Writing this sitting on an island in Greece, looking at the thousands of wildflowers bursting with color in the breeze, the Aegean rustling deep blue, sun slanting through slats, the change I want to see is more beauty, more abundance, more inclusive spaces, more richly layered experiences, nuanced, colorful, and a bit wild.
The change I want to see: an expanded notion of what retail can be. Retail Experiments in Imagining Otherwise. Why retail? Because it is one of the few places that are “open door,” inviting and embodies fun/leisure.
I’ve been observing while traveling in small towns that stores and restaurants provide the most direct community engagement within this context. They are embedded in the fabric of the community, they are a point of access and can provide insider information, they strive to provide a fun environment, and they are independent small businesses.
I want to legitimize the potential of retail to be a site of community, new ideas, and change. And, in so legitimizing their (potentially) crucial role to multiple stakeholder groups, by taking seriously the role fun and accessibility experientially play in creating a sense of openness in both makers (supply side), facilitators (organizers), and customers (can also be makers and vice versa), and when people are in a state of openness, they can receive new information, learning, wonder, ideas, etc.
Retail, particularly recreational shopping, gives people the opportunity to own something through buying or for free (I always had free projects in each iteration of my space so that people could have something even if money wasn’t exchanged), and so explicitly expands people’s sense of belonging/ownership with that space/store. It creates an energetic link, reinforcing a sense of comfort, belonging, and identity, which allows people to become more open to new ideas, be open and have conversations.
In museums, for example, the retail location is often the more direct engagement (physically and verbally) visitors will experience during their time in the museum. In contrast to the prevailing rarified attitude expected [in temples to state-sanctioned objects], the unassuming Gift Shop takes on the possibility of touching, asking questions, engaging, and learning in all its forms. Many stores and Gift Shops currently don’t create such an environment, missing their potential. Perhaps they could take a page from UAL’s Not Just a Store and combine the retail with the education departments.
My interest in retail as a site of exploration:
- an open-door entry to a creative space
- under-utilization and thus the potential of exploring retail as a site of possibility beyond only sales
- the sense of community and conversation that can occur
- playfulness
- with my own space, the creative act of sculpting with ideas/concepts, objects, environment, people, interactions, events
- space for the unexpected
- dialogue and education
- customer service parameters and roles to play with
- expected roles of a store to enact or reject: a medium like anything else
- the multitude of people and ideas to juggle
- studio visits, support, and conversations with creatives
- a way to get other people talking about ideas I want to explore in multi-disciplinary ways
- act of hosting, making people welcome and cared for
- creative interaction out of which new things can be born
Retail seems to be so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible in the landscape. So expected. Of course, each place has some retail attached: it’s the spread and scourge of capitalism. Each monastery perched atop granite cliffs in remote northern Greece has a shop—and some of the best due to their handmade, unique products redolent of beeswax, incense, and vague feelings of supporting selfless monks (however naive that idea might be). There is always a human presence in a store, the people are usually good-natured and spark human interaction of some sort.
This pervasiveness creates such a sense of uniformity or inevitability: ubiquity creates invisibility. Within this overlooked sprawl comes a sense of untapped possibility to use these sites to foster connections, to educate, to pollinate, to seed (find Friere quote), to empower. And the reasons why to do this are not only altruistic but can have long-term positive financial and social benefits.
Putting aside moral arguments about the ubiquity of retail, there is room for better retail (this is an extraordinarily subjective term, but for now, let’s say unique, thought-provoking, beautiful, idea/concept-driven that also includes local makers, sustainable practices, inclusivity and diversity, and an amount of flexibility). Perhaps it is a non-profit enterprise that consults people/businesses on how to achieve this. Or a hybrid sliding-scale consulting firm that works with larger stores to use the potential of their spaces to a greater extent. I could set up some free projects with local places. But working with inventory becomes difficult. Activate the spaces with events.
I look around and I see potential. There are shops retailing all manner of things. In part because of competition/free-market capitalism which encourages individualism and selfishness, there is a distinct lack of support [is this true in the UK? Idk the structures as much] for profit-generating spaces. A lack of community.
Why? This is the philosophy or ideology, solidarity economics (social interactions: cooperation, mutualism sharing, reciprocity, altruism, love, caring, gifting), all of the AI course ideals, the dream of open-platform education, or education in all its guises.