Draw A Dance Figure & Get Candy
As part of my effort to understand the notion of dance for different individuals, I did a guerrilla drawing solicitation today at a cafe near my apartment.
In the cafe, I put on my table a sign, a bowl of candy, color sharpies and a sketch book.
I stayed in the cafe for half an hour, but didn’t get any interest. I first tried making eye contact with people coming my way, but they immediately looked away. So I switched to keeping my head down doing other stuff behind my sign, but that didn’t work either. Then I tried keeping my head down and looking up with a friendly smile when I hear someone coming my way, but again as soon as I looked up, people avoided my eyes. Most people, as I noticed, seemed to consciously keep their eyes away from my table throughout the entire process of walking past me.
At one point I thought I finally got two teenagers’ attention, but as I started explaining to them that they could sketch something, they told me they were actually discussing the drawings on the wall behind me (awkwarrrd…:[])
I’m gonna improve my solicitation strategy learning from today’s trial. Maybe I should make the sign more clear about what I’m doing, or maybe I should be more confident in my eye contact, or maybe I should try a different location?
Onward.
