NEWS

Books

Books conceptualized and edited by Social Practice CUNY that archive and share conversations, learnings, practical approaches, and projects from nearly two decades of pedagogy and practice in socially engaged artmaking.
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Practicing in Public: Conversations on Socially Engaged Art

Practicing in Public gathers a vital new body of conversations emerging from Social Practice CUNY, a network of artists, organizers, and educators working with communities beyond the university to confront the most urgent questions of our time.
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Photo by Jaclyn Reyes

Celebrating the 2025–26 SPCUNY Fellows!

Our SPCUNY 2025–26 Fellows have spent the year developing projects with communities across New York City. Through performance, film, sound, publishing, workshops, public art, and mutual aid, their work asks how creative practice can help us inherit the past differently, respond to the present, and imagine more just ways of living together. These projects demonstrate an ongoing commitment to optimism and collaboration in a challenging world, marking the last round of our Fellowship with a sense of belonging and futurity. We invite you to spend time with these projects and follow where the work leads next.
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Social Practice CUNY Sunsetting Announcement

It’s April, the time when Social Practice CUNY traditionally puts out a call for applications for a new cohort of fellows. This year, we have a different announcement to share: SPCUNY will be coming to a close at the end of February 2027. The 2025–26 cohort has been our last. Click through for the full announcement.
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Social Practice CUNY Announces New Public Programming Series: How Do We ______ in Public?

SPCUNY announces the launch of How Do We ______ in Public?, a new, free public programming series of four experimental events taking place across New York City throughout 2026. Organized by the SPCUNY core team of artists, educators, and scholars (Chloë Bass, Tom Finkelpearl, Catherine LaSota, Nicolás Dumit Estevez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel, Jacquelyn Marie Shannon, Gregory Sholette, and Cory Tamler), the series expands SPCUNY’s existing work and reaffirms its commitment to strengthening socially engaged artistic practice, especially at a moment when culture faces sustained attacks and freedom of expression is increasingly constrained. The first event, "How Do We Study in Public?", will take place on Feb. 12 at Creative Time HQ. Click to read more about the series.
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Announcing 2025–26 Faculty and Student Fellows

We are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2025–26 Social Practice CUNY Fellowship: an interdisciplinary group of 24 visual and performing artists, writers, organizers, educators, documentarians, media-makers, and scholars from across CUNY for their commitment to cultivating social change through art. Read more about this year's Fellows here!
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Courtesy of Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

Multidisciplinary Artist and Educator Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel Joins Social Practice CUNY as the 2025–26 Social Practice Teaching Scholar-in-Residence

We are pleased to announce multidisciplinary artist and educator Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel as the 2025–26 SPCUNY Teaching Scholar-in-Residence. A longtime practitioner of socially engaged performance, Nicolás brings a decades-long commitment to art as a catalyst for personal and collective transformation. His work dissolves boundaries between performance, pedagogy, and ritual, centering presence, care, and radical belonging as essential frameworks for social change.
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Photo by Meghan Stahl

Celebrating the 2024–25 SPCUNY Fellows!

Across disciplines and NYC boroughs, the 2024–25 Fellows are experimenting with new forms of civic life, cultural organizing, and creative resistance. From experimental comedy shows and participatory games to immersive archives, local ecologies, and public rituals, the projects explore social practice not as a medium, but as a mode of relation. This year's projects map a vibrant and growing field of socially engaged art within and beyond the CUNY campuses. Join us in reflecting on this work as well as looking forward to where it is headed.
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Announcing 2024–25 Faculty, Student, and Actionist Fellows

We are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2024–25 Social Practice CUNY Fellowship: an interdisciplinary group of 32 visual and performing artists, writers, organizers, educators, documentarians, media-makers, and scholars from across CUNY for their commitment to cultivating social change through art. Read more about this year's Fellows here!
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Introducing Part of the Practice, the new Social Practice CUNY podcast!

What is social practice, and how does it affect the ways we navigate our lives and make change in the world? Join artists, scholars, and collaborators from Social Practice CUNY on Part of the Practice, hosted by Catherine LaSota, as we discuss our individual art practices, our communities, and the role of socially-engaged art in our work for social justice. Part of the Practice features a different voice in the Social Practice CUNY network every other Wednesday. Visit the podcast page on our website to follow along, and join us in-person on August 21, 2024 for a launch party at Francis Kite Club!
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Welcome to Catherine LaSota, our new Associate Director!

We are so excited to welcome Catherine LaSota as our first Associate Director of Social Practice CUNY. Catherine’s background in directing multidisciplinary academic institutes, organizing creative communities, and her own training as a creative writer, sculptor, and musician represents a synthesis of SPCUNY’s goals to foster artist leadership and engage in conversations across disciplines. Introducing the Associate Director role also offers SPCUNY a significant chance to increase our public presence both within CUNY and beyond.
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Interdisciplinary Artist Natalia Nakazawa Joins Social Practice CUNY as the 2023–24 Social Practice Teaching Scholar-in-Residence

Social Practice CUNY is pleased to announce the appointment of Queens–based artist Natalia Nakazawa as the 2023–24 Social Practice Scholar-in-Residence. A socially engaged practitioner focusing on issues of community activism and educational uplift, Nakazawa brings years of experience relevant across SPCUNY’s intersecting commitments and priorities: the desire to support interdisciplinary creators working at the intersection of art and social justice; the hope to train a future generation of arts leaders able to bring diverse perspectives to institutional work; and the commitment to new strategies of pedagogy engaged with the vibrant life of New York City.
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Tom Finkelpearl, Former Commissioner of NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Joins Social Practice CUNY as the Inaugural Social Practice Teaching Scholar-in-Residence

Social Practice CUNY is pleased to announce the appointment of Tom Finkelpearl as the inaugural Social Practice Teaching Scholar-in-Residence for Spring 2023. As part of his role, he will draw on his extensive New York experience as the former commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs, as well as his Queens-specific knowledge from his time at the Director of the Queens Museum, to amplify Social Practice CUNY’s connections and engagement with the larger cultural landscape and fabric of our complex urban environment.
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Create News 35 – Art and Social Action: International education in collaborative and socially engaged art

Issue 35 of Create News features some select reflections on the state of socially engaged art education from SPCUNY, who were invited to contribute to this publication alongside those involved in the new MA/MFA Art and Social Action at NCAD, in which Create is a partner.
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Lessons for Survival by Emily Raboteau, SPCUNY 2023-24 Faculty Fellow, reviewed in the New York Times

"While Raboteau grapples with much that is wrong with our troubled world, she does so with bracing honesty and insight," writes Tiya Miles in this review of Raboteau's newly-released book. "The strength of her book is her willingness to express concerns that many feel but are reluctant to voice."
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Social Practice CUNY Receives a Renewal Grant of $600K from the Mellon Foundation

The Mellon Foundation awarded Social Practice CUNY an additional $600,000 to continue its work into 2026. In that time, the initiative will welcome two more sets of student and faculty fellows and offer programming and mentorship that encourage CUNY artists and scholars to bring social change through art.
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Social Practice Queens alum Cody Herrmann reports on her 2023 apexart fellowship in Saigon

"apex has me out here in a little apartment along a dirty little canal in a neighborhood I would equate to today's Williamsburg, Brooklyn. And that's where things get a little tricky for me—you know I'm not supposed to be making art out here, but if you know one thing about me, you probably know I make work about public policy and development along dirty urban waterways."
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SPCUNY alum Pedro J. Cruz Cruz wins international award at 2022 Lisbon Architecture Triennial

2021-2022 SPCUNY Student Actionist Pedro Cruz won the highly competitive Millennium bcp Universities Competition Award for his project “El Teatro del Pueblo,” a much-revised version of his second-year studio project, in the main exhibit’s Multiplicity section. It is a work of urban ethnography, using oral histories and filmmaking as an architectural research method, that documents street vendors in Corona Plaza, Queens, NY, and emphasizes how vendors have been historically marginalized.
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Artist Rie Osogoe, SPCUNY 2022 alum, featured on Japan’s largest broadcaster for the project she started with SPCUNY

"With the cost of living rising fast in Japan, a growing number of people are living in poverty. This report explores how one Japanese artist is using the power of art to highlight social issues and help support those in need, through creative expression." Spotlight on SPCUNY alum Rie Osogoe on NHK-World Japan.
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“The Last Street End in Gowanus” project collaborator releases cassette, music video from the performance

Just released: a music video and a limited edition cassette of a sound art performance that took place as part of encounter 4 of Nora Almeida's SPCUNY Project. Artist Martin Bisi says: "Each encounter involved transforming the contested area through uses other than those intended by public officials. Our performance would be to transform the location with sound. Objects from the location were integrated into it, like the large piece of scrap metal that Bradford Reed is dragging. Other instruments were self-made from discarded materials in our landscape." By Brad Cohan for Rock & Roll Globe. Photo: Sleeping Giant Glossolalia 2022.
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