The Taxi Experience
How we will work with you
Taxilandia is designed in a creative process that is spilt into four phases. These phases are split into virtual salons, gallery installations, coloring book, and the tour. We will work with you to bring any or all phases of the experience to your city.
In each city, we design and host a series of virtual salons with local artists whose work intersects with gentrification. Streamed live, these salon/workshops are open to all and offer creative strategies for mapping and confronting gentrification.
Phase 1: Virtual Salons
Phase 2: Community Activation
Flako and the presenting companies will identify the artist community and local businesses to capture it’s present, past, and future and begin to designing the Taxilandia experience for your community. We recognize the potential impact this project can have in gentrifying neighborhoods. Working with national paint partner, PPG, we will make new investments in local artists and in businesses along the tour route. We will provide paint and volunteer labor to amplify the inherent beauty of these locales, and provide branded coloring books for local children. We will also commission new murals painted by local artists in each city.
Phase 3: The Gallery Installations
The virtual salons result in one or more creative collaborations. We work with our local artist partners to create a distributed storefront gallery (in partnership with local businesses). While walking the neighborhood, guests will take in the sights, sounds and history of the barrio—the part Vogue wasn’t talking about. Each installation features original poetry, video and sound design work by local artists, and is based at a local business that is an important patch in the fabric of an ever-changing neighborhood.
Phase 4: The Tour
Flako is hosted in-residence at your institution for a month, working with the local artist to identify the tour route, drive the taxi, conduct interviews, write the script, and photograph the portraits of community members. Flako will direct the tour, led by and co-created with the local artist.
