The Coleman Center for the Arts (CCA) is pleased to invite you to “Pop Up Pop Start” an informational exhibition that investigates innovative business and kitchen incubators, social spaces, think tanks, artist spaces and storefronts for entrepreneurial or creative experimentation. The event will take place on Tuesday, November 5th from 5:30 to 7 PM at 211-A Broad St. (the former “5 and Dime Store”) across the street from the Super Dollar in downtown York. Refreshments will be served.
“Pop Up Pop Start” examines and documents some of the interesting projects happening in the US and elsewhere that are working to create creative and equitable downtowns and communities. As countless individual artists experiment with (commercial) exchange, artists spaces operate in storefronts, and larger institutions explore the cultural commons or start their own incubators, community development efforts from outside the field of contemporary art increasing look at culture as a catalyst for economic development. While urban communities are confronted with rapid gentrification and rural towns face de-population and a lack of access to resources, communities and individuals across the county must navigate who will be the beneficiary of this cultural and economic growth. “Pop Up Pop Start” barely scratches the surface of interesting and important projects that harness creative place making and problem solving, but it serves to illustrate the primary and increasingly sanctioned role of the creative in transforming the post-industrial civic landscape.
This exhibition takes place in the future location of Pop Start, a new initiative by the CCA which will pilot in early 2014. Pop Start is a permanent pop up and community retail space in downtown York that will offer rotating business incubation, a cooperative market for selling home-sourced goods, a community social space and an opportunity for artists and community members to experiment with the space of a storefront. With a shifting yet constant identity Pop Start will provide an exciting space for discovery where patrons may not know what they will find, but know where to find it. It transforms a storefront into a space for cooperation instead of competition, and seeks to transform the permanent sense of civic loss that results from chronic business failure.
Please come and learn about how communities across the United States are confronting economic challenges, solving problems and creating community and be a part of a new initiative in Sumter County.
Pop Start is being developed with support from the University of West Alabama’s James Suttles Entrepreneurship Institute, the Education Foundation of America and individual supporters of the Coleman Center for the Arts. For more information please contact the Coleman Center for the Arts at 205-392-2005, colemancenter@gmail.com, or visit www.colemanarts.org.
Participating Entities
1776 / Washington, DC
Black Belt Treasures / Camden, AL
Civic Space / Broken City Lab / Windsor, ON , Canada
Experimental Station / Chicago, IL
East Scarborough Storefront / Canada
EatsPlace / Washington, D.C.
The Edge / Tuscaloosa, AL
First Container / Collision Works / Detroit, MI
La Cocina / San Francisco, CA
Livernois Community Storefront / Detroit, MI
Machine Project / Los Angeles, CA
The Makery / NY, NY
Open Field / Walker Art Center / Minneapolis, MN
Pie Lab / Greensboro, AL
Popuphood / Oakland, CA
Project: PopUp / Chatanooga, TN
Spaceworks / Tacoma, WA
StoreFront Lab / San Francisco, CA
Urban Emporium / Mobile, AL
Union Kitchen / Washington, D.C.
WindowShop Residency / Beam Center / Brooklyn, NY