maptimeLEX at the October Night Market
After a month away, maptimeLEX made its second appearance at the Night Market.For those who may not know, Night Market is a cool event in Lexington put on by the NoLi CDC that occurs on the 1st Friday of each month. Usually it takes place outdoors on Bryan Ave between N Limestone and Loudon, but because of the rain, the event was relocated to the Plantory in the Breadbox at W 6th and Jefferson. Kudos to Haley Perros (NoLi CDC) and the Plantory for making a less than ideal situation work out!
Dan Cockayne and I manned the booth for the evening. We had a good amount of people inquiring about what we do and garnered the interest of folks from a wide range of backgrounds. We collected 10 signatures from artists, architects, geographers, tshirt designers and more! Even if some of the people we talked to didn’t join our mailing list, there was a generally positive response to what we’re trying to do in Lexington. In fact, we got an RSVP for our October 15th meetup during the Night Market!
We also were able to engage several folks through a little participatory map art project we’ve started. We set up a map of the Night Market (where it usually occurs) and promted passsersby to draw or write on a little sticky note something that expressed their feeling or thoughts at that moment at the Night Market.
While some were reticent to participate - they didn’t think they had anything good to add - many others got into the spirit of the project, adding pictures, random thoughts, and observations expressing their current state. It was pretty fun!
We hope to continue setting this map up with different prompts and activities at each Night Market so that it will become sedimented with the various sort of experiences surrounding this monthly event. We’ll post updates as this project moves forward!
