The Fireseed Anthology Project ( Click to link to the Fireseed blog)
From 2007-2012, Fireseed existed as an intentional living community and creative collective. Within the heart of East Austin, a handful of houses dedicated themselves to living intentionally with one another, neighbor and God. The following values were upheld: Faith. Story. Community. Culture-Making.
Firepit
“Fire-pit” was a neighborhood weekly ritual for oral storytelling, music and creating neutral, safe space for a diverse demographic.
Save Ortega
As a local east Austin neighborhood school faced closure, the Fireseed collective engaged in the process artfully. We approached the school and proposed a public art installation and collaboration between neighbors and the school.
Fireseed artists encouraged older neighbors to donate fabric for the Save Ortega installation. We then cut and brought fabric strips to the school, facilitating neighbors, students, and teachers to tie them together creating a garland installation surrounding the school showing solidarity of support in the neighborhood.
We Have a Story
“We Have a Story” was a project initiated in the Fireseed east Austin neighborhood. Fireseed participants interviewed older neighbors about their personal stories and the history of the neighborhood. After the interviews were conducted, the Fireseed participants returned to create small art objects as a reflection of what they learned. In the photo above, members created shoes out of cardboard with cut up tires for soles in response to a story they leaned from a neighbor about her father making her shoes from cardboard and tires to manage the muddy road that we lived on.
Hope for Haiti
Fireseed facilitated the collaboration of east Austin neighbors and non-profits to create a mail-out to over 50 summer programs throughout the U.S. that would give training to college students on how to they could serve Haiti. It was of high value to me that all of the objects in the packet were hand-made implying a very personal and humanizing approach. The objects were also representative of partnership as they were made collaboratively – a value we wanted to see reproduced in our Haiti relief efforts.
Dolores, an east Austin neighbor, helped sew labels onto burlap bags that would hold the contents of the Hope for Haiti mail outs. One of the Fireseed goals was to involve and empower the community to participate and contribute.
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