Guerilla Art

I've been reading Leanna's birthday present book: The Guerilla Art Kit by Keri Smith

It's not written for a child, but I love the idea, and with adult guidance, I think it could really be a neat tool.  Plus it has instructions for craft type projects.  I'm looking forward to opportunities to try this with her!  Admittedly, I recommended this book to Claire to get for her, so it's not surprising I like it.   The idea is that some type of anonymous work is created, installed, performed, or attached to a public space with the distinct purpose of affecting the world in a creative or thought provoking way.  It can be done to beautify the area, to question or challenge the status quo, or to interact with the environment or people.  Some examples of guerilla art: you could leave a note in a public place, leave a chalk drawing on the sidewalk or a building, insert a note in a book for someone to find, plant flowers in a sidewalk crack, doodle in the margins of a book, leaving political posters somewhere, leaving a poster or notebook somewhere with instructions for others to add comments, etc. etc.  I love the idea of leaving something to brighten someone else's day.  Just random kindness bombs thrown about! 

Some quotes I like:

"Public art says 'the human spirit is alive here."
"Modern culture with its overwhelming wealth of advertising,mass media, and mass communication often teaches us to tune out, or disconnect, because there is a limit to how much information we can process on a given day.  In many cases we have no choice about the quality or quantity of what we take in."
"For a moment I am taken out of my known world and presented with an alternative, one that is unexpected and daring, one that makes me think about the space a little differently.  These little gestures encourage me to not take our world so seriously, to contemplate for a moment something outside the predicable.  They reawaken a sense of connection to the environment by pointing out something I might not have seen, by adding a new image to the world that is unexpected, or by presenting an alternate point of view."