Civic Saturday Gatherings

Civic Saturdays were a series of interdisciplinary gatherings hosted at Brooklyn College to foster the next generation of student leaders and explore the impacts of civic engagement and community building on institutional and cultural change. Gatherings showcased the voices of students, faculty, civic organizations, and outside guest artists, bringing these groups together for artistic expression and guided conversations.

Inspired by the work of Citizen’s University and completed as part of the Civic Saturday National Fellowship and SPCUNY Actionist Fellowship, three public gatherings were held between the Spring of 2022 and 2023. Each gathering was created by a revolving group of student leaders responding to active community needs within the Brooklyn College Theater Department. Central discussion prompts were curated alongside interactive arts programming that engaged students, staff, and faculty to discuss and create in response to relevant topics and concerns, encouraging a culture of civic action and community care. Through activating existing community assets and providing consistent long-term space for addressing concerns and coming together, the gatherings offered space for healing, expression, and reigniting civic spirit within the student body, especially following the isolation of the pandemic and a period of racial justice organizing by the students and alumni of 2020.

In addition to the in-person gatherings, an interactive installation was created to digitally and physically archive student organizers’ often ephemeral labor and their relationality to the legacy of organizing within CUNY and beyond. The installation contains student art, documentation, resources, and oral histories of organizers that have impacted the recent institutional and cultural changes at Brooklyn College. The installation was displayed at the final Civic Saturday gathering and invited students to engage with and add to the legacy the archive looks to capture.