Pass It On is a live art installation exploring our creative capacity to create joy for each other. On entering the space audiences are offered free joy - in the form of a free soft ice cream - if they pledge to pass on that joy to someone else. 

These pledges are added to the walls of the space, growing over the course of the run to become a joyful, heartwarming and entertaining collective portrait of friendship, care and connection. 

The work playfully models a post-capitalist joy-based economy, imagining the abundance of a world with delight as the primary currency.

With Pass It On I aim to challenge the capitalist values we ascribe to creativity. Our current definition emphasises individuality for its focus on private over public benefits, usefulness for its profitability, and originality as this leads to scarcity. The creativity scholar Shannon Steen argues that we need a new definition of creativity as a generous, unselfish activity we do together to help each other, rather than an act of self-expression which only benefits ourselves. Pass It On demonstrates this concept: how can each of us use our creativity to benefit others, through the simple act of creating a moment of joy?

Commissioned by Stellar Creates as part of Happy Rooms

25 Linthorpe Road, Middlesbrough, TS1 1TH

3 August - 22 September 2024

www.happyrooms.co.uk