STREET SIGNS OF CHANGE
With art, we can reimagine and improve the existing organizational structures of society. Historically, artists of various disciplines have served as a vehicle of awareness and change.
While studying the organization and design of cities and towns, we realized an opportunity to spread the awareness of relevant messages using their existing skeletons. Universal street signs are posted throughout the United States. Augmented reality will allow us to create hundreds of millions of micro-billboards, spreading messages of change across the nation.
The idea will be developed under the name “Street Signs of Change” as an AVONNI Global creative initiative. We will begin in June 2020 with the intention to provide support in the fight for racial equality. Black members of our communities should not have to live in fear of the police, the government, or their neighbors. We recognize that everyone deserves but is not provided the same opportunities and want to actively be a part of the solution.
The responsibility to create a better world must be held by everyone. The choices we make in the present can liberate the future from the past.
Protests in Los Angeles (May 2020), photo: Quinn Matthews
FORGOTTEN LA
Forgotten LA is our first charity initiative. Homeless youth are one of the most understated problems in Los Angeles. There are 63,000 homeless youth living in LA. Los Angeles has the most unaccompanied homeless children in the nation. It is our mission to help create better opportunities for these children.
We are selling backpacks full of school supplies for homeless children on our website for only $9.99. Each backpack comes with pens, pencils, notebooks, folder, crayons, sharpeners, rulers, scissors, erasers, glue sticks, pencil cases, and highlighters. To date, we have donated over 150 backpacks to children in need living on Skid Row.
In addition to the website, a billboard was posted on Sunset Blvd for two months that was seen by over 200,000 people each week. The whole campaign is self funded and we take no profit. All money goes directly to the children.
These backpacks offer more than just tangible benefits. A backpack offers the luxury of belonging. The notebooks, pencils, and crayons provide an escape from the streets, a chance to write down their ideas, inventions, and stories. Again, and again, and again.
Each backpack is an opportunity.