In conjunction with Home Sweet Home: Is a Home a Sanctuary? on view in the Cynthia C. Wainwright Gallery, Children’s Museum of the Arts (CMA) presents Love Crickets, Save the Planet, a live cricket farm installation in the Bridge.

This site-specific installation invites visitors to explore the question “what is a home?” by considering how we might invite bugs into our homes as friends instead of foes. Artists Jude Tallichet and Adam Chad Brody believe that it is vital to expose young people to the idea that bugs not pests — rather, they are an essential part of our ecosystem and food systems. Love Crickets, Save the Planet will showcase functioning cricket farms, original animations that explore cooking with crickets, kinesthetic cricket dancing with larger-than-life cricket projections, and participatory cricket concerts. This installation will give visitors the chance to observe these insects at a level of intimacy that few will have enjoyed before. Visitors will be able to view crickets up close, examine various cricket habitats and feeding systems, learn about the benefits of utilizing crickets as an alternative source of nutrition, and even dance with larger-than-life cricket projections. This installation is invested in a culturally situated approach to ecological revolution whereby crickets become kin, housemates, collaborators, and entertainment, in addition to being a food source.

Are we connected to our food in a meaningful way, or are we simply raising food in order not to starve? Love Crickets, Save the Planet will foster a new understanding, not only of what young people eat, but of how our food factors into a larger system.