Our fourth year of Cabinet of Curiosity's Pedal-Powered Programming. 2025's interactive event is called KAZOOZAPALOOZA: The Black Man from Macon.
The event will include an original spectacle Pedal-Powered device with narrative images painted on a giant 100-foot scroll attached to a bike that someone rides to make the pictures travel. The story is accompanied by original sung by Lynne Jordan. The bike-powered panoramic scroll is a spectacle item engineered by students of Cabinet of Curiosity's unique School of Celebration.

The production will play for free, outdoors, for children to persons of age in underserved communities of color. The event is almost entirely visual and includes a musical workshop and a free coloring book about engineering hope. Our event is currently funded to perform 4 times in public parks for free - Boler Park (Homan Square), Marquette Park (South Chicago), 3636 Iron Street (McKinley Park), and Verti Port (Pilsen). This is the third year we have been invited to return to these communities by Alder people, community leaders, neighborhood stakeholders and The Chicago Park District. We focused our first programming years on these targeted communities to generate trust and establish collaboration opportunities. Our staff, board, partners, and collective of artists are confident we can begin to build equally robust and meaningful partnerships with three new, additional communities.

The event aims to offer guests free kazoos, musical workshops, and paid opportunities to community members to work on the event. The event is interactive and celebrates the life of an underrecognized black man, Alabama Vest, the inventor of the Kazoo. Collaborators include Lynne Jordan, Homan Square Artist in Residence Bandon Boler, poet Samarem Diaz-Negrete, painter Mandy Newman Cobb, the School of the Art Institute, the Chicago Park District, the Homan Square Neighborhood Association, and Working Bikes

The Awesome Foundation will provide funds for one new neighborhood with equally great cultural and employment needs- West Garfield Park.