Practice Creativity Think about your life and education. Were you ever taught how to be creative? The simple act of making each day was a reminder that creativity is a practice and a focus on moving your awareness to a different place for a period of time, a place you want to be. Read the full article at: https://t.ly/3VB3o https://www.designandculture.net

Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani shares stories of significant personal places from six Prospect Heights residents in the early 2000s and introduces a project to make visible those stories in the very different landscape of the contemporary neighborhood.

Our publication, “The America Project: A Teaching Method for Collaboration, Creativity, and Citizenship” was created in collaboration with MAPP International Productions to carry on poet Sekou Sundiata’s work to combine teaching, making art, and the development of work in the public realm. 

Can public art, oral history, and open dialogue help rebuild burned bridges between estranged community groups? Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani recounts her experience in the Lower East Side's Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA).

“I’ve asked people for guided tours for twenty years. Most often, they’ve walked or driven me around their neighborhoods, and I’ve photographed their places. But this time of social distancing and constrained mobility has got me returning to a different part of that practice, a project in which I’ve asked people to imagine where in the world they would take me on a guided tour, if they could. This body of work, from my sidewalk photo studios set up in Jamaica, Queens and Harlem, Manhattan—invited by @nolongerempty and De La Vega—weaves a shared imagined geography, encompassing the most everyday parts of our lives, the most seminal places in our personal histories, and the most desired places of our futures. In this traumatic year, returning to these stories of complex personhood and how we can travel in our minds has brought me solace despite the violence that every day brings. I hope that these guided tours help you travel just a little bit, too, remembering what’s precious and what’s at stake.”

Acknowledging and then setting aside the righteous anger over a long-disputed parcel on NYC’s Lower East Side, in order to better imagine its future.

Working with People | Core Values workshopsThese people-centered workshops help organizations define their core values-like community or engagement-and strengthen their capacity for collaboration, rooted in principles of justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

An expressive book of prose and photographs that reveals the powerful ways our everyday places support our shared belonging.

Working with People | Core Values workshopsThese people-centered workshops help organizations define their core values-like community or engagement-and strengthen their capacity for collaboration, rooted in principles of justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion.