a very cool project

Purpose
Our Mission Believing that tools of self-determination lie within creative practices, The Laundromat Project will provide broad access to visual art as a tool of personal and social transformation, especially in communities of color who have been under-served by mainstream art institutions. Our Vision In order to make visual art more broadly accessible we will build art centers with dynamic public programming in laundromats that we own and operate. We are on target to open our first site in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn in 2007. The long-term vision for The Laundromat Project can be understood as: 1) an laundromat-based art center, a physical space that will bring art into our everyday lives—serving as inspiration for the unlimited possibilities of our own visions and as a lens to see our surroundings through new eyes; 2) an organization committed to building creative communities—where the boundaries between artist and resident are blurred; 3) a living, breathing, ever-evolving, permanent public art project—the ultimate site-specific installation. Using the familiar physical space of laundromats allows us to overhaul the way art is exhibited. We don't want people to look at art. We want them to experience art-- to talk back to it, manhandle it, make it, own it; 4) a non-profit social enterprise that has developed a self-sustaining revenue model to support its mission. Founded on principles of entrepreneurship that overlap with any artistic process (e.g. risk-taking, innovation, bringing vision to fruition, etc.), the strategies we use to run The Laundromat Project, Inc. embody the very mission we promote.