2020
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2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2020
Piloting Innovative Community Engagement, Urban Design & Advocacy Tools For The "Special L.E.S. And Chinatown Waterfront District
In dense and growing cities like New York, meaningful community participation in planning and urban design projects is essential to further equitable and sustainable development. This is particularly relevant in Chinatown, Manhattan where the local community needs tools to fight luxury towers, gentrification and the displacement of low-income tenants and businesses.
Our project seeks to co-develop a set of interactive digital tools - WE_GENERATE (beta) - that democratize neighborhood planning in Chinatown by empowering citizens to visualize and shape complex urban projects, analyze trade-offs in real-time, and make persuasive data-backed choices that further resilience, preservation, and urban justice.
These user-friendly digital tools will actively engage local constituents in the planning process, to ensure that their priorities and concerns are reflected in a proposed Special District for the Chinatown Waterfront.
Fellows:
Meta Brunzema
Adjunct Associate Professor, Graduate Architecture and Urban Design
Community Partner: Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES)
2019
Community Photo Album: Encouraging Civic Activism Through Shared Histories
This research and exhibition of the community surrounding Sara D Roosevelt Park in the Lower East Side of Manhattan seeks to inspire community engagement in the reclamation of an underutilized parks building. An exhibition of archival images–from the NYC Parks Department to family albums–will bring together current and past residents of the community to share their histories and connections to the neighborhoods served by the park since its opening in 1934. The goal of this exhibition is to inspire community activism by strengthening connections to shared stories, histories, and sustainable futures to raise awareness of the potentials of underutilized sites to provide spaces, services, and programs that the community urgently needs.
Fellows:
Keena Suh
Associate Professor - Interior Design
Karyn Zieve
Adjunct Assistant Professor History of Art and Design
Seokyoung Jung
Undergraduate Interior Design
Community Partner: Sara Roosevelt Park Community Coalition
2019
Protecting Community Gardens
Seemingly unfettered real estate development threatens the very precious sustainability and resiliency of our coastal city. The community-based environmental resources of our city's Community Gardens hold the key(s) to ensuring our municipal capacity to mitigate the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events such as Super Storm Sandy. Our project entails mobilizing community-based advocacy and organizing efforts focused on securing regulatory protections for improving the land tenure of Community Gardens / Community Farms.
Fellows:
Raymond Figueroa
Visiting Instructor - Graduate Center for Planning
Samuel Pressman
Graduate Student - Sustainable Environmental Systems
Community Partner: Nos Quedamos
2019
Climate Resilience Leadership Lab
The Climate Resilience Leadership Lab aims to support young people in East Harlem to build awareness about climate change and their community, make their voices heard through advocacy in the civic realm, and take real action through pilot projects. In 2018 and 2019, Pratt faculty and students from the School of Architecture Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment will work with DREAM Charter School in East Harlem to collaborate on a pilot project with a group of high school students and a public housing tenants association. The project will create an emergency preparedness guidebook for public housing residents and provide information about climate change risks and resources to make the community more resilient.
Fellows:
Michael Haggerty
Visiting Assistant Professor - Architecture
Samuel Pressman
Graduate Student - Sustainable Environmental Systems
Community Partner: DREAM Charter School
2019
A Food Buying Club for East New York
Building on a capstone research project in the Arts and Cultural Management program, the team will further engage with the East New York community to develop community driven food buying club that provides year-round access to affordable, fresh food. The project encompasses the exploration of location options and location partners for regular deliveries, the co-creation of the logistics and the design of the communication system among food buying club members.
Fellows:
Pirco Wolframm
Assistant Chairperson - Communications Design
Ava Wang
Undergraduate Communications Design
Stephanie Høholt-Pajuelo
Graduate Student - Communications Design
Tara Nasr
Graduate Student - Communications Design
Community Partner: East New York Farms!
2019
Not Yet
NOT YET explores the inherent community work in artmaking through intentional, accessible creative spaces in New York City. Their programming is curated by women, queer people, and people of color. They offer not only material resources for community health & wellness and political engagement projects, but also intentional fellowship and partnerships that lay the groundwork for the future. Not Yet is a breathing example of how it’s possible to make art and build community at the same time. Follow the project at www.notyetseries.com.
Fellows:
Paige Polk
Graduate Student - Media Studies
Elizabeth Olguin
Graduate Student - Media Studies
Jayna Brown
Professor - Humanities & Media Studies
Community Partner: New Women's Space
2019
As Told
As Told is an oral histories project aimed at recording and publishing the stories of Clinton Hill- and Fort Greene-area senior citizens in Brooklyn, NY. In light of social and economic transformations in Brooklyn and specifically these neighborhoods, we believe it is valuable to document the history of our community's oldest residents by gaining knowledge of their daily lives and their journeys. As Told creates a forum for those who have persevered through many waves of change to share their experiences while finding ways to honor and learn from their wisdom.
Fellows:
Luke Dengan
Senior Web Content Manager
Maria Baker
Visiting Instructor - Pratt Integrative Courses (PIC)
Samuel Herrera
Undergraduate Photography
Aarushi Agni
Graduate Creative Writing
Community Partner: Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Project
2019
Environmental Art Therapy
The League School is a school/day treatment combination that provides clinical and educational services to children and adolescents with significant and frequently severe developmental and psychological disabilities. Individual and group art therapy sessions in relationship to the outdoor environment will be conducted twice a week as a part of the clinical and creative arts therapy services currently offered at League School. Environmental Art Therapy – which provides an invaluable nature-based venue for creative generation and allows for a deeper and more expansive awareness of self and other - is becoming increasingly prevalent, and we believe firmly that adopting this practice at the League School in conjunction with Smile Farms Inc., an on-site horticulture program, will support these young people in profound ways while also furthering the emergence of the field of Environmental Art Therapy.
Fellows:
Jean Davis
Associate Professor - Creative Arts Therapy
Ashley Breton
Graduate Student - Creative Arts Therapy
Allyson Parrish
Graduate Student - Creative Arts Therapy
Lindsey Gamble
Graduate Student - Creative Arts Therapy
Community Partner: League School – League Education and Treatment Center
2018
A Landfill for New York
Today, Edgemere landfill in the Rockaways, Queens is capped and is at the end of remediation process that converted the former municipal dump into a spectacular, and yet unused, 173-acre site offering views of Jamaica Bay and the Manhattan skyline. Landfill for New York project aims to bring local residents together with a diverse group of experts and artists to understand and imagine the potential of this land.
Fellows:
Elliott Maltby
Adjunct Associate Professor - Graduate Architecture & Urban Design
Simon Kates
Visiting Assistant Professor - Grad Center for Planning
Martha Wilson
Visiting Associate Professor - History of Art and Design
Community Partner: Rockaway Waterfront Alliance
2018
Productive Collisions
PRODUCTIVE COLLISIONS is a project about imagining more equitable pathways to opportunity in the Bedford-Stuyvesant community. This project will create temporal and transformable structures in public spaces to connect the Vernon Avenue Project/Reconnect community partner with the community. The transformable structure will include space to encourage individual interactions and commercial exchanges.
Fellows:
Latoya Kamdang
Visiting Associate Professor - Interior Design
Community Partner: Vernon Avenue Project
2018
Garden Of Gems
This project aims to build self confidence and economic empowerment in immigrant women with a history of Domestic Violence and/or Human Trafficking through art therapy jewelry making support groups. Through the groups the women can learn jewelry making skills, build a sense of community and a sense of accomplishment to develop their inner strength and voice. As an added benefit the selling of the jewelry online can provide the women with an additional income while also raising awareness of the atrocities of human trafficking and domestic violence in New York.
Fellows:
Dina Schapiro
Assistant Chairperson-Creative Arts Therapy, Adjunct Assistant Professor - Creative Arts Therapy
Community Partner: Garden of Hope
2018
Merchants Energy Opportunites Project
This research and business engagement project will provide the Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Project (MARP) with a roadmap for pursuing cooperative energy purchasing as a means for small business to remain competitive and thrive along Myrtle Avenue’s commercial corridor.
Fellows:
Jen Becker
Visiting Assistant Professor - Grad Center for Planning
Community Partner: Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership
2018
A Strategic Plan for Vernon Avenue Project
The project aims to support the growing social entrepreneurial non-profit Reconnect Brooklyn in building their capacity to engage disconnected youth in Bedford Stuyvesant via their graphics and apparel businesses. The work will center around a strategic planning initiative and technical evaluation of their current practices and training.
Fellows:
Jack Travis
Adjunct Professor - Interior Design
Community Partner: Vernon Avenue Project
2018
Stories in Clay
Stories in Clay is a series of 15 claymaking workshops, led by both a ceramics major and an art education major at Pratt Institute. These workshops will also include storytelling, and these stories will be added to the oral histories that are already part of the Listening Bench, an interactive outdoor bench that plays back stories told by Gibb Mansion residents . By the end of the workshop period, approximately Spring 2018, we plan to design and publish a catalogue of the clay works and the stories. The catalogue/book will provide another piece of tangible history of a unique, yet fragile community.
Fellows:
Theodora Skipitares
Associate Professor - Art and Design Education
Community Partner: Impacct Brooklyn
2018
Designating Community Gardens
In light of the city's exposed built-environment vulnerabilities as a result of climate change-induced extreme weather events, the goal of this project is to promote green infrastructure-based community resilience and sustainability; and to do so, in part, by promoting the utilization of New York City’s best environmental assets – community gardens – which happen to be spatially concentrated within the city’s most socially marginalized communities’. The project seeks to demonstrate that a policy of preservation of community gardens and their concomitant ecosystem service contributions to the city is an extremely cost-effective resiliency and sustainability strategy.
Fellows:
Raymond Figueroa
Visiting Instructor - Grad Center for Planning
Community Partner: We Stay/Nos Quedamos Committee
2018
Landmark Pioneers in Addressing Community Concerns and Secondary Displacement in the Eis Process: Two Bridges/ Chinatown/ Lowe East Side
Thirty years ago, the Chinese Staff Workers Association successfully sued the City of New York for violating City Environmental Quality Review regulations, establishing that indirect displacement of residents and businesses was a necessary component of the review of any large-scale development. Today, the same neighborhood faces similar development and gentrification pressures that stand to displace residents, businesses, and culture, yet the city continues to calculate secondary displacement using assumptions based on New York’s housing market in 1986 and decision-makers lack complete information about the potential impact of new development. This project will provide technical assistance and support to a local tenant group that is fighting to preserve low-cost housing and diversity in one of Manhattan’s last remaining affordable neighborhoods.
Fellows:
Eve Baron
Chairperson, Center for Planning and the Environment - Grad Center for Planning
Eva Hanhardt
Visiting Assistant Professor - Grad Center for Planning
Mercedes Narciso
Adjunct Associate Professor - Grad Center for Planning
Ayse Yonder
Professor - Grad Center for Planning
Jamie Stein
Adjunct Associate Professor, Academic Coordinator - Grad Center for Planning
Community Partner: Tenants United Fighting for Lower East Side
2018
Truthworker Theater Trilogy
Truthworker Theatre Company is a social justice based, hip-hop theatre company for high school and college aged youth in Brooklyn. Using theatre & media to examine history & learn about models for creating social change, we call upon poetry, dance, rap, step, & critical thinking skills as tools to develop solution driven communities.
Fellows:
Tracie Morris
Professor - Humanities & Media Studies
Community Partner: Truthworker Theatre Company
2017
Concrete Waves
This green infrastructure research project focuses on the development of a skate park that doubles as a storm water management system and creates an active space for youth in Red Hook.
Fellows:
Gita Nandan
Visiting Associate Professor - Grad Center for Planning
Community Partner: Red Hook Initiative
2017
Chipping Away at Poverty Through Community Design
This project aims to close-the-loop with the Park Slope Food Coop, the Park Slope Community Help, Inc. (CHiPS), and a community garden through designing a collection bin for compost. The goal is to establish a self-sustaining program that encourages the reduction of food waste through community design.
Fellows:
Jennifer Telesca
Assistant Professor - Social Science & Cultural Studies
Community Partner: CHiPS
2017
Reducing Food Insecurity in Washington Heights
This project aims to address food insecurity in Washington Heights through a mobile emergency food pantry. Using a design thinking methodology, the analysis of cultural and community needs will inform the design of the mobile pantry operations and how it can build discussion around community health and well-being.
Fellows:
Denise Tahara
Visiting Associate Professor - Design Management
Edwin Kuo
Visiting Associate Professor - Design Management
Community Partner: West Side Campaign Against Hunger (WSCAH)
2017
Whose Streets?! Our Streets!
This archival project will support the Bushwick community in the collective documentation of their own histories, and produce a digital platform to house these memories. It consists of a series of planning and skills workshops, followed by a series of oral history and archive sessions at community events.
Fellows:
Caitlin Cahill
Visiting Instructor - Art and Design Education
Chris Neville
Visiting Assistant Professor - Grad Center for Planning
Cynthia Tobar
Visiting Assistant Professor - School of Information
Community Partner: Make the Road NY (MTRNY)
2017
Bronx Outreach & Visioning
This project will work towards ensuring that any future development or proposed uses for available land are in line with the needs of the community. The goal is to assist the Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice with their community outreach and visioning process.
Fellows:
Jamie Stein
Adjunct Associate Professor, Academic Coordinator - Grad Center for Planning
Community Partner: Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice (YMPJ)
2017
Urban Planning in 6-12th Grade
This project seeks to research and design a program to build partnerships between Pratt Institute's planning ,design, and technology programs and 6-12th grade schools in New York City to further equity and inclusion in Urban Planning and other innovation fields.
Fellows:
Aileen Wilson
Professor, Dice/Pratt Young Scholars Instructor, Director-Center for Art and Design and Community Engagement - Art and Design Education, K-12 Center
Community Partner: Various Schools throughout New York City
2016
Composting Youth Participation and Education Initiative
This youth development project focuses on sustainability. It features Educational workshops on urban ecology, community gardening, composting, and design for a compost bin.
Fellows:
Emma Weiss
Graduate Student in Architecture
Mark Parsons
Director of Production & Technology & Executive Director Res, Adjunct Assistant Professor - Provost, Undergraduate Architecture
Community Partner: 200 Lexington Block and Clifton Place Block Association Community Garden
2016
Grey to Green
This Green infrastructure project addresses combined sewer overflow into Newtown Creek. It identifies how much storm water capture is needed to stop a particular overflow into the Creek, and engages the local community to achieve this goal.
Fellows:
Josh Eichen
Visiting Assistant Professor - Grad Center for Planning
Community Partner: Newton Creek Alliance
2016
Photo Narratives for Change
This participatory action research project engages low-income Bronx Community College students in documenting their communities through photography and narrative.
Fellows:
Svetlana Jovic
Visiting Instructor - Social Science & Cultural Studies
Community Partner: Bronx Community College
2016
Sustainability Indicators for Greenest Block in Brooklyn
This project evaluates the “Greenest Block in Brooklyn” initiative by creating a list of sustainability indicators to quantify the environmental impact of the program.
Fellows:
Ira Stern
Visiting Assistant Professor - Grad Center for Planning
Community Partner: Brooklyn Botanical Garden's Greenbridge Program
2016
Listening Bench
The Listening Bench project collects oral histories through workshops with Gibb Mansion residents. The oral histories are recorded and fragments are played on an interactive outdoor bench at the facility.
Fellows:
Theodora Skipitares
Associate Professor - Art and Design Education
Community Partner: Gibb Mansion, Pratt Area Community Council
2015
Infrastructure Improvements for Hattie Carthan Urban Farm
This project engages a community garden’s members in hands-on, minds-on activities by making tangible improvements that inspire future growth. The project worked to build herb garden retaining walls with mosaic, a solar water fountain, a wooden platform pagoda, and an encasement for the outhouse.
Fellows:
Kelly Horrigan
Adjunct Professor - CCE - Fashion Design
Community Partner: Hattie Carthan Herban Farm, Bedford Stuyvesant
2015
Lowlands
This project is a collaboration to explore and define an “integrated, community based green infrastructure plan.” Its goals are: 1) to use green infrastructure as a vehicle for a more economically and ecologically resilient public housing population; 2) to address social justice issues in relation to access to quality public space, and 3) to engage local youth in the process of improving their environment, and 4 ) to design innovative, integrated stormwater management strategies.
Fellows:
Elliott Maltby
Adjunct Associate Professor - Graduate Architecture & Urban Design
Gita Nandan
Visiting Associate Professor - Grad Center for Planning
Community Partner: Red Hook Initiative
2015
Suspending Injustice: Alternatives to Zero Tolerance
Through a participatory action research approach, this project aims to deepen and expand the understanding of the relationship between zero tolerance school policies and school culture. The project creates creative critical media products to reach a broad public audience (youth-produced documentary shorts, stickers, website, and other digital technology products) and a white paper for policy purposes.
Fellows:
Caitlin Cahill
Visiting Instructor - Art and Design Education
Community Partner: Make the Road NY
2015
Open Sewer Atlas NYC
The goal is to map out the full sewer system within the Newtown Creek, Tallman Island, Hunts Point, Jamaica Bay, and Red Hook water pollution control plan sewersheds. Doing so will produce an extensive visualization of CSO (Combined Sewer Overflow) problem areas and its contributing factors.
Fellows:
Josh Eichen
Visiting Assistant Professor - Grad Center for Planning
Community Partner: SWIM (Stormwater Infrastructure Management) Coalition
2015
Facilitating Food Waste Recycling and Reuse in Clinton Hill Fort Greene
Taconic fellow will design a food waste container for use by food-related businesses in MARP’s catchment area. She will also design a set of visual communication tools to serve as a public/educational campaign (for businesses and households alike) about the importance of recycling food waste.
Fellows:
Gita Nandan
Visiting Associate Professor - Grad Center for Planning
William Mangold
Adjunct Assistant Professor - Interior Design
Community Partner: MARP (Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Project LDC)
2015
Furniture Partitions for Women for Afghan Women’s Community Center in Queens
John Heida will work with Pratt students to design a series of movable partitions that dampen sound and contain fold-out tables and seats. The use of sustainable materials will be explored.
Fellows:
John Thomas Heida
Visiting Assistant Professor - Interior Design
Community Partner: Women for Afghan Women (Fresh Meadows, NY)
2015
Raw Fiction
Four writers from Brooklyn between the ages of 16 and 20 will participate in workshops to produce a series of original written work that grapples with various themes related to community, socioeconomic equity, self-development, etc. The workshops will also teach these young people tools related to self-publishing and the work that goes into the production and promotion of writing/literature.
Fellows:
Christian Hawkey
Professor - Writing Department
Community Partner: Hetrick-Martin Institute
2015
Reactivating Public Spaces through Design
Draw attention to the space and to create a visual language that can be used to create aesthetic/design cohesion between the various public spaces along Fulton Street in Clinton Hill by constructing and installing an art piece in Putnam Triangle. Project will create presentation materials to engage DOT and community groups in creating the cohesive design vision.
Fellows:
Mark Parsons
Director of Production & Technology & Executive Director Res, Adjunct Assistant Professor - Provost, Undergraduate Architecture
Community Partner: FAB Alliance
2014
Coney Island Ferry Visioning Project
The project has engaged Coney Island Generation Gap and Friends of Kaiser Park in a community-based planning process to design and implement a ferry landing and park on the south shore of Coney Island Creek. By facilitating a visioning process to solicit local input about community needs, the project will seek to demonstrate a genuine community need for a ferry landing and new park. The project used an analytical lens of promoting local economic development in order to create lasting benefits and improve the quality of life in the neighborhood that surrounds it.
Fellows:
Stuart Pertz
Adjunct Associate Professor - Grad Center for Planning
Beth Bingham
Visiting Assistant Professor - Grad Center for Planning
Community Partner: Coney Island Generation Gap
2014
Bridging Gowanus
A graduate student and professor from Communications Design are working together to support a participatory planning process for the future of Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood. Working for a client that comprises a group of local elected officials, they have created a visual brand for the initiative and designed and maintained an interactive website (www.bridginggowanus.org) for local stakeholders to track progress and weigh in on planning issues. These Taconic fellows are also creating visual tools for use in public meetings attended by a wide range of stakeholders and will apply their design expertise to the document that will describe the outcomes of the process.
Fellows:
David Frisco
Adjunct Professor - CCE - GR Communications/Package Des
Community Partner: Office of Councilmember Brad Lander
2014
TRUE (Trans Urban Education) Project
One professor from the Film/Video Department and one from the Photography Department are teaming up with four students – from various departments -- to create and implement an innovative after-school program that engages local youth in issues of youth empowerment, leadership, and community development. In conjunction with an established Brooklyn-based youth leadership program, these Taconic fellows will run workshops with middle and high school students and use video, collage, visual storytelling, and other media to explore themes related to urban health, environmental justice, and changing neighborhoods.
Fellows:
Sasha Summer
Adjunct Assistant Professor - Film and Video
Jim Costanzo
Adjunct Associate Professor - CCE - Fine Arts, Photography
Community Partner: Horizons Leadership Project
2014
Reclaim Works: Community-based Art & Design Education
This project builds on MARP’s ongoing efforts to re-imagine the underutilized and relatively dangerous and unwelcoming space under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway as it runs through the Wallabout/Fort Greene neighborhood directly over Park Avenue. Through a semester-long after-school residency, Pratt students from diverse disciplines worked with students from four local middle schools, introducing them to art and design strategies that would support the middle school students’ envisioned improvement projects. The overall goal of the project was to redefine the way that youth participate as citizens and leaders in the design of their communities while addressing the most pressing challenges in the world around them. The project culminated with a final exhibition of the envisioned improvement projects at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Fellows:
Erika Schroeder
Assistant to the Chair - Graduate Architecture & Urban Design
Community Partner: MARP (Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Project)
2020
(Dis)Placed in Sunset Park
“(Dis)Placed in Sunset Park” is an interactive multimedia story-based and mapping project that features short videos of Chinese, Latina and other (im)migrants, workers and residents in Brooklyn, New York’s diverse Sunset Park neighborhood. The common theme among their stories is the shared narrative of migration to the U.S., their journey to Sunset Park and their fears of displacement as a result of gentrification. Each story is grounded in the subject’s own sense of home, sanctuary and refuge that they have found in Sunset Park. The title refers to the way people are being “displaced in” their own community as it changes around them; and to the some are being squeezed into smaller quarters within Sunset Park as well. Visitors can take a virtual tour of Sunset Park and unlock the stories of people who live and work there by using an augmented reality technology (AR) app. The virtual tour features video stories, images, maps, text, audio about the neighborhood. The project goals include collaborating with community groups to host community screenings, placekeeping walks and exhibitions in Sunset Park that highlight the neighborhoods anti-displacement organizing efforts as well as provide ways for people to get involved.
Fellows:
Betty Yu
Visiting Assistant Professor, Social Science & Cultural Studies
Caitlin Cahill
Associate Professor, Social Science & Cultural Studies
Community Partner: Protect 8th Ave Coalition
2020
FEAR AS FUEL
FEAR AS FUEL is a three-way collaboration between Recess, a participant-based nonprofit art space, and artists Shaun Leonardo and Hannah Celli, with 10 young men between the ages of 18-26, pioneering one of the first arts-based diversion programs open to individuals with felony charges. This project will consist of 12 weekly 2.5 hour sessions where collaborators will engage in workshops that focus on technical skills – ceramics, drawing, cinematography and movement – aimed at creating a series of short films grounded in the theme of fear: what is fear, how does it look and feel in the body, and how can be it transformed and used productively?
Shaun and Hannah will lead exercises that encourage participants to examine their own personal histories, using their stories as fuel in the creation of short narrative pieces, sculptural props and costumes. Creative output will reflect imagined and/or real events in the lives of participants.
Fellows:
Hannah Celli
MFA Candidate, Fine Arts
Shaun Leonardo
Professor, Fine Art
Community Partner: Recess Art
2020
NBN / SAVI Community Mapping
In a series of hands-on visioning sessions, SAVI and our Taconic Fellows will work with North Brooklyn Neighbors to develop an interactive webmap-based tool that will help facilitate community access to data and information. This tool will serve to enhance capacity for stakeholders to engage and empower people on the ground to act in their own neighborhood. Through a series of targeted approaches and data updating strategies, community members will be able to use this tool to identify environmental concerns that are immediately impacting the areas where they live, work and play.
Fellows:
Haley Balcanoff
MS Candidate, Sustainable Environmental Systems
Case Wyse
Visiting Assistant Professor, GCPE
Annie Yie
MS Candidate, Sustainable Environmental Systems
Zachary Walker
M.S. Candidate, Data Analysis and Visualization
Community Partner: North Brooklyn Neighbors
2020
Environmental Justice for Vendors By Vendors
Street Vendor Project’s (SVP) previous campaigns have focused primarily on economic and legal justice for vendors – priority issues for street vendor members. But vendor leaders have increasingly recognized the need to make their businesses healthier (for workers, consumers, and the general public,) more sustainable, and more resilient to the impacts of climate change. SVP is seeking to launch an ambitious new program with the goal of transforming New York’s food carts to a green and resilient industry. Pratt faculty and students will work with SVP and its members at street carts and commissaries (where street carts are housed each evening) to research and collect information from members focusing on energy use, air quality, food waste and ‘to go’ packaging, and composting.
Fellows:
Julie Torres Moskovitz
Visiting Assistant Professor, Interior Design
Community Partner: Street Vendor Project
2020
Emancipatory Urban Futures
Emancipatory Urban Futures is an artistic, design and research partnership with Iyapo Repository Collective aimed at imagining a more inclusive and just city for the next generation. We are concerned that gentrification, as a form of racial capitalism, is contributing to the displacement and dispossession of Black, Brown, and working-class communities of color across New York City. As part of our collective process, we want to open up a creative space to imagine the opposite – what might an emancipatory future might look like?
Through participatory workshops that involve virtual reality sketching, game-playing, and discussion groups, we will engage communities in envisioning an urban future rooted in collective well-being, sustainability, and racial justice. Based on the community workshops and discussions, we will create a collective archive of creative artifacts, testimonials, scholarship and resources for community groups.
Fellows:
Caitlin Cahill
Associate Professor, Social Science & Cultural Studies
Community Partner: Iyapo Repository
2020
Life of Benjamin Banneker
Life of Benjamin Banneker focuses on engagement with two community groups: the Soul Tigers of Benjamin Banneker Academy (a drumming band) and the residents of Gibb Mansion. In a series of workshops with each community, we propose to develop narratives as well as large-scale objects that will culminate in an outdoor parade/pageant. The history of the project, in-progress and the final event, will be documented in a book as well as a video.
Fellows:
Theodora Skipitares
Associate Professor - Art and Design Education
DeAndra Craigman
Community Partner: Benjamin Banneker Academy
2020
Migration Stories in Multiple Media
Peter Macapia and Arlene Keizer will hold workshops with members of immigrant communities and the Brooklyn Public Library to reflect on, write, and illustrate personal experiences and ideas of immigration, community, and personal and public space. Their stories will be organized into a book for circulation throughout the library network. Our goal is to enhance the Library’s immigrant community services, expand and inspire community involvement, generate positive, creative, and long-lasting dialogue, and broaden our understanding of the importance, variety, and uniqueness of immigration. Brooklyn Public Library sees its mission as community building, particularly in the face of politics that threaten those communities and when the space of reasonable dialogue has all but disappeared from media: “libraries provides resources that support personal advancement, build civic engagement, and strengthen the fabric of community. Brooklyn Public Library collections are filled with millions of voices spanning different experiences, geographies, and generations and serve as a much-needed source of credible information at a time when distinctions between fact, opinion, and disinformation are not always clear.”
Fellows:
Arlene Keizer
Chairperson of Humanities and Media Studies
Peter Macapia
Adjunct Associate Professor, Graduate Architecture and Urban Design