Aliffer Zamira Sabek

Reclaiming our Earth (Reclamando nuestra tierra) is Seeds of Liberation’s no-cost clay education offering to the Brooklyn community. In summer 2025, we will lead a 12-week “Intro to Sculpture” class for Brooklyn community members interested in clay, and who may have no prior experience working with the material. These classes are an opportunity for immigrant, low-income, ESL community members to learn about sculpture in a welcoming, loving environment. Our programming is geared toward Black and Brown neighbors having a space that allows for creative exploration to channel their ancestral gifts, regardless of financial means. Throughout Brooklyn are ceramic studios that center wealthy and majority white hobbyists. Between studio fees, firing fees, and materials fees, clay working is largely inaccessible for less-resourced beginners. When traditional ceramics spaces do invite Black artists and artists of color, they are typically on scholarship, one in a room of dozens of white hobbyists, and studio owners or members feel entitled to marginalized artists’ works. Reclaiming our Earth will be a space that centers our Caribbean and Black neighbors as the norm, as opposed to the exception, in a 12-week sculpture class. This project is multi-generational and designed for our Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy communities. We center immigrant and low- income people who deserve the opportunity to learn and develop a creative practice, inviting our neighbors to imagine realities beyond survival mode and to engage in community-building practices. Simply put, our people deserve to dream and create, and artmaking should not be reserved for the wealthy.