This month, five Detroit arts groups are vying for the Knight Arts Challenge People’s Choice Award, a $20,000 prize the winner can use for a project of their choice. The award is one of the ways Knight aims to bring attention to small arts organizations and their impact on the city. Here, KnightArts.org has a quick word with  Sherrine Azab and Jake Hooker  of nominee A Host of People, a theater group celebrating the DIY movement in food and the arts. Vote for the group by texting Detroit1 to 22333, and learn about the other nominees at knightarts.org/peopleschoice.

Q. What do you love most about your arts group? A. We love the experimentation.  When we begin, we don’t know where we’re going to end.  We love collaboration.  Everybody in our process — performers, designers, musicians and especially the audience — are part of the generation of the work.  We’re all making it together.  And because of all of that creative combustion, what we make, is big, bold, visually arresting, thought provoking and fun.

Q. What would you do with the $20,000 People’s Choice award? A. Part of the funds will go directly towards our upcoming production The Harrowing; part will go towards renovating our attic into a rehearsal space/chamber theater where we can develop this and future works; and part will go towards establishing a mobile bike cafe that we can take to events and other neighborhoods in order to get the word out about our own work as well as that of other artists in Detroit.

Q. Three words or phrases your fans would use to describe your work? A. Welcoming, transportive, captivating

Q. What’s the best thing about Detroit’s arts community? A. Artists in Detroit are really game for cross-disciplinary collaboration and are really imaginative about space and resources.  The arts community in Detroit isn’t as separated by discipline or genre as we’ve seen in a lot of other cities.

Q. Personal cultural highlight over the past year? A. The presentation of our series Performance, Potluck, and Punch is high on our list.  3P is a winter performance series where we curate two artists to make living-room sized works for our home and we invite our neighbors in for the price of a dish to share.  It’s a simple idea, but it led to nights that were as fulfilling as the best dinner parties, where you leave satisfied by good food, good people and, in this case, good art.

Q. What subject would you like to know more about? A. All of them!  There is truth in that because curiosity is what drives us to create.  Right now we’re obsessed with exploring urban community gardens in Detroit (the site and subject of a production in development).  We are driven by the importance that these sites have in this city and the commonality we suspect exists between artists and gardeners–the connection between those that create nourishment whether from food or art.

Q. What is one aspect of your personal life that has the greatest impact on your professional life? A. We’ve recently bought a house in Detroit that we’re (slooooowly) renovating.  It’s a big project and certainly something that’s new and unexpected for us, but it feels amazing to be putting down roots in Detroit at this moment and to be creating a home base for our company to work out of for years to come.

Q. Why is the work you do important to your audience? A. At our last full-length show one audience member told us that they’ve never felt so welcomed at an art event before.  That’s exactly what we’re going for!  We want to invite our audience in and host them at our work like we would at our home, whether we perform for them in our house, on the street, in a garden, or in a theater. We invite them to have their own imaginative experience.  It’s completely theirs.  There is no wrong interpretation.