From an e mail conversation between Kathrin and Adam:

E MAIL FROM KATHRIN

HONESTY BOX
I left quite a few Höfer Goods and Horsemilk products with Michael last Friday for the Rochelle School Honesty Box. Also left green myvillages.org frames with a brief introtext to go into the box together with the produce.
Michael wants to put things in today, and watch how fast which product sells.
We made some Shoreditch prices and let s see if it sells.

I like the multiplication of the HONESTY BOX, e.g. as Wapke suggests at the Witte de WIth in Rotterdam, and in her village.
I also would like to start one in our office at public works, and maybe one next spring in Höfen.
There could be some very simple guidelines for the extension of those boxes:
- they happen at places where we are active ( a similar rule that Wapke has for her soil drillings)
- they are made from recycled material on location

The growing number of boxes can also be seen as an extension of the "Village Kiosk" proposal.

E MAIL RESPONSE FROM ADAM

Karen and Nina are doing an Honesty Stall in their Northern art prize show in Leeds next month and are bringing/making a bunch more Japanese stuff.

Name and network would be good to formalise, maybe 'Pay what you think is right' is a term we have used.

I am making some japanese styled tea bowls centred around the idea of adding value to objects based on the Japanese concept of Meingei - very close to the idea of value in art. So the idea is the bowl is valueless until it is selected by a collector, it then becomes high value. The rules of mingei are all about how the object is produced in the first place, ie anonymous, part of mass production by hand, in normal use etc. I am interested in the idea that the purchaser basically pays what they think they are worth, ie how much value they bring to the object - sort of like therapy language, invest in yourself etc.
So maybe the honesty stall could be called 'pay what you are worth'

Also local to us there has opened an honesty cafe, pay what your wallet can afford or exchange work in the garden - seems to be working very well.

I had a chat with the design museum the other day I think they would be interested in having a stall too - maybe we need to put a cap on the number as it gets hard to service so many in an interesting way.

RE product: I would like to start to generate some cross over products, I am doing a schnapps bottle with Christoph Keller. Should we try to make this for Rochelle?

This thing of value starts to get complicated though even for example the rice has to be expensive, it is anyway and with shipping its unreasonable expensive so?

Posted by Kathrin Böhm on 07/11/07 at 15:34 : 0 Comments