Iowa Popups - Oct 2018

Becky Anderson, Alex Fortes, and Wayne Lee at a voter registration Pop-up at Davenport Public Library

VOTESart kicked off its October Iowa residency with a series of pop-up concerts at coffeeshops, libraries, and farmers’ markets in Iowa City, Coralville, and Davenport.

While we had the help of Iowan musician friends of ours, most notably Wayne Lee and Juliana Han of Davenport, who gave us a place to sleep, we were surprised by how much we could get done by cold calling friendly neighborhood organizations such as libraries, farmers’ markets, and coffee shops to get a bunch of voter registration pop-up concerts going.

We made a list of institutions in Davenport, Iowa City and Coralville that seemed to have the space to allow for a few musicians to come in and play for an hour, and emailed or called them to speak to a person in charge – usually a manager who would be present during our visit.

We found it was important to explain what we were doing (playing classical music for an hour while encouraging non-partisan voter registration), how much space we’d take up, etc.

At the various places, we tried to find a table that was near where we were playing, but not so near that people would feel uncomfortable, where we would place a clipboard with Iowa voter registration forms, pens, a clipboard, and a cheap tablet (we used an Amazon Fire 7) with the browser open to vote.org’s register to vote website. We also created a little quarter-sheet with important voting information, including voter registration deadlines, Voter ID requirements, and where to find additional information. If people registered on paper, we immediately took those voter registration forms to the county registrar’s office at the end of that day.

We were able to register a few people at pretty much every event, and we also were able to speak with a lot of community minded people (many already registered) who were incredibly generous – we were taken out to dinner by one listener, and offered places to stay by two people.

We’re looking forward to our residencies later this month in Virginia and Wisconsin, where we will combine these pop-up events with school residencies and house concerts!

-Alex