Hunt & Darton Present Kids Business Art Exhibition

Handing all the decisions over to children aged 5 - 15, Kids Business is a brand-new site specific public art work in a high street shop by award-winning live art duo Hunt & Darton.

Working with local budding young entrepreneurs, Hunt & Darton will run a series of workshops to grow ideas, cultivate skills, and bring to fruition the creation of a new business, democratically conjured up through the imagination of a group of kids. Be it a bank, barbers, bakery that is up to them. Participants are invited to dress in executive attire and attend 'Meetings' around the board table where each session will focus on aspects of an enterprise kicking off, debating everything from uniforms, procedures, products and services to roles, decor, brand, policies and signage. Taking the final agreed vision, the Hunt & Darton team will then manage a dramatic make-over of the space - painting, building, stocking until the business is ready to go. For two consecutive weekends the pop-up shop will open to the public staffed by local children - perhaps it's a bakery specialising in unicorn cream horns, or a bank whose currency is emotions, or maybe it's a barbers with only one haircut, the only way to find out is to go shopping.

Hunt & Darton is a live art collaboration between Jenny Hunt and Holly Darton, best known as creators of the award-winning Hunt & Darton Café, a pop-up interactive performance/installation and fully-functioning café, and Radio Local creating unique hyper local broadcast experiences across the UK. Hunt & Darton make art events that they perform and make with the general public, taking their work directly to people, they like to pop up on high streets, interrupt daily routines, challenge automated behaviour and have a laugh.

Jenny Hunt and Holly Darton said "Finally its time to start having a bit of fun again. We want to take over an empty shop throwing the transformation of the space to the boundless imaginations of young local minds - creating and running their own fully functional business on the high street in this highly creative and entrepreneurial project. That's right. Move aside Primark, Gregs who? M&S - never heard of you! First they enter the board room, then there's the make over and then we open for business! For Real! There's an opportunity for everyone to get involved as the children's unmade decisions are left for the public to decide. Anyone who wants to can get involved! This is a terrifyingly exciting project because kids are brilliantly mad!"

Clacton-on-Sea 9-10 April (Recruitment weekend)

13-15 April (workshops)

30 April - 1 May Opening Weekend 1

7-8 May Opening Weekend 2

Partner: Colchester Arts Centre

Newcastle under Lyme 11-12 June (Recruitment Weekend)

16 - 19 July (Workshop Weekend)

2-3 July Opening Weekend 1

9 - 10 July Opening Weekend 2

Fenland 10-11 September (Recruitment Weekend)

15-18 September (Workshops)

1-2 October Opening Weekend 1

8-9 October Opening Weekend 2

Corby 5-8 November (Recruitment weekend)

10-13 November (Workshops)

26-27 November Opening Weekend 1

3-4 December Opening Weekend 2

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