The Cigarette Butts Picking Game seeks to gather the power of the community to rebuild and strengthen the relationship between citizens and the street cleaners. In the workshop, participants will need to pick and collect cigarette butts for our exhibition. The aim is to co-create and design parts of the exhibits together with different members of the society, to achieve the goal of ‘Design as One’. Everyone has the power to reshape society – and empowering street cleaners may be our first step through ‘Design as One’.
The Cigarette Butts Committee reinterprets existing issues in a defamiliarised and humorous design form. The current situation of street cleaners is framed as ‘unclear’ (the public is not clear about the work of the cleaners), ‘unclean’ (the working environment of the cleaners is filthy) and ‘unjust’ (the cleaners are treated unfairly). The cleaners are at the core of the project, and the issue is reexamined from a bottom-up perspective.
Cigarette butt littering is a metaphor for the ‘unclean’ section, whilst the mock Olympic Games is an interpretation for the ‘unclear’ component. The goal is to awaken citizens’ awareness of environmental protection and the rights of street cleaners in Hong Kong.
