During the FEAST! Local Foods Marketplace festival on Saturday, Dec. 7, 2019, attendees were a part of a participatory art activity called String Survey, created and curated by Arlene Birt of Background Stories.

Arlene captured the action around the interactive art with a time lapse video, which you can see by clicking 'read more,' below. 

The video, compressed down to about 2 minutes, is shown here with some descriptive captions and a few photos at the end. 

Questions in the String Survey included the following:

• "How often do you look at product labels to see where a food comes from?"
• "How many local farms can you identify that you've purchased food from in the last 6 months?"
• "When choosing where to shop, how important is it that your store carries local foods?"
• "How much do you feel that what you do, personally, contributes to change within the local food system?"

And an open-ended question, for which attendees hand-wrote answers onto tags at the survey end: "We know that price, convenience, and taste are important. Outside of those, what things are MOST important to you?"

Responses included things like, "helping my local community & friends grow," "brand I believe in :)" and, "environmental impact & supporting local farming & health." 

Thanks to Background Stories for recording this fun time lapse video, and thanks to everyone who participated! More information on the comments from the open-ended question will be coming soon. Stay tuned!

This activity was made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.