The Laundromat Project is excited to announce the 2022 cohort of creative practitioners selected to participate in our 17th annual Create Change Artist Development Program! The cohort will collaborate with New York City communities of color to develop and implement creative projects that deepen trust, build relationships, and leverage the power of creativity for positive social change.
2022 Create Change programming, which includes the Create Change Fellowship and the Create Change Residency, will combine cultural organizing and community-building strategy workshops with hands-on instruction in creative engagement. Faculty includes Ebony Noelle Golden (Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative), Urban Bush Women, Fernanda Espinosa, and Laundromat Project staff, among others.
> > > Read the announcement in ARTnews
> > > Download the press release
“The Laundromat Project has a long history of working with artists and cultural producers to strengthen their creative practice while building stronger relationships between neighbors,” said Kemi Ilesanmi, Executive Director of The Laundromat Project. “As communities all across the city are able to reconvene and reconnect after so much isolation the past two years, we could not be more eager to support and empower artists and creative problem solvers, whose role in the resilience of NYC remains essential. We look forward to an inspiring year collaborating with this powerful cohort of artists.”
Each Create Change Artist-in-Residence will receive $20,000 in funding, and will collaborate with an array of local partners to develop their projects, addressing themes of cultural preservation, history, identity, and community wellness.
Create Change Fellows will develop and practice strategies for making community-engaged art programming over a rigorous six month period. Fellows will work on proposals to amplify local cultural resources in Bed-Stuy that center the voices and histories of long term residents, small business owners, youth, activists, cultural institutions, and artists. For the second consecutive year in 2022, Create Change Fellows will receive stipends for their participation in the program.
THE LAUNDROMAT PROJECT 2022 CREATE CHANGE COHORT
Artists-in-Residence
JAMEL BURGESS
Archiving East New York
East New York, Brooklyn
Archiving East New York is a community archival project highlighting counter narratives about communities of color in East New York, Brooklyn. Jamel Burgess and community members will produce an accessible digital platform including oral histories and multimedia elements to educate East New York residents and the general public about the Brooklyn neighborhood.
IBI IBRAHIM
Reclaiming Realities: The Yemeni American Experience
City-wide
Reclaiming Realities is a photo and oral history project documenting Yemeni American bodega workers across New York City. The project will explore themes of home, multi-national identity, and the enduring impact on Yemenis and Yemeni Americans of political events such as the Yemen War and travel ban.
KENDRA J. ROSS
The Sankofa Residency
Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn
The Sankofa Residency is a multi-phase project by Kendra J. Ross and collaborators rooted in the history of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and an Afrofuturist imagining of Bed-Stuy moving forward. The project uses research, oral history, and collaborative imagining through dance to facilitate a plan for local residents, businesses, and stakeholders to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic in a place of healing, thriving, and progress.
CHERYL WING-ZI WONG
Reflective Urbanisms: Mapping NY Chinatown
Reflective Urbanisms: Mapping NY Chinatown is a storytelling project about Manhattan’s Chinatown community as told through its built environment. The project will map Chinatown through changes the buildings and streets have undergone over time, and through community stories about the activities that took place there.
Fellows
KYRA ASSIBEY BONSU
Community development, oral storytelling, writing, event production | Crown Heights, Brooklyn
JESSICA CORTEZ
Applied theater | Crown Heights, Brooklyn
JING DONG
Theater, socially engaged art, education | Lower East Side, Manhattan
BRIANNA HARLAN
Multidisciplinary art, community organizing | Astoria, Queens
MADJEEN ISAAC
Painting | Flatbush, Brooklyn
MAYA K. JEFFEREIS
Visual art, education | Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn
WALIS JOHNSON
Social practice, documentary film | Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
SHARI JONES
Multi-dimensional practice | Fort Greene, Brooklyn
DUNESKA SUANNETTE MICHEL
Social practice, visual art, sound, community organizing, education | Brooklyn
MON M.
Community and collaborative art | Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn
NATALIA GUZMÁN SOLANO
Activism, scholarship, artivism | East Elmhurst, Queens
The 2022 Create Change program cohort was selected by the 2022 Artist & Community Council: Prerana Reddy, Artist & Community Fellow at Recess; Bianca Mońa, artist, Create Change alum, and Culture Push Fellow; and Anthony Buissereth, Executive Director of North Brooklyn Neighbors.
Members of the press are invited to attend a virtual meet and greet with the 2022 Create Change artists on January 18, 2022. Register to attend.
ABOUT CREATE CHANGE
Established in 2006, The LP’s flagship Create Change Residency program has evolved into a leading artist development model that builds and nourishes creative community leaders. Through the residency, The LP supports three innovative socially engaged creative endeavors across NYC annually. Create Change resident artists develop community-responsive projects that make use of the unique social space of their location.
In 2011, in response to participant feedback, The LP established the Create Change Fellowship to train artists who are newer to a socially engaged creative practice. Each year, the Fellowship provides a select group of diverse creative practitioners with 120+ hours of a combination of workshops (theory) and arts-based community engagement processes (practice), aimed to help them develop, deepen, and enact a community engaged creative practice.
Over the past 16 years, The LP has supported 180+ artists. Alumni of the program include: Tomie Arai, Raul Ayala, Chloë Bass, LaTasha Diggs, Fernanda Espinosa, Rachel Falcone, Sukjong Hong, Rasu Jilani, Shani Peters, Michael Premo, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Betty Yu. The LP aims to foster and support creative community leaders who are empowered by, committed to, and fully conversant in community-attuned art practices.
FUNDERS
The Create Change program is made possible in part by The Bay & Paul Foundations; The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Artha Foundation; Ford Foundation; Jerome Foundation; Robert Sterling Clark Foundation; The New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellowship Program; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; and the New York State Council on the Arts. The Create Change Fellowship is supported in part by our Catalyst Circle members—become a Catalyst here.