Darren O'Donnell, Criteria to Determine Beautiful Civic Engagement

1.
Gluing the Grease and Greasing the Glue: conflating the imperative to grease the wheels of commerce with the imperative to glue the social fabric; in other words, hauling the community into the commercial and the commercial into the community to spread, or equalize, power.

2.
Diversity: age, race, sexual orientation, religion, occupation, etc.

3.
Atypical Encounter: people doing things they wouldn't ordinarily do, or would ordinarily do but in an unordinary context with people they wouldn't ordinarily do it with.

4.
Inversion of Hierarchies: those who normally have the power give it up, or participate in service to other less powerful participants.

5.
Offering Agency: creating a context that provides agency to those who would not ordinarily have it.

6.
Questioning Social Assumptions, Imperatives: creating a context where taboos are challenged by actions that reveal the taboo to be based in social control.

7.
Atypical use of public and public/private space: playing where we're supposed to work and working where we're supposed to play.

8.
Fruitful Antagonisms: triggering friction, tension, and examining the ensuing dynamic in a performative arena where all is easily forgiven.

9.
Volunteer Ownership: providing opportunities for volunteers to participate to foster a wider sense of ownership.

10.Blurring of Roles: passersby become observers; observers become participants; participants become collaborators and volunteers become creators.

11. Generating Buzz: where the media is on par with other aspects of the project; the media as collaborators-slippery collaborators-but collaborators, nonetheless.

-- Some great insight to take into consideration when entertaining the thought of throwing a performative art piece, related to social activism. It's interesting to see each point here striving to spread the wealth and the power among communities, a way of equalizing people in such a way that everyone is on the same level. I think the role reversal's of power relations is interesting. And the main meat and potatoes here is that everyone is a creator of some sort, if you're participating in the message you are participating in the cause.