“It’s a monthly event where patrons of the art gallery come together to vote on proposals,” said East Lansing Sunday Soup founder Luke Allen Hackney. “$5 buys your meal and the vote. The proposals are anything that’s directly related to the arts. So the funding is for any sort of projects, ranging from working on paintings to trying to cut an album.”

After an hour of conversation, patrons who purchased a bowl of soup vote on their favorite proposal. The winner of the proposal receives the money raised from the soup.

Sunday Soup is not a local event, but a national grassroots movement that was founded in Grand Rapids by Ben Schaafsma. Sunday Soup’s can be found in Detroit, New York, and many other cities in America. Hackney personally knew Schaafsma, and was a fan of the program.

“I thought it was a really good idea,” Hackney said. “It was a cool thing to see and it’s been growing. It’s something that I wanted to bring to East Lansing, in part because I was volunteering at (SCENE) MetroSpace, which is where they take place and became a member of their advisory board.”

Tim Lane, the director of (SCENE) MetroSpace, said that Luke then came to him to discuss hosting the event at (SCENE) MetroSpace.

“We talked about it and worked out some parameters,” Lane said. “So Luke is the director of Sunday Soup at (SCENE) MetroSpace. He gets the donations, he receives the submissions. It’s pretty much his baby. We (just) provide the space for the event to take place.”

Taylor Davis is using her Sunday Soup earnings to plant “resistance posters” around East Lansing. The posters are inspired by the Situationist International movement that took place in France in the mid 1900’s. The movement advocated against consumerism and mass media and supported the idea of engaging in imagination and creativity.

“It’s important to me because I think in terms of health, if I didn’t live the way that these theorists prescribed, I would be confused and lonely and lost,” Davis said.

Davis is a fan of Sunday Soup and for what the program stands for.

“The establishment of Sunday Soup is a really cool idea and I think that a person’s art project is something that we should invest more time in and more of our consciousness in,” she said. “I’m not sure that I look at it as winning. I’m really proud of my community and how they’re supporting me. And I think that that’s crucial for a healthier society.”