Enjoy a Pedal Powered Picnic with Chicago’s Cabinet of Curiosity

Cabinet of Curiosity, in collaboration with lead partner Working Bikes, presents Pedal Powered Picnic, June 29, an outdoor benefit to support Cabinet of Curiosity’s free summer programming. Enjoy picnic foods, live grilling, beer, soda, all the elements of 2024’s Pedal Powered Playground from 12 - 7 p.m. There will be 3 enormous interactive sculptures, multiple bikes that power whimsical devices, an engineering workshop, a short puppet show and a free coloring book along with a live solo musical performance by Michelle Billingsley from 3 - 4 p.m., and more. Tickets are on sale now for $50 and can be purchased at cocechicago.com.

Pedal Powered Playground, devised by Frank Maugeri and a dozen students from Cabinet’s paid training program The School of Celebration, includes multiple bug- and beast-inspired sculptures containing fans blowing pinwheels, record players playing vinyl albums, and machines emitting showers of bubbles, all which are powered by audience members on transformed exercise bicycles. Each event includes a mechanical engineering workshop and mechanism building station where participants will be invited to add their creation to one of the large sculptures; collectively creating a totem of communal expression. Additionally, each participant may take home a free coloring comic book that examines the necessity of global sustainability, healthy exercise, conscious eating, alternative forms of power, and the enormous value and respect of bugs and creatures from the natural and imagined world. Expect an uncanny garden of oddities and surprises.