Three-Day Open Forum Exploring Gentrification, Displacement, Memory, History and Activism
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: [email protected]
May 25, 2023
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK – The Laundromat Project today announced it will host Artists as Neighbors: Living Liberation, a three-day community conversation series to be held in locations around Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant (Bed-Stuy) neighborhood.
Held on June 9 – June 11, 2023, Artists as Neighbors: Living Liberation will explore issues of gentrification and displacement as well as how memory, history, and activism can be used in tandem to reclaim and defend neighborhoods. Through public forums, participants and panelists the convening will address challenges facing both artists and neighbors who are working in different fields, such as public advocacy, local organizing, history and preservation, as well as philanthropy, to address these topics.
The series will build to a culminating brunch on June 11 at Bed-Stuy stronghold, Restoration Plaza. This gathering over a shared meal will serve as an opportunity to address the wide and complex challenges facing both artists and neighbors in a time of immense change. Together, participants will share strategies for building community and nurturing creativity in ways that lead to our collective liberation.
All Artists as Neighbors: Living Liberation forums will be free and open to the public. Bed-Stuy residents, cultural workers, creative producers, business owners, and organizational leaders, are invited to attend. Registration is available at laundromatproject.org.
“As a non-profit arts organization, we certainly see artists and cultural producers as key to developing innovative ideas about and approaches to solving the complex problems we face as a community, particularly in our organizational home of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn” said Ayesha Williams, Executive Director of The Laundromat Project. “I’m excited to see how generative the outcomes of discussions about gentrification and belonging can be when creativity is placed at the center of possible solutions, and when artists are seen as core facilitators and leaders in the efforts to improve the future of neighborhoods like ours in Bed-Stuy and across greater New York City.”
Details on Artists as Neighbors: Living Liberation are as follows:
Friday, June 9
Community Conversation: Evolutions in Public Art and Displacement
6:00pm–7:30pm
Somewhere Good (320 Tompkins Ave., Brooklyn, NY)
Saturday, June 10
Community Conversation: Remembering & Reclaiming Our Neighborhoods
11:00am–12:30pm
Tranquility Farm (659 Willoughby Ave, Brooklyn, NY)
Sunday, June 11
Culminating Brunch
12:00pm–3:00pm
Location: Restoration Plaza (1368 Fulton St, Brooklyn, NY)
For more information and to register, visit laundromatproject.org.
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ABOUT THE LAUNDROMAT PROJECT:
The Laundromat Project is a Black-rooted and POC-led community-based arts organization dedicated to the advancement of artists and residents of New York City as change agents within their own communities. We envision a world in which artists and neighbors in communities of color work together to harness the power of creativity that has the ability to inspire and initiate meaningful change and that generates long-lasting impact. We make sustained investments in growing a community of multiracial, multigenerational, and multidisciplinary artists and neighbors committed to societal change by supporting their artmaking, community building, and leadership development.
Since 2005, The Laundromat Project has directly invested over $1M in over 200 multiracial, multigenerational, and multidisciplinary artists; nearly 90 innovative public art projects; and a creative community hub in Bed-Stuy, while engaging close to 50,000 New Yorkers across the city and beyond. The idea of a laundromat as a primary place for engagement has expanded over time. It now serves as a metaphor for a variety of community settings in which artists and neighbors transform their lives and surroundings. Our programming has evolved to take place in community gardens, public plazas, libraries, sidewalks, local cultural organizations, and other places where people gather.