FRIEDAcommunity Participatory Art Project- POMBAA

FRIEDA and FRIEDAcommunity offer a welcoming space to people of all ages and from diverse backgrounds brought together around a curated program of activities and events focused on food, art and culture.

Our large-scale participatory art projects are opportunities for everyone to collaborate on installations that bring joy and wow to community members and visitors alike!

Join us for the reveal of Pombaa on March 1, 2024 at 6:00 pm.

For almost two years, young and old, visitors, guests and members, gathered around our community table, volunteering their time to make hundreds of pom poms from plastic shopping bags that could not otherwise be used following the long overdue plastic bag ban.

Without any special skills, everyone was able to sheep in to create this collective work. The attendees followed trustfully, the instructions provided, even though they didn’t know exactly what the end result would be. Becoming a pompom expert might not have been the reason to join the flock at FRIEDA. But the togetherness, fun, and opportunity to create something big kept us coming back every week, to make more pompoms!

THANK you to all the volunteers who participated and a special THANK YOU to:
Coco, who deserves all the credit for making this FRIEDAcommunity art project bigger and fluffier!
Mark, for sharing his construction and engineering skills.
Donna, Kilahra, Marika, Hester, and Suji for leading the pompom workshop for the past 18 months.

POMBAA
Opening reception: Friday, March 1st
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Location: FRIEDA, 320 Walnut Street
Open to the public
Registration recommended via hello@frieda.community
* Mask recommended during this event.

* In addition to hosting art exhibits, FRIEDA and FRIEDAcommunity have engaged the community in previous large-scale participatory art projects: Love Pavilion by artist Ziui Chen (2019) and #BlueAsAButterly (2020-2021) made of more than 20,000 blue butterflies cut out by hand. This butterfly project was created by Thomas Steinborn created at the onset of the pandemic, first as a stay-at-home craft project for volunteers during the lockdown, and later as a full-blown rebirth of our community when FRIEDA reopened to the public. These installations are evocative memories we share as a community.