The July FIGMENT project in Boston turned the Rose Kennedy Greenway into an interactive, inquisitive, inspiring, and entertaining arts village. The FIGMENT Project facilitates community-building, interactive arts projects in numerous cities in the US, Canada, and Australia. The project is guided by 11 principles: participation, decommodification, inclusion, self-expression, self-reliance, giving, communal effort, civic responsibility, leave no trace, immediacy, and gratitude.

All eleven principles would be appropriate to integrate into our everyday lives, but I am also especially struck by the group’s description of “immediacy” as a principle:

Too often the limit for creative expression is the barrier between our inner selves and the selves that we present to the world. By breaking down that barrier, we can gain a profound appreciation for the opportunities that lie in each time and place.

This is a very insightful and well-articulated idea. Only once we have acknowledged and embraced who we truly are, shedding the masks we wear to fit into our assumptions about what others want to find in us, can we fully and genuinely interact with each other and contribute to our social environment.

Please go to http://figmentproject.org/ for more information, including how you can get involved and help contribute to this fantastic experience.