led by artist mentor Stephen Farley in Summer 2002.

In late Spring 2002, Farley and his assistant Sally Schubert organized a public outreach campaign throughout Minneapolis and Saint Paul. He called for public submissions to this project, inviting Twin Cities residents to submit a brief story and a photo or other visual artifact (menu, drawing, postcard, etc.) of his or her favorite place in the Twin Cities.

During June 2002, six underserved teenagers from throughout the metro area worked with Farley and Schubert as they gathered and organized these public submissions. Youth entered the stories into computers, scanned photos and graphics, composed web pages, produced pages for a book, wrote sidebars on significant historical favorite places, mapped each favorite place, interviewed local residents in area neighborhoods, and created additional visual artifacts of some favorite places. Final products will include a website, a coffee-table-style book, and possibly even a large-scale tile mural in a to-be-determined location in the Twin Cities.

The process of thinking about one’s most favorite place is in itself part of the public component of this project, even for those who do not submit anything. Simply posing the question—“What is your favorite place?”— will inspire people to think differently—more deeply—about their community and themselves.

The online version of this public component has now been created. You can view this body of fascinating stories and photos of the favorite places of you and your neighbors here.