Author Archives: pnp

1. Volunteer at the LP

   September 22, 2022 4:11 pm Leave a Comment

   The Laundromat Project is seeking volunteers looking for fun ways to make art accessible in New York City. We offer a wide range of opportunities, from helping at special events to aiding teaching artists at art workshops and assisting staff in The LP office. Benefits of working with us include:

   • Networking and socializing with other talented volunteers
   • Helping to promote public art and art education
   • Learning new art techniques and making art projects
   • Fostering creative expression among program participants
   • Building a sense of community in New York City neighborhoods

   To sign up for volunteer opportunities with The LP, fill out the brief application form below. Please understand that submitting an application for volunteering does not guarantee a position. We are only able to contact those candidates whose skills and background best fit the needs of the volunteer opportunities. Once your application has been processed, we will contact you should a position become available.

   Volunteer Application

   Questions? Email us at [email protected]

2. POC-Centered Principles Accountability Report

   2:49 pm Leave a Comment

   

   Before calls to create diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in cultural institutions became ubiquitous following the racial uprisings of 2020, The Laundromat Project (The LP) lived as an organization committed to centering the voices, cultures, imaginations, knowledge, and leadership of people of color (POC).

   View PDF

3. Artnet: For Years, Brooklyn’s Most Progressive Art Space Made a Big Impact as a Nomadic Organization. Now, They’re Putting Down Roots

   August 30, 2022 2:21 pm Leave a Comment

   “Since its founding in 2005, the Laundromat Project has funded more than 80 public art projects across New York, through residencies and grants for a growing roster of 200-plus artists. These include storytelling workshops conducted by Betty Yu out of a coin wash in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where the artist grew up, and an outdoor living room for conversations on community safety, led by artist Ro Garrido, in Jackson Heights, Queens.

   The impact of these unifying efforts can be traced through dozens of neighborhoods citywide. But it is in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn where the arts non-profit has its deepest roots and connections, and where it has been building a new home and an alternative vision of an art space.

   In 2020, it signed a 10-year lease on a storefront on bustling Fulton Street, gathering all its operations at one site for the first time since the project’s foundation. The space—purposefully not a gallery—is in a historically Black neighborhood, emphasizing the staff’s commitment to programming that is responsive to the community, particularly for Black residents and other people of color.”

   Read on artnet.com

4. The New York Times: At the Laundromat Project, Artists Are Ambassadors of Joy and Activism

   July 7, 2022 2:23 pm Leave a Comment

   “The Laundromat Project was founded two decades ago at a kitchen table on MacDonough Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, when Risë Wilson received her first grant money to make art experiences accessible to her neighbors — miles away and a world apart from gatekeeper institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.“

   Read on nytimes.com

5. The LP Documents: Community Building in Ballroom with Sydney Baloue and Samer RIDIKKULUZ

   June 16, 2022 9:31 pm Leave a Comment

   What does community building and affirmation look like in the ballroom scene? Tune in to a special Pride Month edition of The LP Documents podcast featuring Create Change artists and ballroom performers Sydney Baloue (2020) and Samer RIDIKKULUZ (2021), who spoke about chosen family, queer visibility, and personal confidence.

   A transcript of this episode is available here.

   Note: All views and opinions expressed by the artists are the views of the artists alone. This episode includes some adult language.

6. The LP Documents: Leslie Jiménez – A World Inside Drawing

   9:31 pm Leave a Comment

   As an Artist-in-Residence with The LP, Leslie Jiménez facilitated a series of collaborative art-making workshops with families in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem. During the gatherings, community members created illustrated books of drawings inspired by memories and experiences in their neighborhood.

   The workshops culminated in a large-scale interactive installation featuring the illustrated book drawings and larger than life, diorama-like versions of the drawings, as interpreted by the artist. A World Inside Drawing celebrates community members and familial neighborhood spaces, and it acts as a sanctuary, where neighbors can literally see themselves inside their own creations.

7. The LP Documents: Lizania Cruz – We the News

   9:30 pm Leave a Comment

   In the midst of an era fueled by generalizations and incendiary rhetoric, how do we share immigrant stories in a way that is reflective and representative of their complexity and humanity? Created by LP Artist-in-Residence Lizania Cruz, We the News amplifies these unique stories through a pop-up physical newsstand. The newsstand is filled with bilingual zines created by immigrants affiliated with local partnering organizations. Historically, zines have been a medium of communication within subcultures and a tool in activist movements and organizing. Via zines that focus on stories of traditions and rituals, Lizania co-creates spaces of sanctuary through the use of language, personifying the role words and messages play in uniting, empowering, and building community.

8. Black Joy & Liberation Playlist

   9:26 pm Leave a Comment

   Curated by The LP Staff in June 2020 during global protests in defense of Black lives, this playlist manifests Black joy and Black liberation. Enjoy! #BlackLifeEternal

9. The LP Documents: Fellows Edition

   9:24 pm Leave a Comment

   In this voicemail style, call-in episode, Laundromat Project Artist Engagement Manager Ladi’Sasha Jones and Programs Director Hatuey Ramos-Fermín listen to stories and reflections from Create Change Fellows on what connection and affirmation has looked like for them during the COVID-19 pandemic.

   Featuring the voices of Angela Miskis, Anjelic E. Owens, Ayling Zulema Dominguez, Ella Mahoney, Kimberly Tate, and Manuel Molina Martagon.

   A transcript of this episode is available here.

   Note: All views and opinions expressed by the artists are the views of the artists alone.

10. The LP Documents: Radical Imagination with Piper Anderson

    9:23 pm Leave a Comment

    In our final episode of 2021, hear a conversation between LP Executive Director Kemi Ilesanmi and Radical Imagination Fellow Piper Anderson on abolition, mental health, rethinking carceral approaches to harm, and more. Piper discusses her personal journey to abolition work, and projects Mass Story Lab and Rikers Public Memory Project, which use storytelling as a tool to address and name the injustice of the prison system.

    For more on narrative justice, watch Abolitionist Storywork, a program curated by Piper and featuring practitioners of oral history, community archive development, and an interdisciplinary range of narrative justice strategies to create community care, safety, and liberation. ⁠