Windows of Opportunity is a fantastic project from York Museums Trust, it uses crowd sourced creative to fill shops left empty by the recession. 
 
I think it’s a brilliant example of an organisation stepping out of the gallery space (and probably it’s comfort zone) and doing something to benefit the community.

The project has attracted already attracted press from around the world, with American ‘cool hunter’ Josh Spear saying ‘I think every city in the world should be doing this.’

Sumo worked with YMT to develop the website for the project and to help them spread the word through social media networks.

Today we have announce DEMOCRACY our first exhibition (well it’s actually our third, but this is way beyond anything we have tried before, perhaps it’s best described as our first proper exhibition), which will be part of Design Event 09, the North East Design Festival.

DEMOCRACY is an incredibly exciting project for us, it uses a groundbreaking format to change the way that audiences interact with an exhibition. Today we launched the call for entries which asks designers and illustrators to respond to a brief by creating an artwork on the theme of democracy, and later this month we will start to accept these entries through the exhibition website.

The participatory nature of the exhibition won’t stop there, the community will not only create the artworks in the exhibition, they will also select what is displayed through a public vote on the website. While this kind of ‘crowd sourced’ exhibition has been tried before (most notably by Brooklyn Museum and TATE) the exhibition continues the audience interaction on a level not attempted before.

When the exhibition opens in October, visitors will be able to continue to vote for the artworks they like and their votes will instantly be reflected in the exhibition space, where all the artworks will be digitally displayed. When an artwork receives more votes, it grows in size compared to the pieces displayed around it, so the exhibition will be constantly changing hour by hour, day by day.

As well as the digitally displayed exhibition showing the changing popularity of the work, we will also display comments posted about the artworks on the online community.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a book, also called DEMOCRACY.