Practicing in Public

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. Contributors span staff, collaborators, and faculty and graduate students across the CUNY system, reflecting a wide range of disciplines, lived experiences, and political commitments.

Across these exchanges, artists and practitioners explore activist organizing, coalition building, environmental and economic justice, art and climate change, the role of archives, pedagogical and publishing methods, and the role of cultural work in an era of overlapping crises. Grounded in real-world projects addressing immigration, affordable housing, information sharing, and climate response, the book asks a central question: What futures become imaginable through interdisciplinary, socially engaged practice?

Edited and introduced by SPCUNY Associate Director Catherine LaSota, the anthology draws inspiration from SPCUNY Fellows’ projects, cross-institutional collaborations, and conversations from the podcast Part of the Practice. Together, these dialogues document the possibilities, frictions, and contradictions of working publicly—within and against institutional constraints—while offering concrete models for collaboration and collective action.

As a project that grew in the soil of the largest urban public education system in the United States, the City University of New York, Practicing in Public is both a record of experiential learning and a provocation: a field guide for artists, students, organizers, and cultural workers seeking new ways to practice, organize, and imagine a shared future as old systems fracture.