Note: This event has passed. Please see previous event descriptions, highlights, and photos below!
We celebrated the culmination of the 2024 Create Change Fellowship, where we witnessed the transformative power of art in fostering community connections and driving positive change at the Fellow Activations and Final Presentations. The event took place on June 26 at 5:30pm EST where our Fellows Final presentations took center stage!
Fellows Activations
On June 15, our Fellows unveiled their thought-provoking public art activations throughout the Bed-Stuy neighborhood.
Date, Time, & Location
Saturday, June 15
12:00 pm – 2:30 pm
Annual KowTeff Juneteenth Celebration Restoration Plaza 1368 Fulton St, Brooklyn, NY 11216
Painting Peace x Divine Times Collective
As publicity for the full activation on June 16, we passed out flyers for our Painting Peace event. This event included mini workshops focusing on healing inner child work through natural paint making, conversation, art therapy and inner child meditation.
Participating Artists: Zulmilena Then, Kevyn Way, Ash Rucker
EM[BED]DED: A Community Archive Project x Brownstoners of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Inc.
Through a call for participants, our team added to the collection of information and materials to develop a guided tour of Bed-Stuy happening later in June. This activation was used to share details about the project and build interest for the upcoming tour date. We also engaged future collaborators to help sustain the project after launching.
Participating Artists: Florian Koenigsberger, Khalia Batts, Tiffany Smith
Stoops Speak: Brownstone Stories x Justice for 441 Willoughby
A rich legacy of culture, community, and collaboration resonates through the steps of our collective history. Generations of memories, as well as fresh new experiences, are drawn from the lives of the residents of Bedford Stuyvesant.
In partnership with a coalition of residents and neighbors from BedStuy organizing to create the Willoughby Hart Historic District, our LP team created a series of graphics, stories, zines, poetry/performance pieces and support material that help the campaign energize and mobilize the greater BedStuy community as well as influence the Landmark Preservation Committee (LPC).
Participating Artists: Wema Ra, Nafisa Ferdous, Juan Pablo Caicedo Torres
Healing Our AfroFutures: Using Art and the Sacred Stories of Our ForeMothers to Heal Our Ancestors, Ourselves and Our Descendants x Restoration Plaza x ARIAH Foundation
This activation surveyed Bed-Stuy residents at the 13th Annual KowTeff Juneteenth Celebration to capture creative resources the community would like to see offered by the Restoration Plaza, which support the facilitation of future programming. Community members also participated in visual mapping and free portraits. The photographs and responses were compiled into a community-sourced zine.
Participating Artists: Ziedah Diata, Jennella Young
About The Create Change Fellowship
The Create Change Fellowship program is for artists and cultural producers interested in developing and deepening a collaborative, community-based, and socially-engaged creative practice. The Fellowship is philosophically grounded in peer-learning around art making, power analysis, and community building.
Take a look at our 2024 Fellows Final Presentations!
Fellows Final Presentations & Community Partnerships
Our Fellows Final Presentations brought our Fellows, community partners, artists, friends, and neighbors together to celebrate their creative activations and reflect on the Create Change fellowship, collaborations, and community-building.
For the first time ever, we hosted Final Presentations in person at the Brooklyn Bank. There, twelve 2024 Fellows presented their community-based projects in conversation with Glynn Pogue, an award-winning writer and audio storyteller from Bed-Stuy. Learn about each of the Fellows groups, partners, and projects!
Final Presentations 2024, Photographed by Jacques Morel
Painting Peace led a free community event designed to reconnect with the inner child through the power of meditation, heartfelt conversations, inspiring interviews, and the joy of painting.
Fellows: Zulmilena Then, Kevyn Way, Ash Rucker
Community Partner: Divine Times Collective – The Divine Time Collective’s (DTC) mission is to create spaces of empowerment and belonging for black queer individuals, offering events with the intention of reconnecting with nature and community through initiatives like the annual music festival Pan-Afro Wisdom (P.O.W.) Fest, nature-based workshops, musical jams, and other monthly events. In a society where black spaces can often be transphobic and homophobic, and queer spaces may lack black perspectives, DTC’s focus on centering black queer people creates a unique and inclusive environment where joy, rest, and inner-child healing are celebrated. By providing spaces for queer people of the African diaspora that foster cultural celebration alongside personal growth, DTC embodies a commitment to learning, community empowerment, and the radical reclamation of joy.
EM[BED]DED: A Community Archive Project
EM[BED]DED collected, documented, and made accessible the personal narrative histories of multigenerational Black Bed-Stuy residents, business owners, and community leaders to counteract their erasure during the community’s rampant, ongoing gentrification.
Fellows: Florian Koenigsberger, Khaila Batts, Tiffany Smith
Community Partner: Brownstoners of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Inc. – The Brownstoners of Bed-Stuy’s Mission is a not-for-profit, volunteer service organization that is dedicated to the continued preservation, revitalization, and enhancement of our community. The Brownstoners is a “hands-on” organization that maximizes its resources through the wealth of skills that our members freely share. Our tradition of “taking it to the streets” is a strategy that has reached every corner of this community through initiatives such as our tax lien outreach project and voter registration drives. We have entered the twenty-first century with the voices of those community leaders who kept Bedford-Stuyvesant alive still ringing in our ears. We intended to keep the fire under their legacy.
Stoops Speak: Brownstone Stories
Stoops Speaks partnered with Willoughby Hart Historic District to center landmarking as a community strategy to defend architecture heritage and long-time Black residents of historic Bed-Stuy brownstones.
Learn more about this amazing landmarking effort!
Fellows: Wéma Ragophala, Nafisa Ferdous, Juan Pablo Caicedo Torres
Community Partner: Willoughby Hart Historic District
Willoughby Hart’s Mission is to champion the landmarking and preservation of the architectural and culturally rich heritage of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. We pledge to uphold the integrity of our beloved brownstone structures and pay homage to the individuals whose stories breathe life into them, ensuring their enduring legacies remain integral in shaping our historical narrative.
Healing Our AfroFutures: Using Art and the Sacred Stories of Our ForeMothers to Heal Our Ancestors, Ourselves and Our Descendants
Healing Our AfroFutures is a multimedia, multi-sensory participatory art experience designed to explore community ancestors’ pregnancy and birthing stories, create healing affirmations, and learn about reproductive health disparities and the community organizations fighting for birth and reproductive equity.
Fellows: Ziedah Diata, Jennella Young
Community Partner: THE ARIAH Foundation
Community Partner: THE ARIAH Foundation – The ARIAH Foundation utilizes art, education, advocacy, and holistic healing programs to mitigate the long-lasting impact of systematic racism and oppression on the sexual reproductive health and birth outcomes within BIPOC communities. ARIAH’s work amplifies and validates the voices of BIPOC birthing people to ensure that their stories are known and their vision for co-creating, nourishing, and raising their families is defined by, and for them. We are committed to increasing public awareness around reproductive health disparities, especially for those outside of BIPOC communities who wield power and have authority within institutions that perpetuate bias, discrimination, and oppression. Vision: The ARIAH Foundation is committed to ameliorating the scourge of maternal morbidity and mortality by providing education, support, and advocacy for BIPOC individuals, families, and communities who have been impacted by disparities, inequities, and injustice in the reproductive healthcare system. ARIAH’s programs and services are centered around the lived experiences and expressed needs of BIPOC mothers and birthing people, who are most likely to be adversely impacted by reproductive inequities, trauma, loss, and death.
Artists Bazaar – a special thank you to the artists who participated in our first-ever Artists Bazaar!
Hannah Miao (Chinatown Photo Album)