STREET WORKS
Image: 2024 Street Work Earth. Photo by Derrick Seymore.
Street Works, a project of The Arisen, are public-space galleries for participatory art, by and for artists dedicated to making justice normal.
Sister to the street action and block party, Street Works center co-creation and deep participation. We believe co-creation in public space is one way civic action can become part of our lived wisdom and joy.
2024 STREET WORK EARTH
34 Ave & 78 St, Jackson Heights, Queens, NY, 11372, September 22, 2024, 11am-5pm
Thanks for joining our free street arts & climate action festival: no ticket limits, no cost, no doors: everyone was welcome! We spent the day co-creating with artists and learning about environmental & climate action on 34th Avenue's Open Street in Jackson Heights, Queens.
Please share feedback at gather@makejusticenormal.org. We're just getting started: donations are welcome by our volunteer team to work towards fair pay one day and future street actions. 2025, we see you!!
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WHY
Image: 2024 Street Work Earth. Próxima Tierra. By Kaleidospace. Photo by Brentton Wilson.
An incredible amount of creation happens in our public spaces — our streets, parks, plazas, and more. From graffiti art and performances, to chalk drawings and memorials.
Among street creators are artists who co-create art with passersby, often in dialog with social and civic action. In a time in which democracy is at risk and collective participation is needed more than ever, we hope to support one home by and for these artists, who enable the brilliance of passersby to collectively emerge. Over time and scale, we hope this is one way for democracy to become a personal and joyful experience.
Through Street Works, we hope to foster mutual aid space for street artists like us who think the mainstream museum and gallery systems do not serve justice. We need to re-work how we consume, show, and perceive art to serve justice. Over time, we hope to open-source the model, so that artists seeking justice can apply it in places and on topics that matter to them and their communities.
PRINCIPLES
We co-create with audiences and commit to authentically sharing power with audiences as an embodiment of democracy.
We are place-based, see relationship as art, center our “audiences,” — not only self-expression — and center joy as fundamental.
We aim to spark hopeful, concrete co-actions that our communities can take to transform frustration, fear, sorrow, confusion, unknowns, or uncertainty into solutions.
Artists and organizers — many of us among them — have been working on the street long before this program existed. We’re listening to develop a “blueprint” to open-source structures behind Street Works.
Practitioners of climate solutions are all around us. We need each other, and we need joy, inspiration, and the freedom of imagination to keep going.
What we eat, how we breathe, how we rest, how we love are all connected to mother Earth. And our conversations around justice, environmentalism, health, climate, wealth, and more can be re-woven with our local, personal priorities and joys.
STREET WORK ARTISTS, ADVISORS, SUPPORTERS
FAQs
Image: 2024 Street Work Earth. “Rising. Curtains.” By Ernest Verrett & Anjali Deshmukh. Photo by Cindy Trinh.
When Make Justice Normal was founded, we initially wondered: was the name too big? Were we setting ourselves up for failure in a world in which injustice is normal? Could we embrace the emergence of it all?
For values to become group norms, we must embody in souls. For values to become to lasting norms, we must embody in the systems we control. For embodied systems to scale, we must test and transfer them. (Image by Anjali Deshmukh).
MJN sees narrative as the stories and facts told to us and we tell ourselves, including beliefs and ideas formed from words, pictures, sounds, & more. Narratives don’t sit on the surface of content. Instead, they shape how we think, what we think, and what we do — on our own and together.
Why we need new national platforms for social practice artists and BIPOC-led micro-organizations that advance diverse narratives, present art differently, take about climate change in different ways, and embody different business models.
Why arts have an impact, and why we think today's models of quantifying impact do a deep disservice to the systemic, non-linear nature of human transformation.
How mountains of data, at the intersection of art, climate, and justice, have led us to design programs the way we have.
How we’re structuring our collective to embody our values of loving care, justice, and solidarity in every thing we do.
Can our public spaces be electrified with the energy of people exploring and co-creating solutions that match their community priorities? We say yes!
Why the wild creative spirits of artists matter, and how to think about effectively working with them towards aligned goals.
An art discipline that aims to create social and/or political change through collaboration with individuals, communities, and institutions, often in the creation of participatory art.
Yes. Street Work is in itself a social practice project by social practice artists. It is not an “arts presenter.” It is centered in mutual aid.
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"Nature surrounds us, from parks and backyards to streets and alleyways. Next time you go out for a walk, tread gently and remember that we are both inhabitants and stewards of nature in our neighbourhoods."
—David Suzuki
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"The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned."
—Maya Angelou
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"If we wish to rebuild our cities, we must first rebuild our neighborhoods."
—Harvey Milk