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The Red Line Archive Project, E 14th Street, 2016, Mobile Archive installed in New York City
The Red Line Labyrinth – Weeksville Heritage Center
Yovana, a water and environmental defender from Cajamarca, Peru, carries her daughter Frida.
Fund Communities, Screenprint, 2018
8 to Abolition-Mon-M
SickOfIt-BW-Cover-Mon-M-1536×2048
Motherlands
Heart Mountain, 2017. Single-channel video (color, sound), 3:21 minutes
Maya Jeffereis and Elliott Katz, They Were Just a Sentence in a History Book, 2019. Two-channel video installation (color, sound), reading room, 12:27 minutes
Seeing Water Lilies-Maya-Jeffereis-scaled
“Weathering the Storm”, oil on canvas, 30×36 inches, 2020
“The Bittersweet Escape”, oil on canvas, 37.5×55 inches, 2021
Meet Us at Flatbush and Beverly, oil on canvas, 42×60 inches, 2021
“Amongst the Fruits of Our Labor”, oil on canvas, 36×48 inches, 2021
“Abundant Surprises in the Sky”, oil on canvas, 45×57 inches, 2021
When Memories Shine: Storytelling Works
When Memories Shine: Storytelling Works
Garden of Plenty. This Theatre-in-Education project follows a mis-informed gardener who banishes bees from the garden in fear of their stingers.
Jugando N Play and Word Up Community Bookshop workshop which incorporated interactive storytelling, puppet making, and theatre. The project culminated in a mermaid parade celebration.
Vigil for Black Lives
Puerto Rico and Black Lives Zine
Paper Weaving
Portal
Te Pareces Negra Asi” at Joan Mitchell Foundation
Black Love Blooms recipients with their gifts of free flowers and love notes at celebrations of Juneteenth or out and about in their cities.
Black Love Blooms founder Brianna Harlan holds up a Black Love Blooms Love Note and smiles big in front of buckets of roses.
A view of a meal, menus, and cooking station from “Eat My Heart Out (Pop-Up Diner)”, an interactive meal experience for discussing disconnection and lack of intimacy in today’s digital culture.
The “Functionals Only” Rock Wall that sets everyone up to fail.
Beauty Reimagined (2019)
Manifest Divine (2014)
Choreography by Kendra J. Ross. Photo by Eric Bandeiro.
Return and Go Seek/Sankofa at STooPS (2021)
Danced by Kendra J. Ross & Jaimé Yawa Dzandu Photo by Bostock Images.
Silver Linings: Triumph of Loss (2018)
Choreography by Kendra J. Ross in collaboration with Rakia Seaborn (pictured), Pia Monique Murray (pictured), and Efeya Sampson Photo by Janet Griffith.
Warrior’s Path (2016)
Photo by Ivan Forte
Habibi & Habibti, 2010
from the series Social Codes,
Hanan, 2020
from the ongoing series How Do You Want to Be Portrayed?
PORTAL (2021)
Installed at Jefferson Middle School, Washington DC.
04_CWZW-CURRENT-Cheryl-Wing-Zi-Wong
The LP Reading Group – February 2022 – Reparations, Pandemic, and Power
About the Musicians Teachers Organists Branch of National Association of Negro Musicians
Chartered in 1931 and based in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the mission of MuTeOr is today as it was then: to preserve America’s original music, the Negro Spiritual, Jazz, and Blues; and to promote youth, collegians, and emerging musicians of color.
Project
With a panel of musical historians and performers, the program will bring together a multigenerational audience to enjoy the music of the ancestors; learn how Bedford-Stuyvesant churches and choirs caused the genre to flourish; and how the strategic, creative use of language transcends time, generations, and genres to express struggle, protest, overcoming and joy.
Create & Connect Fund Applicants: Kathleen Grosvenor, Patricia F. Robinson, Lynnette Brinson
Math & Art Learning Pods
Math Through Art is providing math and art learning pods to participants of all ages that will be provided in the local Bedford Stuyvesant area. We intend to develop confidence in their understanding of mathematics through creative activities that provide mathematical instruction such as pattern printing paintings, jewelry making and more.
Create & Connect Fund Applicant: Angela Bell
About Marienne
Marienne Thomas, artistically known as Yen, is a Visual artist/portraitist and the Director of Youth Programs at Bailey’s Cafe. I have been establishing myself an artist for the past 3 years and looking to develop more meaningful artwork that impacts our community and create conservations.
As Quiet As It’s Kept: the Story Continues–The Portrait Project
AQAIK: The Story Continues-The Portrait Project will focus on the residents of Jackie Robinson/Fulton Housing complex and Brevoort Public Houses to bring visibility, both through word and image, to people who are often treated as if they were invisible. This next iteration of AQAIK comes out of a larger community-based movement to offer an alternative to the violence that continues to erupt in the neighborhood. Through this project and others we aim to bring positive, life affirming activities to those who may not feel that they are normally included.
Create & Connect Fund Applicant: Marienne Thomas
Learn More
Website
Bailey’s Cafe
Instagram
The Garden Abolitionist Bookstore & Community Well
The Garden is a pop-up abolitionist bookstore and community space that exists to reignite and nurture our collective imagination in service of Black Liberation. We connect our neighborhood (Bed-Stuy) with resources and literature that has been meaningful for us on our political journeys and engage the community in different projects and events that encourage action and solidarity among Black people in the neighborhood.
Create & Connect Fund Applicant: Joseph Capehart
About Self-Care Warriors
Self-Care Warriors are the volunteer care team of EmergeSoul well-being studio in Bed-Stuy. The SC Warriors consist of yoga teachers and other wellness practitioners who want to ensure that wellness services are available and accessible by offering free or donation based services in underserved urban communities.
Meditation, Art, Storytelling for Older Adults
MAS is a safe virtual space where older adults can engage in the healing arts to cultivate a practice of being good to themselves. Through the use of meditation, arts, and storytelling older adults will use these mediums to explore historical and immediate traumas deeply rooted in ones subconscious mind and body. Through the healing arts older adults will re-imagine what is good, restore the best parts of themselves and recreate a sense of being. This project will emerge into a quilt story circle. MAS is about creative expression to usher in healing to live more fulfilled.
Create & Connect Fund Applicants: Tameeka Ford and Elvira Clayton Art
About The United Order of Tents Eastern District #3
The United Order of Tents Eastern District #3 is the oldest Black women’s fraternal organization in the US. Established in the 19th century, The United Order of Tents served the cause of abolition, originally providing aid to those escaping slavery via the Underground Railroad. As an early mutual aid society, they also provided food, shelter, clothing, nursing care, and proper burial to those in need. Now, their current mission is to solve local issues and serve their community, especially elderly neighbors, through the bonds of sisterhood.
Tea with the Tents: Creating Community through History and Art
Tea with the Tents is a one-day event for the community of Bedford-Stuyvesant to meet members of the United Order of Tents Eastern District #3, the oldest Black women’s benevolent society in the US, learn about their long and vibrant history, their past, and present mutual aid work and participate in a community art project documenting these stories for future generations. Additionally, audience members learn how to become a member of the United Order of Tents Eastern District #3 or a Friend of the Tents. This event hopes to connect the past to the present to build for the future.
Create & Connect Fund Applicant: Kelly M Britt
About Str8OuttaBklynMedia
Str8OuttaBklynMedia is an organization focused on implementing youth and artist development initiatives. Through vocational training and artistic programs we create safe spaces for our youth and community artists to thrive.
The Artist and Repertoire Show
The Artist and Repertoire Show is a performance art showcase for Black and brown youth in Brooklyn. It is a safe space for them to thrive creatively while receiving necessary life skills. Young artists who are rising stars in Brooklyn, and artists who are performing for the first time will be featured. There will also be a video game tournament and open video game portion of the event for youth to play at their leisure. We will have professionals to provide GED/educational services, gang intervention and prevention services, legal aid, and employment opportunities. Raffles Prizes and a fresh vegetable giveaway will also be part of the day’s activities.
Create & Connect Fund Applicant: Johari James
Learn More
Instagram
The inaugural edition of the Fred Jones Memorial Bicycle Ride (FJMR) on Sunday, August 29, 2021, is being presented in memory of the late Manifred Jones, to celebrate his life and service to the cycling and Bedford-Stuyvesant communities. Additionally, we pay our respects to all our neighbors we lost to COVID-19. This free 35-mile bike ride, inspired by the late Fred Jones personal training rides, takes cyclists through Brooklyn and Queens mostly following bike lanes, greenways and bike friendly streets. We invite everyone everywhere to help us celebrate our city’s reopening with a fun day of movement and re-engagement with our communities.
Create & Connect Fund Applicant: Owens Ridges Jr.
Collaborators: Wentworth Price, Sirocco Wilson, James Durrah
LEARN MORE
Register to join 2021 ride
Bed Stuy Clothes Swap is a community based safety net for Bed-Stuy residents. We provide clothing alternatives that move against the grain of capitalistic systems that unevenly take from and kill our community. As a mindful movement that centers on the sustainable wellbeing of people of color, we respond to the localized impacts of hyper-consumerism, fast fashion, gentrification and lack of equitable clothing alternatives in Bed Stuy. Our praxis is a blend of communal based sharing, exchanging and donating habits.
Create & Connect Fund Applicant: Akiera Xavina Charles
LEARN MORE
@bedstuy_clothesswap
The Sankofa Residency is a multi-phase project that is both rooted in the history of Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, NY, and an afro-futurist imagining of BedStuy moving forward. Taking the Ghanian concept of Sankofa-looking backwards in order to move forward-this project uses research, oral history, and collaborative imagining to facilitate a plan for residents, businesses, and stakeholders to emerge from a place of healing, thriving, and progress. Each iteration culminates in an interdisciplinary immersive dance experience that transforms a space into a gallery of the past, present and future of that location placed in the context of the journey of BedStuy.
Create & Connect Fund Applicant: Kendra J. Ross
LEARN MORE
www.thekendrajross.com /// @thekendrajross
Since the Great Migration, Black people have built a vibrant and thriving mecca in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, making it an icon of community, culture, and resistance. But the neighborhood is changing. Gentrification, racist housing policies, and systemic oppression have forced longtime Bed-Stuy residents and business owners out of the neighborhood, as a younger, predominately white, population moves in. Black residents must reconcile these changes with their sense of belonging on the blocks they built.
“We Are Here” is a celebration of Bedford-Stuyvesant’s rich cultural legacy—a testament to its past and present. The project, originally curated as part of Bailey’s Cafe’s As Quiet As It’s Kept centers images and stories of long-time Bed-Stuy residents, cementing their place as neighborhood icons in the name of resilience and permanence.
“We Are Here” features photographs by Robyn Twomey with interviews by Monica L. Williams, artistic director of As Quiet As It’s Kept, is culturally produced by Pia Monique Murray, and supported by Bailey’s Cafe.
Create & Connect Fund Applicant: Pia Monique Murray
LEARN MORE
www.asquietasitskept.space
HER Power is a women’s empowerment project developed by three community advocates who saw an immediate need for resources that promote holistic well being across NYCHA developments. When we say holistic, not only do we mean mind, body, soul but ways to become liberated from systemic stressors such as violence, lack of resources, and impacts of COVID-19. HER Power aims to build power and community among other female NYCHA residents. Through the engagement of these practices, we hope to find ways to cope with trauma so that we as women can move towards individual and community healing, become empowered.
Create & Connect Fund Applicant: Annastesia Harris
Open Court at HQ Tennis is a summer series of free, weekly, 2-hours open court time at Jackie Robinson Tennis Courts. The purpose of HQ community classes is to bring the community together, to create a safe zone and support the work being done toward ending gun violence, and grow the game of tennis at Jackie Robinson Tennis courts. These community classes are catered to the historic Black and Brown residents of the Jackie Robinson community.
Create & Connect Fund Applicant: Frances Ferdinand
LEARN MORE
www.hqtennis.com /// @jackierobinsontennis
Patchen Community Square Garden invites neighbors to participate in the Unity Mural Project. Participants can submit artwork, an original song, poetry, or a favorite recipe related to creating unity in the beautiful neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Create & Connect Fund Applicant: Marshalla Ramos-Inde
LEARN MORE
www.patchensquare.com /// @patchensquare
KowTeff presented their 11th Annual Juneteenth Celebration and 30th anniversary as a cultural arts institution in the community. The event was held on Saturday, June 19th, 2021 from 11AM-10PM in a hybrid fashion. Participants could take part in activities virtually and in-person at Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Plaza.
Create & Connect Fund Applicant: Akilah Clarke
LEARN MORE
www.kowteff.org /// @KowTeffafricandance
“Herkimer Street Stoop Interview” is a social engagement community art project with long-term Bed-Stuy residents. I set up the camera and a microphone on my stoop and interview the community members outdoors. I record videos/audios while they were talking about their life and connection to this neighborhood and take portraits.
At the end, I plan to make an outdoor public exhibition in Bed-Stuy. I believe the final public exhibitions and presentations would make the subjects into the spotlight.
Create & Connect Fund Applicant: Hidemi Takagi
LEARN MORE
www.hidemitakagi.com /// @hidemi_takagi
Da Cypher’s hood art show theme centers “Unity & Remembering,” and what that means for Black and Brown artists. Our show explores the complex narratives that come out of NYCHA/low-income/working-class communities.
Create & Connect Fund Applicant: Arabia Q. Simeon
LEARN MORE
www.dacypherbk.com /// @dacypher.bk
#InspireDaYouth
Garden in the Wake is a community garden in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn centering Black queer, trans, non-binary, genderqueer, and agender folks who are looking to grow and cultivate food and medicinal herbs. We hope that this space will be multipurpose in its function, with the larger aim to create and strengthen support networks for these communities, especially those who are disproportionately impacted by food apartheid and disabled. The garden space will be accessible, secure, and focus on the needs of Black queer and trans folks who are seeking a haven, for community building, skill sharing, art making, food cultivation, medicine making, holistic wellness practices such as tincture making, and political education grounded in a Black radical tradition.
Create & Connect Fund Applicant: Morgan Bromell
Project Collaborator: Justina Walker
LEARN MORE
@gardeninthewake
Meditating for Black Lives believes in raising the collective consciousness about our shared struggle for human rights starting with each community member. Awareness and understanding of our own vulnerabilities and unique positions, inspires us to care for, and accept, the multiplicities inherent in us all.
Meditating for Black Lives uses principles and practices of various meditation traditions to support efforts in healing from racial and systemic oppressions. It is a collective aspiration to co-create a coexistence free from the mental chains that inhibit the full expression of our humanity.
Together, we sit in contemplation to process our absorbed traumas and breathe for the lives of Black, Indigenous, brown—and all persecuted and oppressed—communities of the world.
Create & Connect Fund Applicant: Brittany Micek
LEARN MORE
meditatingforblacklives.org // @meditatingforblacklives
