Department
of Tenderness
A participatory art project creating public rituals of care, recognition, and emotional exchange through the language of civic institutions.
Agency Mandate
Department of Tenderness is a participatory art project that uses the language of civic institutions to create public rituals of care, recognition, and emotional exchange. Through street activations, installations, forms, citations, advice, and interpersonal encounters, it invites people to imagine what a government office devoted to tenderness might actually do.
Agency Services & Inquiries
Select a department below to begin your activation.
Tenderness Interventions
Review previous work or request an activation
Love Landmark Requests
Submit a site, place, or memory for inclusion
Tenderness Incident Reports
Report a moment, act, or encounter of tenderness
Sign Office
Browse the sign archive or submit a suggestion
Department Notices
Public bulletins, announcements, and poetic updates
About the Department
Mission, team, and agency history
Public Inquiries
Contact for commissions, collaborations, or questions
Past Activations
A selection of previous public interventions and agency deployments.
Bureau of Mutual Recognition
A pop-up office where citizens could issue official citations of appreciation to strangers and neighbors. Over 500 citations were filed and hand-delivered over three days.
The National Archive of Small Joys
A mobile archival unit that collects and categorizes small, everyday moments of tenderness. Each entry is assigned a unique tracking number and filed in a public database.
Emergency Care Hotline
A 24-hour phone line where callers could receive automated tenderness advice or leave messages for the Department's listening officers.
Bring Department of Tenderness to Your Space
We create interactive public experiences for streets, festivals, galleries, institutions, and community spaces. Our work often takes the form of bureaucratic rituals, public interventions, participatory installations, and civic-style encounters.
Initiate CollaborationAvailability & Services
- Commissions
- Public Programming
- Festivals
- Exhibitions
- Workshops
- Custom Site-Specific Activations
- Institutional or Community Collaborations
Founded on the principle that emotional infrastructure is as vital as physical transit, the Department of Tenderness began as a rogue street intervention in 2021. It has since evolved into a mobile agency that partners with major cultural institutions to deploy care at scale.
Director of Outreach
Leading the Department's efforts in public engagement and community relations.
Lead Archivist
Overseeing the collection and preservation of public tenderness records.
Public Inquiries
We are available for commissions, festivals, exhibitions, workshops, public programming, and custom activations.