Co-creation at work: 2024 Street Work installations

Street WorksAnnouncements
Written By Anjali Deshmukh

Street Works are rooted in design principles that shape how we think, curate, and organize. These design principles stack on MJN’s core values of justice, loving care, and solidarity.

Among design principles is co-creation — artwork in which makers or facilitators share power with the audience in the artistic process. The end result thus belongs to a collective or might be ephemeral altogether. See below for the latest on installations. Click on each for details.

There are still more to come!

Featured
Gadgets!, by Solar One’s Youth Advisory Committee
Sep 22
Gadgets!, by Solar One’s Youth Advisory Committee

Collaborate with Solar One’s Youth Advisory Council (YAC) to explore how your unique skill sets and experiences can help you make meaningful changes in the climate space. You'll also have the opportunity to generate actual, physical energy by playing with solar panels and circuits!

Rising. Curtains. By Ernest Verrett & Anjali Deshmukh
Sep 22
Rising. Curtains. By Ernest Verrett & Anjali Deshmukh

Join MJN members, Ernest and Anjali, in the locally loved craft of community beading. As regular local stewards of this wearable art, we're excited to collaborate with participants to reflect on the story of climate change, by co-creating a glittering bead curtain mapping global temperatures. (Photo by Ernest Verrett.)

Places of Pollution, Places of Resilience
Sep 22
Places of Pollution, Places of Resilience

Join a team of local healers in an environmental mapping activity inviting attendees to pinpoint sources of pollution and, separately, sources of resilience on a map of Queens. We’ll also be coloring maps of Queens all day, talking about all our favorite places, and learn about the role that environmental pollution plays in maternal and child health.

The Art of Letter Writing to Get Out the Vote, by MJN collective
Sep 22
The Art of Letter Writing to Get Out the Vote, by MJN collective

Did you know that writing a letter to someone on why you vote can actually increase the odds that they will? Hang out with MJN to write nonpartisan letters encouraging young voters across the country to participate in our democracy in the upcoming Federal election.

Societal Composting, by Mazorca Colectiva
Sep 22
Societal Composting, by Mazorca Colectiva

"Prepare for an impending collapse!" is how the government and the media express the failure of our society to support our lives. Colonial-capitalist systems continue to profit from disaster, without contributing solutions. Join Mazorca Colectiva in healing circles reflecting on collapse. Participants will create poetical work, which will be composted into something beautiful. In a space of rest, they’ll imagine the seeds to plant for the future that will emerge. 

Mushroom Power! By Remember Y(our) Connection
Sep 22
Mushroom Power! By Remember Y(our) Connection

Join Remember Y(our) Connection in a creative exercise inspired by the power of mushrooms to clean our environment. Mushrooms will blossom on a log over the day as participants envision more beauty & compassion in our world. (Image: Connecting to our environment through mobile-making w/ found objects, Remember Y(our) Connection Chill 'n' Grill, Flushing Meadows, 10/23. Photo: Molly Hein.)

Colorful World, by Jing (Ellen) Xu
Sep 22
Colorful World, by Jing (Ellen) Xu

Small actions can make a big difference in the future of our planet and oceans. Join Jing (Ellen) Xu for an interactive art installation of colorful foam and cardboard rocks reflecting on how small actions can tip the balance. You’ll have about 2 minutes to balance seven foam rocks of different colors. (Spoiler: it's not easy!)

Community Superheroes for Just Climate Futures! By Kaimera
Sep 22
Community Superheroes for Just Climate Futures! By Kaimera

Join Kaimera for an interactive journey into imagining and shaping our own climate futures! Create your own climate superhero, share stories, and participate in community creations that blend art, movement, dance, and imagination.

Flood Sensor Aunty, by Sabina Sethi Unni
Sep 22
Flood Sensor Aunty, by Sabina Sethi Unni

Join Sabina Sethi Unni for a play starring an anthropomorphic flood sensor who wants to be a movie star, designed for brown aunties and communities. Halfway between public theater and culturally competent emergency management, audience members will leave nourished: bellies full of chai and pakoras, good vibes, and emergency planning materials.

Wasted Potential, by The Veggie Nuggets
Sep 22
Wasted Potential, by The Veggie Nuggets

What are the impacts of food waste on the environment? And what can we do about it? Help the Veggie Nuggets create a painting made of block brints and vegetable dyes that represent the food we waste. The canvas, which rotates throughout the day, will slowly change colors. While you're there, learn from about the benefits of turning food scraps into “black gold.”

Próxima Tierra, by Kaleidospace
Sep 22
Próxima Tierra, by Kaleidospace

Join Kaleidospace for coloring, workshops, and dance performances. For the first half of the day, participants will color in a replica of Kaleidospace member Mark Saldana’s mural in Travers Park, nearby, co-created with NICE. Stick around near the end of the day for a final performance in Travers Park.

Community Climate, by All Street Collective
Sep 22
Community Climate, by All Street Collective

How do local communities respond to climate change? Participate in building an archive of Queens climate actions facilitated All Street Collective. There will be workshops and interviews throughout the day on zine-making and more. By the end, we’ll have recorded our community's history in their own words.

Heat Maps: Jackson Heights, by Nitin Mukul
Sep 22
Heat Maps: Jackson Heights, by Nitin Mukul

Collaborate with Nitin in creating an improvisational artwork made by layering paint in sheets of ice, freezing each layer so it accumulates color and texture, and then watching it melt according to natural weather conditions while it’s filmed. As you're making a new one, you can watch an existing one melt in the open Jackson Heights air.

Hip Hop 50 Boombox, by Bayeté Ross Smith
Sep 22
Hip Hop 50 Boombox, by Bayeté Ross Smith

Contribute your favorite songs on freedom and liberation alongside perspectives on climate change to Bayeté Ross Smith’s mix tapes on the climate change crisis, part of a sculpture made of sugarcane and cotton boombox replicas. Bayeté will collect recordings all day and mingle your songs and voices in with pre-recorded perspectives from Street Work participants.

Green Card by Purvi Shah & Troy Woodley
Sep 22
Green Card by Purvi Shah & Troy Woodley

Green plays hide & seek in a tapestry of grey asphalt and brown buildings in Jackson Heights. A lack of trees means a dearth of places birds can call home. Come join Purvi & Troy in making origami birds while exploring how green space helps increase clean air, limits the heat index, and gives space for our feathered friends (and also people!) to nest & soar.

Ready... Set... VOTE! By Woodside on the Move
Sep 22
Ready... Set... VOTE! By Woodside on the Move

Post your community priorities on Woodside on the Move’s low-tech community bulletin board. And while you're there, register to vote ahead of the Nov. 5 election and check your registration status. It's the first step on the path to the polls.

Reimagining the Brooklyn Queens Expressway
Sep 22
Reimagining the Brooklyn Queens Expressway

Join El Puente and the Brooklyn Queens Expressway Environmental Justice Coalition (BQE-EJC) in an art-marking and storytelling journey to imagine how the public spaces that are disrupted by highways today can be transformed into futures in which we prioritize community health & environmental wellness. 

Landscaping our Climate Future
Sep 22
Landscaping our Climate Future

What does a joyful future, free of climate change, look like to you? Join Frontline Resource Institute in a visioning of our collective future inviting participants to make artwork — with watercolor, pencil, pastel, and more — reflecting on this question. Over the day, we’ll combine everyone's artwork into a single image, like an unfolding puzzle.


Anjali Deshmukh
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Relationship at work: where the 2024 Street Work is and who it's for
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Remember Y(our) Connection: envisioning beauty and building compassion