THIS MACHINE HAS A SOUL, was a 5 year process of pushing for the City of Denver to adopt Participatory Budgeting into the budgeting process. It was a difficult uphill battle, but because we had incredible residents leading it, and the best artists around inspired by it–We won!!  The city of Denver has now completed 2 years of Participatory Budgeting, where neighborhood residents have decided how to spend over $4 million. It’s wonderful and it’s not yet perfect, so we’re continuing to push for more equity and more money for the process.

THIS MACHINE HAS A SOUL! explores creative responses to obstacles that residents face while navigating their home, their neighborhood, and their government. It’s weird. And fun.

And means a lot to a lot of people.

Residents, students, artists, and community groups have been working together to bring two participatory budgeting (PB) processes to Denver. In both processes residents and students are working with their communities to decide how to spend $30,000 on projects that are community-led, from collecting ideas to developing proposals to voting on the winning project, and lastly implementation. Artists have created work in service of the PB process that have been used to engage, teach, and inspire residents.

THIS MACHINE HAS A SOUL is inspired by the PB processes as well as by interviews with participants, neighborhood residents, history, artists and activists. It includes Hot Wheels, a museum of repeated history, a resurrected 1953 Chevy Bel Air, a bus stop, paintings of humans, a closet of souls on video, many murals, free trees, and it is wild!