At its heart, the Haves and Wants Wall is a tool for community engagement/ participation.
The Haves & Wants wall is an installation that attempts to foster collaboration among people, by getting them to share what they have and what they want. The wall itself is a metaphor for people’s inhibitions- bred by their limitations- which they would release into small notes. By doing so they break down these inhibitions through the act of sharing them with others while also knowing that there may be a possibility for them to be addressed. This act of asking is also made easier by the fact that in return one could give what they perceived to be as their own strengths.

The installation was conceptualized and executed for the first time at The Goa Project– an event where thinkers, doers and people who veer away from the well-trodden path discuss ideas that breed innovation and learning. The installation was used to facilitate just that by getting people to share what they have and get what they want. In a broader sense, the installation was also envisioned as a microcosm of what our society wants and thinks that it already has, considering that The Goa Project was a melting point of people from various walks of life. At The Goa Project, people were free to visit the wall, read the notes, and contact the person that filled them up if there was a match between their ‘haves’ and ‘wants’. This way the seeds would have been sowed for a potential collaboration between the two individuals as they set out to address their ‘I have’ versus ‘I want’ disconnect.

Get in touch with us if you would like us to put up this installation at any other event/ space/ neighbourhood/ city as a means to engage with the community.
Alternatively, if you would like to put it up yourself, please download our DIY toolkit from this link to guide you in the process-

 
Project team: Vidhya Mohankumar, Mahesh Radhakrishnan