We have cross-referenced economic reports, with media coverage and membership in professional design organizations. Those cities that met our “creative city” criteria are the cities that we are visiting. We chose cities that are not often in the spotlight and are pursuing enlightened strategies and ideas.

It depends, is your city listed on our itinerary? If it is, yes we are on our way.  If it isn’t we might still decide to swing through.  As our research progresses we will finalize the city program so there may be some additions or subtractions in the build up to the trip.

If your city doesn’t make it this time, we apologize.  We would love to visit every city in America but we just can’t fit everything into this first exploratory trip.  We do hope you will argue the merits of your city in one our communities though.

We’re building, with limited resources, a robust website and social networking presence to take in suggestions, comments and recommendations on who to talk to and what to see in each city in anticipation of our trip. This crowd sourcing combined with our own research will guide the journey.

In each city, we plan to interview as many designers as possible to understand how they participate in their city’s brand, life and economy, among other things, then we upload all the data and move to the next city. At the end of the trip we’ll select the best content and put it all together into a promotional book on design led change in the US.

We are.  We have put together a series of proposals to potential partners but haven’t received much of a response just yet.  This project is as much an experiment as it will be a book.

We are really into crowd sourcing and crowd funding theories.  As part of the experiment we are building as large as possible social network to take and in and participate with crowds.  We have also listed our project on kickstarter.com to explore the potential of crowd funding.

If you can help us with funding, we do appreciate it, if you can only help with an opinion that is welcome too.