Parity Project is an immersive, interactive installation designed to simulate the barriers that limit upward mobility and access to wealth. While stark statistics can struggle to fully convey the complexity of this issue, I sought to create a tangible, memorable experience that inspires empathy and deeper understanding. By translating these systemic challenges into a physical display, I hoped to engage users on an emotional level and spark meaningful dialogue around the hurdles that many face in achieving financial stability and prosperity.
3 months
Charlotte, North Carolina has long been thought of as a hub of financial prosperity, but that’s far from the truth for a large number of communities enduring poverty in this area. There exists many barriers to upward mobility that were put in place by political, corporate, and social policies systematically trapping local families in poverty for generations.
For those who have never dealt with poverty, understanding the challenges these families face is in itself a challenge. They rely on the assumption that everyone has an equal chance at prosperity, and are therefore at fault for their own lack of financial success.
Going beyond static display of statistics in posters and fliers, it was important to make this a physical interactive piece to communicate the challenges individuals, families, and communities are forced to overcome for a chance at generating wealth. People remember better when touch and play is involved. This installation invited the audience to turn knobs, select and insert cards, and flip switches while learning at every step how various barriers restrict media that represented wealth potential.
A growing number of communities are facing increasing concentrations of poverty. As poverty deepens, governments move resources from impoverished areas to wealthier communities, companies close or move to more sustainable areas, and communities are stripped of an equal voice in their governance. A combination of social, corporate, and government policies that privilege the wealthy are forcing large numbers of Charlottean families into generational poverty.
If we don’t begin to challenge our assumptions of equality and poverty, then future generations will continue to become disenfranchised.