Description:
We Should Own Our Futures
As an artist and urbanist, my current research projects focus on redirecting traditional community engagement strategies to develop a toolkit for more inclusive and equitable urban planning. This emerging toolkit opens space to celebrate and learn from Black experiences in public spaces.
“Participatory Mapping Frameworks: Past, Present & Future” seeks to develop new strategies for democratizing the practice of neighborhood asset mapping. Together with my community collaborators, we subvert the power dynamics underpinning the urban planner’s historical approach to base-mapping. Across three projects, my recent participatory mapping work has engaged high school students in Roxbury, MA, residents of Brooklyn’s historic Black neighborhood Weeksville, and visitors to MoMA PS1.
My experiential installations and workshops aim to empower anyone to be co-researchers on the future of community mapping. Together, we are creating new symbols, languages and frameworks for discussing the shape of our own communities.
Whether our memories in space reflect racial trauma or Black joy, those untold stories are critical to understanding how we heal this land.
Location:
New York City, Boston, Paris
Medium/a:
Digital Art: Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Place-Based Installation
Participatory Workshops
Timeline:
2021 – Present
Cara Michell 