Social Practice CUNY

Our Literacies Are Ambulatory: Freedom Zines as Pedagogical Backchannels
2025-06-18 19:00 - 20:30 UTC | The Word is Change Bookstore, 368 Tompkins Ave. (at Putnam), Brooklyn, NY, 11216
During this interactive panel, attendees will be presented with a brief history of the Sea Island Citizenship schools and the Mississippi Freedom Summer schools, as well as a description of the Freedom Zines workshop. Attendees will also be asked to think about and discuss their early writing experiences by the panel moderator. Then, Freedom Zines participants will discuss and share their zine-making process, followed by a Q&A. Zines will also be distributed to all event attendees.

Elevating Black Queer Ancestors: Embodying Black Queer Pasts, Envisioning Black Queer Futures
2025-06-26 19:00 - 21:00, 2025-07-31 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Lefferts Historic House, 452 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn, NY, United States
Elevating Black Queer Ancestors: Embodying Black Queer Pasts, Envisioning Black Queer Futures is a workshop series that explores the role of embodied experience in recovering, interpreting, and reimagining the uses of Black queer histories. Hosted monthly at Lefferts House—a site marked by legacies of enslavement and the erasure of Black historical presences—the series examines how material culture and spatial narratives shape our understanding of the past. Participants will engage critically and creatively with historic spaces and objects to explore embodied strategies for disrupting dominant historical narratives and reclaiming marginalized stories.
Sessions will take place from 7PM-9PM at 452 Flatbush Ave in Prospect Park, Brooklyn on the following dates:
May 29, 2025
June 26, 2025
July 31, 2025
To RSVP, please send an email to riah.kinsey@gmail.com expressing your interest.

*77*
2025-06-27 19:00 - 20:00, 2025-07-07 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | NY

Kensington Windsor Terrace Mutual Aid Community Potluck and Recipe Share
2025-06-28 16:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | Kensington backyard, RSVP for info
This event brings together neighbors participating in the long-running Neighborhood Cooperative Food Distribution Project of the Kensington-Windsor Terrace Mutual Aid network. The food project employs mutual aid principles to distribute local produce in a way that builds connections and relationships across our neighborhood’s immigrant communities, language differences, and economic situations.
The SPCUNY grant supports a community cookbook project that showcases neighbors’ recipes in English, Spanish, and Bangla – recipes for the seasonal produce we all share. The event is a community builder, with a potluck and a recipe share. It will take place in a neighborhood backyard. It is wheelchair accessible, although there will be some uneven ground.
Please email sofya.aptekar@gmail.com to RSVP.

What Else? A Comedy Show about the Solidarity Economy
2025-08-01 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Maker’s Ensemble, 13 Grattan St. #408, Brooklyn, NY, 11206, United States

Banned Books Brunch with The UltraViolet Archive
2025-08-03 11:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Clemente Soto Velez Cultural & Educational Center, 107 Suffolk Street, New York, NY, 10002, United States

The Relationship Assessment Test
2025-08-23 15:00 - 17:00, 2025-08-24 14:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | City Reliquary, 370 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, 11211, United States

RSVP DEADLINE for September & October: Sounding Data Justice with Eastern Queens Alliance, Inc.
2025-08-29 | York College CUNY (3H Atrium & 2D01), 94-20 Guy R. Brewer Blvd., Jamaica, NY, 11451, United States
Responses needed (at this link) by Friday, August 29, 2025 11:59pm.
This is a special invitation for the Social Practice CUNY (SPCUNY) network!
Your attendance is requested at two sound installations organized as part of the Jamaica Forum for Public Art Otherwise, a 2025-2026 SPCUNY project at York College in Jamaica, Queens.
Both events share work from Sounding Data Justice, a collaborative project with Eastern Queens Alliance, Inc. funded by a 2024-2025 American Council for Learned Societies Digital Justice Seed Grant. This experimental project works with data on air quality and aircraft noise collected by EQA to advocate for a sustainable Southeast Queens!
To assist with scheduling the sound installations—the first on September 18, the second in October—please complete the form at this link.
All information is confidential and will only be used to send you friendly reminders. For questions, please contact Emily Verla Bovino, Assistant Professor, CUNY York, at ebovino@york.cuny.edu
‘The Jamaica Forum for Public Art Otherwise’ is a Southeast Queens-based center for artistic research in public art at York College CUNY in Jamaica, Queens. The SPCUNY fellowship supports its manifestation by conjoining initiatives with the Southeast Queens Artist Alliance, Eastern Queens Alliance, the Black American Heritage Foundation Music History Archive, and Black Spectrum Theatre. The project serves these communities with events to engage them with each other, thus enacting the center.

Accessibility: York College is wheelchair accessible. Contact ebovino@york.cuny.edu with accessibility requirements for the King Manor Museum in October.

Part of the Practice Season Two Launch Party
2025-09-17 17:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Francis Kite Club, 40 Loisaida Ave, New York, NY, 10009, United States

Sounding Data Justice with Eastern Queens Alliance, Inc.
2025-09-18 17:00 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | York College CUNY (3H Atrium & 2D01), 94-20 Guy R. Brewer Blvd., Jamaica, NY, 11451, United States

KUMUKUTIKUTITAP: PAROL-PAINTING WORKSHOP
2025-10-04 14:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Queens, NY, 11101, United States
Join us for a joyful, hands-on workshop led by artist Maria Arenas, where we’ll paint Capiz parols—traditional Filipino lanterns that sparkle with light, resilience, and community. This event is not only a chance to learn and create together, but also a celebration of Filipino American heritage and the beloved ‘ber’ months tradition that stretches from September through December.
📅 Date & Time: Saturday, October 4 at 2:00 PM
📍 Location: MoMA PS1, Classroom (Homeroom Gallery, 1st floor near the café)
💲 Admission: FREE — all materials and refreshments provided
📝 Registration: Pre-registration is required. Please register if you plan to attend—space is limited. Once registered, you’ll receive instructions for entering the museum.
Parols—star-shaped lanterns—are a cherished symbol of the holiday season in the Philippines, representing light, hope, and togetherness. Many parols are traditionally crafted from Capiz shells, which glow beautifully in both architecture and handicrafts. Yet, with growing global demand, the harvesting of Capiz has become more intensive, raising concerns about environmental impacts and local economies.
This workshop is the second phase of Kumikutikutitap (“to sparkle”), a project designed to illuminate the Little Manila neighborhood with parols. Alongside creating art, participants will also learn about the deeper ecological and cultural stories behind Capiz. The workshop will spark dialogue about sustainability, climate justice, and how creative practice can connect to care for both people and place.
No art experience is necessary, and materials will be provided. Ages 12+ are welcome. Please wear clothing suitable for painting, as spills and splashes may happen. Because parols are delicate, the activity is best suited for those comfortable working with fine materials. Light Filipino refreshments will be served.
Presented with love + collaboration by MoMA PS1, Little Manila Queens Bayanihan Arts, the UKAI Initiative, Social Practice CUNY, and the Coalition for Asian American Children & Families.

Accessibility
Event will follow host’s protocol here.

Sounding Data Justice - Listening Event
2025-10-23 19:00 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | King Manor Museum, 150-03 Jamaica Ave, Jamaica, NY 11432, NY, United States
Responses needed at this link by October 14, 2025 11:59pm.
This is a special invitation for the Social Practice CUNY (SPCUNY) network!
For one evening on Thursday, October 23, the King Manor Museum on Jamaica Avenue in Jamaica, Queens, will host a sound installation from the project Sounding Data Justice, a collaborative effort between Eastern Queens Alliance, Inc., York College CUNY, and SUNY Buffalo. The installation will transform the rooms of the house-museum into spaces for listening to invite reflection on the long history of today’s environmental justice issues.
For more information and to RSVP, please complete the form at this link.
Visitors will hear aircraft noise recorded in Springfield Gardens, a Southeast Queens neighborhood where residents live with day-to-day noise and pollution burden under flight paths from JFK Airport. Members of the Sounding Data Justice research team will facilitate conversation in the rooms of the museum, a historic home significant in the early 19th century anti-slavery movement in the United States, just over a mile from the location of The Green (present-day Bricktown), a 19th century community of African American freepersons and formerly enslaved people that contributed to efforts organizing a Black press, advocating for equity in education, and building thriving neighborhoods for the self-determination of people of color on Long Island.
‘Sounding Data Justice’ is funded by the American Council of Learned Societies Digital Justice Seed Grant and is supported by the Social Practice CUNY (SPCUNY) faculty fellowship project, the Jamaica Forum for Public Art Otherwise.
Light fare and refreshments will be served. Admission and snacks are free!
King Manor Museum is a 6 minute walk from the Parsons/Archer subway stop (E/J/Z). Parking at the museum is available for those with accessibility needs (contact ebovino@york.cuny.edu). There is metered parking on surrounding streets and visitors can also use the reasonably-priced, attended, indoor parking garage at the corner of 90th Avenue and Parsons Boulevard, within easy walking distance of the museum.
Accessibility:
There is wheelchair access to the King Manor grounds along with an accessible entrance, limited accessible parking, and two accessible restroom facilities. Please contact ebovino@york.cuny.edu to arrange for your accessibility needs at the museum.

How Do We Study in Public?
2026-02-12 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | CTHQ, 59 E 4th St, Floor 7, New York, NY, 10003, United States
What happens when institutions face systematic destruction? Five leading social practice art educators confront the present.

For over two decades, Claire Bishop, Tania Bruguera, Tom Finkelpearl, Pablo Helguera, and Gregory Sholette have developed projects that simultaneously exploit and critique pedagogical methods and structures. Organized by Gregory Sholette and Tom Finkelpearl, this event brings all five together on February 12 to confront a pressing question: What becomes of counter-institutional pedagogies when the institutions housing them face fundamental transformation—not through progressive reimagining, but through systematic defunding and ideological assault? What have we learned, and what new critiques does this unsettling moment demand? Under fast-changing circumstances, exactly how do we study in public?

Claire Bishop
Claire Bishop is presidential professor of art history at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Her book Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship won the College Art Association’s 2013 Frank Jewett Mather Award for art criticism. In 2024 she won a Guggenheim Fellowship and published two books: Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today (which was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award) and Merce Cunningham’s Events: Key Concepts. Her books and articles have been translated into twenty languages, and she is a Contributing Editor to Artforum.
Tania Bruguera
The installation and performance artist Tania Bruguera researches ways in which art can be applied to everyday political life, focusing on the transformation of social affect into political effectiveness. Her long-term projects have been intensive interventions on the institutional structure of collective memory, education, and politics. Bruguera earned her MFA in performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the founder and director of Cátedra Arte de Conducta (Behavior Art School), the first performance studies program in Latin America. She is Senior Lecturer in Media and Performance at Harvard University.
Tom Finkelpearl
Tom Finkelpearl organized fifteen shows at PS1 in the 1980s, managed over 100 public art commissions at the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) in the 1990s, spearheaded a 50,000 square foot expansion as Director of the Queens Museum (2002-2014), and oversaw the city’s cultural policy and funding when he returned to DCLA as Commissioner (2014-2020). Since then, was a consultant for the Mellon Foundation (2020-21), and was appointed Social Practice Teaching Scholar in Residence at SP CUNY (2023-present). He co-curated a show of Christine Sun Kim’s work at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2025) and Walker Art Center (2026). Currently he is working on his third book, Recast the Museum (working title) in collaboration with the artist Pablo Helguera.
Pablo Helguera
Pablo Helguera is a visual artist living in New York. His work involves performance, drawing, pedagogy, installation, theater and other literary strategies. He has been head of public programs at various museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the MCA Chicago. He is the author of many books including Education for Socially Engaged Art (2011) and The Parable Conference (2014). He is currently Assistant Professor of Arts Management and Entrepreneurship at The College of the Performing Arts at The New School. He writes a weekly column titled Beautiful Eccentrics.
Gregory Sholette
Gregory Sholette is a New York City-based artist, author, educator, and activist. He is a co-founder of the collectives Political Art Documentation and Distribution (PAD/D, 1980-1988), REPOhistory (1989-2000), and Gulf Labor Coalition (2010-), as well as co-curator of Imaginary Archive, which documents a past whose future never arrived. His books include the highly cited Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture (2010), as well as Delirium and Resistance: Activist Art and the Crisis of Capitalism (2017), The Art of Activism and the Activism of Art (2022), and forthcoming from MIT Press, The Radical Unpresent: Cultural Resistance in a Fractured World (2026). Together with artist Chloë Bass, he co-directs Social Practice City University of New York at the CUNY Graduate Center, a Mellon Foundation-funded initiative, where he is also affiliated doctoral faculty in Environmental Psychology.

About the Series
Produced by Social Practice CUNY, How Do We ______ in Public? is a 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, the series responds to contemporary crises shaping the cultural field, including the defunding and targeting of public institutions and the erosion of shared civic space. Rather than offering prescriptive solutions, the series tests new forms of social practice in real time, foregrounding experimentation, solidarity, and public accountability.
Across four interconnected programs, How Do We ______ in Public? asks how we study, move, keep secret(s), and continue together in public when the infrastructures that once supported those actions are fraying.

Open Call! Southeast Queens Film Festival
2026-03-27 | York College CUNY, 94-20 Guy R. Brewer Blvd., Jamaica, NY, United States
Submit to the OPEN CALL for a juried film selection that’s part of the inaugural edition of the Southeast Queens Film Festival (April 15-17), an event that the York College CUNY Art History Program is running in Jamaica, Queens as part of the Social Practice CUNY (SPCUNY) initiative Jamaica Forum for Public Art Otherwise!
The EXTENDED submission deadline for videos and films is fast approaching: March 27.
Interested in the full three-day festival schedule? Check it out and RSVP here:

Want to submit to the Open Call? Fill out the form here:

We’re excited to see what you submit! Remember – This juried selection is inclusive!
The open call for juried selection is coordinated by the community organization Southeast Queens Center for History and Culture (SQCHC) which welcomes submissions of moving image works of any length and format (note: analog formats would have to be submitted as digital files).
SQCHC wants to see anything and everything that you can conceive, from TikTok videos to short films, from curated home video selections to a funny night out with your friends captured on your phone! Anything and everything!
SQCHC just asks that all applicants and/or their films have a connection to Southeast Queens. They hope to show as many submissions as possible. Selected submissions will be shown in the main Lecture Hall at York College CUNY in Jamaica, Queens on April 15.
Don’t hesitate to contact ebovino@york.cuny.edu, if you have any questions!
ACCESSIBILITY
Contact ebovino@york.cuny.edu with any accessibility needs so that the film festival can make your open call submission experience as comfortable as possible.

ALAY: A Mourning Ritual Performance
2026-04-11 13:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | BAX Annex, 80 Hanson Place, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
ALAY is a mourning ritual performance created and performed by Dorothea Gloria, rooted in Ilocano traditions of grief, remembrance, and offering. Drawing from ancestral practices of lamentation, prayer, and embodied devotion, the work explores how grief lives in the body and how ritual can hold what language cannot.
Positioned at the intersection of performance, ritual, and social practice, ALAY treats mourning as a living, communal practice. Through gesture, repetition, sound, and presence, the performance creates a shared space where grief is witnessed rather than explained, and where collective attention becomes an act of care.
ALAY reframes mourning as relational and expansive. The performance asks: What does it mean to mourn together? How might ritual be adapted and reimagined within contemporary performance practice? And how can ancestral knowledge inform present-day modes of gathering, remembrance, and healing?
ALAY functions both as a performance and an offering to our ancestors, to the community, and to those carrying unspoken or unresolved grief. Audiences are invited into an intimate ritual space that prioritizes presence over spectacle and process over product, foregrounding mourning as a shared human experience rather than an individual burden.
Created and performed by Dorothea Gloria, ALAY reflects Gloria’s ongoing artistic practice of exploring theater as ritual. The work builds a bridge between inherited ceremonial practices and contemporary performance, offering a space to sit with loss, tenderness, and collective remembrance.
ALAY is a durational performance. Audience can enter and exit at any point throughout the performance time.

Other Daughters presented by Dxhesva Collective
2026-04-19 19:00 (America/New_York) | Millenium Flim Workshop, 167 Wilson Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11237, United States
DXHESVA Collective Presents Other Daughters: A New Wave of Balkan-Diasporic Cinema at Millennium Film Workshop
BROOKLYN, NY — April 19, 2026 — The DXHESVA Collective is proud to announce Other Daughters, a curated program of short films exploring the intersections of heritage, gender, and the immigrant experience. The screening will take place on April 19, 2026, at 7:00 PM at the historic Millennium Film Workshop in Brooklyn.
Other Daughters features a cohort of Balkan-American filmmakers who utilize archival intervention, analog experimentation, and performance art to navigate the complexities of identity across generations. From the mountainous border towns of the former Yugoslavia to the basement corridors of New York City, these works interrogate how memory is preserved, how bodies rebel, and how “home” is reconstructed in the diaspora.

Featured Works & Filmmakers:
“Women in Gusinje” and “Koprive” by Anisa Hodzic: Hodzic’s work spans archival re-editing and visceral performance. Women in Gusinje deconstructs 1970s documentary footage to reclaim female narratives from the male gaze, while Koprive uses the stinging nettle as a tactile metaphor for the painful yet nurturing nature of maternal healing.
“Axilia” by Bimbi Mafia: A defiant act of self-adoration, this film challenges cultural taboos surrounding the female body, transforming “indecent” hair into a symbol of rebellion against societal expectations in Albania and beyond.
“Gjurma” (Traces) by Dora Nano: A poetic archival short that connects Nano to the origins of the Kinostudio, Albania’s first film studio. By weaving together documentary footage shot by their grandfather, audio interview with their father, and archival images, Nano explores the fluidity of diasporic and collective memory through cinema.
“Si Të Lashë” by Alissa Xhixhabesi: Documented on analog formats (16mm and Super 8), Xhixhabesi captures her grandparents’ home on the eve of demolition, offering a haunting meditation on the loss of physical space amidst Albania’s rapid modernization.
“Returning, Leaving” by Mirela Musić: An observational study of Balkan immigrant superintendents in NYC. The film documents the “disordered integration” of family life, focusing on the quiet gestures that define the space between a daughter’s arrival and a father’s departure.
“Scattered” by Edina Hoti: An ongoing series that explores the complex intersections of identity and displacement following the 1990s Balkan conflicts. Utilizing archival recordings of a return to Montenegro for the first time since the war, Hoti captures the reality of a “scattered family”—individuals bound by heart and ancestral stories despite being separated by borders and oceans. Her work examines the nuanced space between everyday life and past memories through a distinct feminist lens.
Support: This program is made possible with support from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
About DXHESVA Collective:
Founded by Anisa Hodzic, DXHESVA Collective is a multidisciplinary initiative dedicated to fostering community spaces that honor resilience and voice. The collective serves as a bridge between personal experience and collective remembrance, inviting dialogue across culture, time, and place.
Contact:
Dxhesvacollective@gmail.com
IG @dxhesva

WEARABLE WASTE: Mask-Making Workshop
2026-04-21 16:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | The City College of New York, 160 Convent Avenue, New York, NY, 10031, United States
WEARABLE WASTE
Mask-Making Workshop
📍 Location: The City College of New York, 160 Convent Avenue, New York, NY 10031
Building: Shepard Hall, Room 375 (3rd Floor)
📅 Date: Tuesday, April 21, 2026
⏰ Time: 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Let’s face waste!
Join us for a hands-on mask-making workshop led by artist, Abby Manwiller, where we will transform recyclables into wearable art. Using metal, plastic, and paper, participants will create expressive masks while exploring how waste connects to climate justice, environmental justice, and waste equity. Through creative play and conversation, we’ll reflect on who carries the burdens of consumption and disposal—and transform everyday discards into bold statements about the systems behind what we throw away.
No art experience needed—materials + light refreshments provided! Plus, we’ll have a photobooth so you can pose and show off your mask creations 📸
🔗 Register here

Presented in collaboration with Sustainable CCNY, NYPIRG-CCNY, and the Sustainability in the Urban Environment Graduate Programs at CCNY. This event is supported by The NYC Climate Justice Hub, Social Practice CUNY, and the UKAI Initiative by Little Manila Queens Bayanihan Arts.

Accessibility info: Refer to CCNY COVID protocol here, and accessibility protocol here.

Thank You, Come Again workshop (Mad World: After Hours)
2026-04-30 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | SoMad, 34 E 23rd St, New York, NY, 10010, United States

Thank You, Come Again workshop (NADA X Mad World: After Hours)
2026-05-14 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | SoMad, 34 E 23rd St, New York, NY, 10010, United States

Thank You, Come Again workshop (Mad World: Saturday Special)
2026-05-30 12:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | SoMad, 34 E 23rd St, New York, NY, 10010, United States

Fundraiser concert to support our neighbors
2026-07-07 | Mama Tried, 787 3rd Ave., Brooklyn, NY, 11232, United States

Kensington-Windsor Terrace Mutual Aid Cookbook Launch
2026-07-12 16:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | DRUM Midwood Office, 818 East 16 Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11230, United States
To celebrate 6+ years of our bulk food project, Kensington-Windsor Terrace Mutual Aid put together a trilingual cookbook (Bangla, Spanish, English), featuring recipes from neighbors who participate in this food project. The recipes were gathered during potluck events, on distribution days, and through one-on-one conversations between neighbors. The process led to many conversations about food cultures, ingredients, and what to make with the surprise set of vegetables we get in the box from our supplier, the worker-coop Lancaster Farms. The process of creating the cookbook took us deep into issues of language justice, connecting neighbors across language divides during times of attacks on immigrants and a food insecurity crisis exacerbated by cuts in federal benefits. The cookbook project culminates in a launch event in the Midwood office of DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving). No RSVP required.

How Do We Move in Public?
2026-07-13 17:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | The Hub, 3rd Avenue and East 149th Street, Bronx, NY, 10455, United States
How Do We Move in Public? is the second program in Social Practice CUNY’s 2026 series How Do We ___________ in Public?: a cycle of four free experimental events responding to contemporary crises shaping the cultural field, including the defunding and targeting of public institutions and the erosion of shared civic space.

This second program in the series is partnered with BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance during the Boogie Down Dance Series.

How Do We Move in Public?
at The Hub, Bronx, NY

Organized by Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel, this event brings together dancers/ choreographers with connections to the Bronx to generate movement-based actions in public spaces in the South Bronx: Argelia Arreola (with support from Pepatián: Bronx Arts ColLABorative), Ana ‘Rokafella’ García, Paloma McGregor/Angela’s Pulse, and Alethea Pace. Responding to escalating surveillance, policing, and state violence, particularly the terrorization of Black and Brown communities under ongoing ICE raids, the program advances movement as a counter-response to neglect, with care, and shared imagination, asking how bodies navigate, reshape, and reclaim urban space under conditions of threat.

This program will activate several points along 3rd Avenue and 149th Street, a major cultural crossroads at the heart of the South Bronx called The Hub, and is funded by the Mellon Foundation and the Eugene M. Lang Foundation.

SCHEDULE OF PERFORMANCES:

Alethea Pace
Time and location: 5:00PM / Just south of Roberto Clemente Plaza (149th Street and 3rd Avenue)
An act of love: is an improvisational movement performance that invites audiences into a practice of deep listening. It explores interconnection—between people, land, and history—and asks how attention, care, and softness might open new possibilities for belonging.
Directed by Alethea Pace / Performed by Maria Bauman, Alethea Pace and Katrina Reid
Costumes by Mauricio Barrera / Masks by Katherine Miranda
Alethea Pace is a Bronx-based interdisciplinary artist whose work is rooted in social justice and community engagement. She has presented work at institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim, and is an adjunct professor at Lehman College.
Ana “Rokafella” García
Time and location: 5:30 & 6:30 PM / 149th Street & 3rd Avenue (The Hub)
This performance responds to the current hostile political climate, including the dismantling of DEI initiatives, ICE raids, lack of justice around sexual assault, anti-LGBTQ+ policies, and racial violence. The dancers use hip-hop as a form of resistance and collective expression.
Dancers: Rokafella, Kwikstep, Fresh Frank, ShamGod, Rocka James,
Bgirl Beasty, Monica B White, and Ava Flava Davis
Ana “Rokafella” García is a NYC-based hip-hop pioneer of Puerto Rican descent. She co-founded Full Circle Productions, NYC’s only non-profit breakdance theater company. With over three decades of experience, she has performed, judged, and taught internationally, and is currently an adjunct professor at The New School, and Sarah Lawrence College.

Paloma McGregor/Angela’s Pulse
Time and location: 6:00 PM / The Hub: at the small triangle park between 148th & 149th on 3rd Ave
A’we Monumental: “Monuments are what empires leave behind as evidence of their might. Culture—dances, stories, food, songs—is what communities keep alive as evidence of our love.” A’we Monumental is part of Building a Better Fishtrap, an iterative performance project rooted in the disappearing fishing tradition of McGregor’s father. The work is guided by three central questions: What do we take with us? What do we leave behind? What do we return to reclaim? Using the Fishtrap Method—a community-based collaborative practice—this iteration brings together Bronx-based dancers to transform an intergenerational duet into a collective performance that reflects on legacy, displacement, and possibility.
Creative Direction and Choreography: Paloma McGregor / Performers: Arthur Avilés, Kayla Hamilton, Michele Lee, Roberto Ventura
Paloma McGregor is an award-winning choreographer, writer, and arts leader, and co-founder of Angela’s Pulse. Her work centers communities of color, merging choreography, journalism, and community organizing. She has received numerous awards including the Herb Alpert Award and the Bessie Award, and has presented work internationally.
This performance of A’we Monumental is supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant. Building a Better Fishtrap – A’we Monumental is supported by the Mellon Foundation and the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project (with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Mellon Foundation). Fiscally sponsored by BAAD!, Angela’s Pulse is also a recipient of funding from Howard Gilman Foundation and The Mosaic Network & Fund (with lead funding from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA)).
Argelia Arreola
Time and location: 7:00 PM / The piece will begin at the corner near Candy Lotto, then gradually move along Willis Avenue
until reaching the opposite side on 148th Street, in front of the mural that says “We Are the Bronx.”
Sembrando Flores: This dance piece draws from traditional Mexican son jarocho and the rhythmic practice of zapateado to explore how the body navigates public space in a city like New York. Blending tradition with contemporary dance, the work reflects on migration, identity, and the experience of inhabiting shared urban environments.
Dancer: Argelia Arreola / Musician: Iván Contreras
Argelia Arreola is a Bronx-based Mexican dancer, choreographer, and musician. Her work bridges African, Afro-Caribbean, and Mexican traditions through contemporary practice. She has performed at major venues including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and is a recipient of the Bronx Dance Fund Fellowship.
Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel has curated exhibitions/programs for El Museo del Barrio; Leslie Lohman Museum of Art; Franklin Furnace; Elizabeth Foundation Project Space; Artists Alliance Inc; Korea Art Forum; Longwood Arts Project/BCA; Bronx River Art Center (BRAC); BAAD!; Art in Odd Places; The Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary in New York; as well as for Academia Desposeída in Madrid, and for the Filmoteca de Andalucía in Córdoba, Spain. Nicolás is the Teaching Scholar in Residence at SPCUNY. Born in the Dominican Republic, he was baptized as a Bronxite in 2011.
Special thanks to our supporting team for this event: Program assistant: Andrés Senra / Artists support on site: Ivana Larrosa, Kip Silva,
Jessica Fairfax Hirst, Kathleena Howie / Welcoming person: Elina Jiménez
Supporting organizations: BronxNet, and Rincón Criollo-La Casita de Chema.
Thank you as well to: Argenis Apolinario, Geoffrey Jones, Alex Romania, BronxNet, and
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Jerome Robbins Dance Division for documenting the program.
With deep gratitude to the beloved South Bronx and its Neighbors

Slow & Sensual: Accessible Burlesque
2026-08-16 14:00 - 15:50 (America/New_York) | Playwrights Horizons, 440 Lafayette Street, New York, NY, 10003, United States
Slow & Sensual is an accessible burlesque movement workshop that invites performers to slow down, deepen their sensual presence, and build erotic charge through gaze, breath, delay, touch, stillness, and intentional movement. Developed by Alyssa Kitt, the workshop brings together striptease technique, somatic movement, disability dance, crip time, and sensual pacing to explore how tease can emerge from each performer’s own bodymind rather than from able-bodied expectations of speed, stamina, verticality, or virtuosity. Through guided movement, reflection, and practical slow-burn exercises, Slow & Sensual treats access as a creative method and celebrates slowness, pleasure, fatigue, rest, and non-normative movement as powerful aesthetic and erotic resources.
Date: Sunday, August 16, 2026, 2-3:50 PM
Event link: http://schoolofburlesque.com/alyssakitt.shtml
OPEN LEVEL WORKSHOP
Access note
This workshop welcomes Deaf, blind, disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, and mobility-device-using participants. ASL interpretation available by request. Movement material will be verbally described and adaptable across standing, seated, reclining, floor-based, still, resting, and mobility-device-based options. Participants are welcome to bring any mobility devices, comfort props, or access tools they use.
Dress for movement and comfort.
About Your Instructor
Alyssa Kitt Hanley is a burlesque performer, teacher, researcher, and Disa-burly-teaser whose work explores striptease, sensuality, disability, and the politics of performance. Known as the “Siren with the $7 million smile,” Alyssa began her burlesque career in Australia in 2007 and has spent nearly two decades developing work around tease, stage presence, slow-burn sensuality, and embodied performance practice. Her teaching invites students into burlesque as a practice of erotic self-authorship, confidence, pleasure, and embodied agency, with a strong commitment to access and bodily difference. Alyssa is an award-winning performer, producer of Mx Burlesque Australia, Director of the Australian Burlesque Museum, a Social Practice CUNY Faculty Fellow, and a PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance at the CUNY Graduate Center, where her research focuses on erotic performance, burlesque, disability, and dance. She is also a cancer survivor and beauty activist championing facial difference, and is passionate about creating burlesque spaces where sensuality, difference, and self-directed movement are celebrated as sources of power.
Workshop fee: $40.00
Sliding scale available for access reasons, including disability, chronic illness, low income, student/unwaged status, or financial precarity.
Location: Playwrights Horizons, 440 Lafayette, Fourth Floor, Studio 4A. Greenwich Village 10003
If you have trouble with the buzzer or elevator call 212-564-1235
In Person in New York City!
Class size is strictly limited.
To confirm your workshop place, please forward your payment receipt to alyssa_kitt@hotmail.com with your name and Slow and Sensual NYSB. Your place will be confirmed once your payment receipt has been received.
ASL interpretation available by request. Please request by Sunday 2nd August so we can confirm an interpreter and share preparation materials in advance.
This workshop has been developed with support from Social Practice CUNY.

How Do We Keep Secret(s) in Public?
2026-09-20 18:00 - 22:00 (America/New_York) | Green Lung Studio, 22 Commerce Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11231, United States
Organized by Jacquelyn Marie Shannon and inspired by anthropologist Michael Taussig’s framing of magic as “a skilled revelation of skilled concealment,” this immersive event explores secrecy as a social practice. Drawing on research with occult communities, the event features artist-practitioners who employ relational forms of concealment, including magicians, mediums, witches, hypnotists, death doulas, sex workers, dream workers, and more. Across two floors, participants are invited to rehearse secrecy as a shared skill, a means of building trust, sustaining connection, and preparing for moments that demand hiding, signaling, and collective commitment.
Tickets & Timed Entry:
Tickets are free, but capacity is very limited. Please only reserve a ticket if you are able to commit to attending. (If your plans change, please cancel your ticket so it can be released to someone else.)
There are two timed entry sessions: 6 PM and 8 PM. Each ticket grants access to one 1 hour and 45 minute experience window. During your session, you are invited to roam freely across two floors, discovering performances, installations, and intimate encounters with 15+ featured artist-practitioners.
There is no single path through the event, and not every experience will be encountered by every one. Your path through secrecy will be your own. Arrive promptly for your selected entry time and trust that you’ll find what you’re meant to find.
To RSVP, visit the event page on Eventbrite and select your preferred entry time.

Featuring:
Abou Farman
Antra Kalnis Borofsky
Daniella Caggiano – www.daniellacaggiano.com / @dfcaggiano
Esme Providence Brown – @esmeprovidence
Hayden Childress – www.haydenismagic.com
Katherine Borkov – www.everythingspills.studio / @everything.spills
Kay Turner (she/her) – IG @kay__turner / FB @kay.turner.3701
Kelvin Daly
Lilith Dorsey – lilithdorsey.com / IG @lilithdorsey / FB @lilithdorseyauthor
Liza Fenster – @crow.mother.channeling
Madazon Can-Can – www.madazoncancan.com / @madazon_can_can
Miss Harissa – @miss.harissa
Orpheus (she/they)
Seeress MuggaRose
Tara Desouza – www.taratherapeuticcoaching.com / @desouza.tara
The Winter’s Doe – www.thewintersdoe.com / @thewintersdoe
The Wizard Devin Person – www.personisawake.com / @personisawake
Content & Age Guidance:
This event is intended for mature audiences. Individual works and encounters may engage with themes including sexuality and eroticism, death and violence, religion and spirituality, the occult, and other potentially sensitive subject matter. Some experiences may include suggestive content or moments of intensity.
Young people are welcome at the discretion of a parent or guardian; we encourage adults to consider the nature of the event when deciding whether it is appropriate for younger attendees.
Sensory & Participation Notes:
This is a roaming event featuring intimate, participatory, and installation-based works. Some experiences may invite direct interaction with performers, and some artists may invite consensual touch or physical contact. You are always welcome to decline an interaction or leave an experience at any time.
Accessibility:
Green Lung Studio is located across two levels and is not wheelchair accessible. Entry to the venue requires the use of stairs, and an additional staircase connects the two levels of the event. Because this is a roaming event, guests may move throughout the space and between floors during their visit. Limited seating will be available throughout the space.
If you have specific accessibility questions or would like more information about the physical or sensory experience of the event, please contact Jacquelyn at jacquelyn.spcuny@gmail.com.

Bios
Organizer bio:
Jacquelyn Marie Shannon is a ritual artist, occult scholar-educator, and PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance at The Graduate Center, CUNY in New York City whose work explores dramaturgies of magic, witchcraft, haunting, and the supernatural. She is especially interested in ritual and artistic processes that engage spirit(s), alternative temporalities, liminal and altered states, synesthesia, hypnosis, visions and dreams.
Jacquelyn has performed, presented research, taught, designed and facilitated ritual experiences across the US and internationally, heavily informed by 20+ years of training in Japanese butoh, expressionist dance, physical and psychodramatic theatre, ritual practice, and contemporary performance. Her dissertation research investigates the relationship between theatricality, embodied technique, and ritual efficacy towards producing experiences of magic and transformation in The Witch’s Dance. Jacquelyn holds an MA from Indiana University in Communication and Culture (2011), an MA from New York University in Educational Theatre (2014), and an MPhil from CUNY Graduate Center in Theatre and Performance (2023). Her writing appears in published articles and edited volumes, including The Witch Studies Reader (Duke University Press, 2025) and The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance (2020). Jacquelyn (not-so-secretly) weaves her research and practice into every event she produces, taking exquisite care to craft collective experiences that genuinely affect those who take part and leave them a little haunted.
https://jacquelynmarieshannon.com/

Individual Artist-Practitioner Bios:
Kay Turner (she/her)
IG @kay__turner / FB @kay.turner.3701
Kay Turner (she/her) is an artist and scholar working across disciplines including performance, writing, music, and folklore. Her current performance and writing project, ongoing since 2012, is called What A Witch. Performing various aspects of the witch figure in folklore and history, her practice is centered in unmaking and reversing the damages done by demonizing the witch. Recent performances include: “A Hekate Supper: Redemption through Decay,” (Staten Island Museum of Art, 2026); “Aphrodite’s Mirror/Hekate’s Reflection” (SVA Project Space, 2026); “Frau Trude: The Musical” (Dyke Art House, Philadelphia, 2025); “Double Sun” with Elizabeth Insogna (Bill Arning Exhibitions, Kinderhook, NY, 2024);“A Hekate Supper, Parts I and II, Abjection and Ecstasy” (Five Myles Gallery, NYC, 2022); “Healing Persephone’s Wounds,” with Elizabeth Insogna (National Arts Club, NYC, 2021); and ”Muses of Malta: Witch, Goddess, Madonna” (Fragmenta Contemporary, Valletta, 2018); Her books include Beautiful Necessity: The Art and Meaning of Women’s Altars and Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms. Turner holds a PhD in folklore and anthropology from the University of Texas, Austin. She was adjunct Visiting Professor in the Performance Studies Department at NYU from 2002-2022.

Lilith Dorsey
lilithdorsey.com / IG @lilithdorsey / FB @lilithdorseyauthor
Lilith Dorsey M.F.A. , hails from many magickal traditions, including Celtic, Afro-Caribbean, and Native American spirituality. Their traditional education focused on Anthropology and Film at the University of R.I, New York University and the University of London, and their magickal training includes numerous initiations in Santeria also known as Lucumi, Haitian Vodoun, and New Orleans Voodoo. Lilith Dorsey is the filmmaker of the experimental documentary Bodies of Water :Voodoo Identity and Tranceformation, the proud Black author of the bestselling Orishas, Goddesses and Voodoo Queens and 5 other titles, Voodoo PriestX of the New Orleans based House of Maman Brigitte, as well as choreographer for jazz legend Dr. John’s “Night Tripper” Voodoo Show. Spirit, soul and identity are often seen in an unusual and shocking way and this is what their work strives to artfully display.

Esme Providence Brown
@esmeprovidence
Esme Providence Brown is a multidisciplinary practitioner working across performance, cultural criticism, patient advocacy, and somatic practice, based in Brooklyn. She holds an MFA from Temple University and is completing an MA in Costume Studies at NYU. Her lecture-performance Dressing for Authority: A Cultural Hallucination was presented at FCVC in 2025. She is a Fulbright scholar (Indonesia 2022) and a correspondent for the Conspirituality podcast. Studio EPB, the multidisciplinary practice she ran from Metropolitan Avenue in Brooklyn, closed in early 2026.

Abou Farman
An anthropologist, writer and artist, Abou Farman is author of On Not Dying: Secular Immortality in the Age of Technoscience, Clerks of the Passage and No Silence in the Afterlife. He is co-founder of Art Space Sanctuary, Casa Ojala and the Shipibo Conibo Center of NY.

Liza Fenster
@crow.mother.channeling
Liza Fenster (she/her) is a professional medium and tarot reader. She also serves an Ordained minister, Reiki Master Teacher and Community Steward. There are places in every timeline and generation that stand present to be witness to what you carry within. Within those quiet walls, in every space and time, sits a person present and prepared to consume this. I am here with you now, to receive what you no longer want to bear alone. I am here to alchemize the DNA of these secrets into a powerful catalyst.

Madazon Can-Can
www.madazoncancan.com / @madazon_can_can
Madazon Can-Can, M.Ed (SLC), is a multi-media artist specializing in clown, burlesque, drag and spends their spare time as a Professional Dominatrix in Utah. They are constantly inspired by the way in which humans connect and disconnect. The influence of nature vs. nurture on an environment and its creatures is a never-ending fascination for them. As an ex-Mormon and survivor of a cult, they do indeed walk many miles of grief, witnessing the cruelty of mankind. Through their study of their own honeybee hives, Madazon has created the Lulla-Beez offering to awaken the inner child, the one who doesn’t question if connection exists, but seeks only sweetness in an exposed and often difficult world. Danger and intimacy often walk hand in hand as yellow and black on the bee.

Hayden Childress
www.haydenismagic.com
A very honest liar.
Hayden Childress is based in New York City and is the creator and sole performer of Urban Illusions, a 20-seat close up magic show running every weekend in the East Village of Manhattan. The show runs off of word of mouth and has garnered a cult following. Hayden sees magic as an artistic medium and not just a puzzle. His influence in magic comes from outsider perspectives on performance and a background shaped by indie music, analog art, and an obsession with cultural gaps between perception and reality. His work has been covered by Bloomberg and Timeout New York, and has appeared on Penn & Teller: Fool Us on the CW network.

Orpheus (she/they)
orpheus (aka Scout Rainer Wiley) (they/zie) is an Asheville-based poet, writer, and renegade alchemist whose work explores the relationship between the somatic, the imaginal, and the mysteries of nature. By weaving together threads of religious studies, systems theory, and somatics, they seek to inspire systems change and liberation for humanity through creative ritual expression.

Seeress MuggaRose
Since 1988, MuggaRose has studied esoteric arts, offering psychic and evidential services nationwide for over 20 years. She helps individuals navigate grief, gain clarity, and support unsolved cases. She authored the grimoire chapbook Sundries for the Soul, with Ghost of the Unresolved Past, a memoir and mediumship guide, forthcoming.
MuggaRose (Cheyanne Disé) has spent a lifetime navigating the space between the seen and unseen. From childhood, she experienced perceptions beyond ordinary awareness, leading her on a grounded path of spiritual exploration. Her work is rooted in the unseen through her roles as a doll artist, ceremonialist, apparition photographer, ghost historian at Pike Place Market, and active Spiritualist. She has been invited as an Artist in Residence at Lily Dale, New York, for the past two summers and continues to hold Practitioner Residencies across the country in apothecaries, community centers, and private spaces, offering workshops, evidential mediumship, book talks, and spiritual services. She has also been a featured guest on radio shows, podcasts, and live audience events. Her home bases span San Francisco, Seattle, New Orleans, and New York’s Hudson Valley. Simply put, she is a mother, a Spiritualist, a facilitator, and a practitioner devoted to healing, connection, and service.

Miss Harissa
@miss.harissa
Miss Harissa is an immersive experience designer, rope artist, and NYC dominatrix. She explores world building, ritual, and participatory experiences to create spaces where play, presence, and trust can unfold.

The Wizard Devin Person
www.personisawake.com / @personisawake
Devin Person lives his life as an unfolding answer to the question, “What would a wizard do?” So far, he’s doing his best to put the mystery back in magic and look good in a pointy hat.

Katherine Borkov
www.everythingspills.studio / @everything.spills
Katya Borkov is a poet, jewish mystic, and portal maker knocking on the door and writing the way in.

Tara Desouza
www.taratherapeuticcoaching.com / @desouza.tara
Tara Desouza is a trauma-informed therapeutic coach and certified hypnotherapist specializing in helping people create lasting emotional change. Her work integrates Hypnotherapy, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Time Line Therapy®, and therapeutic coaching to help people understand how unconscious patterns influence thoughts, emotions, and behavior. With years of experience facilitating personal transformation, Tara creates a safe environment to explore your issues, identify solutions, heal and pursue the life you want and deserve to live.

Daniella Caggiano
www.daniellacaggiano.com / @dfcaggiano
Daniella Caggiano (she/they) is a queer disabled director, intimacy director, and proud native New Yorker. She is committed to radically centering queer and femme voices on stage and screen. Their directing challenges traditional power structures and explores taboo topics, inviting audiences to sit with discomfort and welcome empathetic vulnerability. Daniella draws inspiration from a long line of gutsy theatremakers including Sarah Kane, Caryl Churchill, The Five Lesbian Brothers, Brecht, and Holly Hughes. As an Intimacy Director, Daniella believes in healing the industry through choreography and consent education. She brings a queer, feminist perspective to this work. She believes that a trauma-informed approach to handling onstage intimacy is essential to creating a safe working environment where performers are confident to take risks and do their most daring work.
Daniella holds an MFA from The New School and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in Brooklyn with her wife and rescue dog. ​In their spare time, Daniella can be found going to punk shows and training as a Death Doula.

Kelvin Daly
Kelvin Daly is a musician, ritualist, and builder of musical and ritual instruments and situations. He specializes in performances in unusual or otherwise inaccessible spaces, and often lives to work in collaboration with other performers, dancers, poets or theatre in creating mysterious experiential situations.

The Winter’s Doe
www.thewintersdoe.com / @thewintersdoe
The Winter’s Doe brings whimsy into the world beyond expected boundaries. She hails from the fae realm isle of Hy-Brasil, though now she walks among the skyscrapers. While her heart is made of ice, it is your heart she seeks to delight. She has been crafting one-on-one immersive experiences for three years and creating communal rituals for witches for over two decades. Learn more at Calluna, located at callunaembassy.com

Antra Kalnis Borofsky
Antra Borofsky is a couples therapist, retreat leader, Zen practitioner, and movement artist whose work explores relational presence, embodied memory, grief, tenderness, and the mystery of being seen. Born in a displaced persons camp after World War II to a Latvian family shaped by occupation, exile, emigration, and survival, she carries an enduring interest in what the body remembers and what cannot—or need not—be fully spoken. Her movement practice has been influenced by Butoh, contemplative stillness, improvisation, and the natural world. She creates dances and video works in intimate relationship with music, place, and personal history, often collaborating with her husband, Richard Borofsky, who films her work. She divides her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Great Duck Island, Maine, where wind, ocean, fog, and changing light continually enter her creative practice.

Part of the Practice Season 3 Launch Party
2026-10-15 | Phebe’s Tavern, 361 Bowery, New York, NY, 10003, United States
Save the date for Part of the Practice Season 3 Launch Party on October 15 at Phebe’s in Manhattan!
Part of the Practice, our podcast about the intersection of art and social justice, is returning for a third season this Fall! In this final season of the podcast, hosted by SPCUNY Associate Director Catherine LaSota, we will be reflecting on the lessons of our program and getting ready for the launch of Practicing in Public, a new book of SPCUNY conversations to be published by OR Books in February 2027. More details soon!
