THE BUREAU OF DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT is open Wednesday to Saturday 12 pm to 6 pm and Sunday 12 pm to 5 pm until July 31 at Propeller Centre for the Visual Arts (984 Queen West).
The Bureau of Doing Something About It opened last week at Propeller gallery to creatively respond to Torontonian gripes and grumbles about everything from slow people on the sidewalk to Rob Ford. Not surprisingly, grumpy locals are already kicking up a fuss about the Bureau itself.
“Toronto is a pseudo polite society and a bit passive aggressive,” says Amanda Happé who collaborated with five coworkers from Bruce Mau Design’s Toronto office on the project. “There’s always a venue to bitch about something. People need to be nudged to come up with positive ideas.”
The source of the annoyances printed on slips of yellow paper and pinned to the gallery’s walls is the Toronto Complaints Choir. That group was founded by Harbourfront Centre as a way for citizens to vent about anything from common courtesy and bad weather to etiquette and grammar and bring some levity to things we sometimes take a little too seriously including ourselves. The Bureau’s team has taken the feedback a step further, setting up the pop up studio and brainstorming solutions to some of the issues that stand out most.
Ideas range from developing new, cost-effective street furniture to deal with one anonymous complainer’s frustration that there aren’t enough public places to sit outside to prototyping a bedroom that accelerates the sleep cycle for someone who wrote that they craved getting by on four hours of shuteye.
“We’re problem solvers by nature and this is a project with 1000 problems to solve,” says Happé.
After the Bureau closes this Sunday, the issues and fixes will be compiled into a 100-page book that will be available to download for free online. Happé hopes it inspires people to stop protesting so much and problem solve instead.
“It’s really tempting to be negative and a challenge to fix things but it feels great when you do it,” she says.
