CSCW EP: 53 - Felicia Young - Ecological Cities

Felicia Young uses arts-based strategies and tools to spur community action. She has helped save hundreds of New York's community gardens, clean up a sacred river in India, stymie one of America’s most powerful politicians, bring attention to local solutions to the climate crises, and most importantly bring people together to make real change.

Felicia Young is a social action artist and the Founder/Executive Director of Earth Celebrations, a non-profit organization since 1991 engaging communities to generate ecological and social change through the arts. For the past 30 years she has applied the the arts to build community, collaboration and environmental action on climate change, water quality, river restoration, waste management, and the preservation of species, habitats, nature, gardens, parks, and a healthy urban environment. She has pioneered cultural strategies utilizing collaborative arts to build broad-based coalitions and diverse sector partnerships with local organizations, academic institutions, government agencies, schools and community residents to work together, develop solutions and mobilize action to achieve common goals and ecological, policy and social change.

Her social action art projects include a 15-year grass-roots effort and annual theatrical pageant that led to the preservation of hundreds of community gardens in New York City and a project to engage community on restoration efforts of the Hudson River and impacts of climate change. She then applied these cultural strategies to build an international collaborative effort to restore the Vaigai River in Madurai South India, in a severe crisis due to pollution and the drying effects of climate change. Felicia's current Ecological City: Cultural & Climate Solutions Action Project engages community on climate solution initiatives throughout the community gardens, neighborhood and waterfront on the Lower East Side of New York City, and their importance to city and global climate challenges.

As a native 3rd generation New Yorker, she has deep roots in the City of New York, as well as much inspiration from the festivals, ceremonies, and mythic dramas from her mother’s native land of India.

Felicia Young has also developed a course " Art, Ecology and Community" for Princeton University. She has BA in Art History from Skidmore College and a MA degree in Performance Studies from New York University. 

Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met",[a] is the largest art museum in the Western Hemisphere. Its permanent collection contains over two million works,[1] divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the 

Felicia Young uses arts-based strategies and tools to spur community action. She has helped save hundreds of New York's community gardens, clean up a sacred river in India, stymie one of America’s most powerful politicians, bring attention to local solutions to the climate crises, and most importantly bring people together to make real change.

Felicia Young is a social action artist and the Founder/Executive Director of Earth Celebrations, a non-profit organization since 1991 engaging communities to generate ecological and social change through the arts. For the past 30 years she has applied the the arts to build community, collaboration and environmental action on climate change, water quality, river restoration, waste management, and the preservation of species, habitats, nature, gardens, parks, and a healthy urban environment. She has pioneered cultural strategies utilizing collaborative arts to build broad-based coalitions and diverse sector partnerships with local organizations, academic institutions, government agencies, schools and community residents to work together, develop solutions and mobilize action to achieve common goals and ecological, policy and social change.

Her social action art projects include a 15-year grass-roots effort and annual theatrical pageant that led to the preservation of hundreds of community gardens in New York City and a project to engage community on restoration efforts of the Hudson River and impacts of climate change. She then applied these cultural strategies to build an international collaborative effort to restore the Vaigai River in Madurai South India, in a severe crisis due to pollution and the drying effects of climate change. Felicia's current Ecological City: Cultural & Climate Solutions Action Project engages community on climate solution initiatives throughout the community gardens, neighborhood and waterfront on the Lower East Side of New York City, and their importance to city and global climate challenges.

As a native 3rd generation New Yorker, she has deep roots in the City of New York, as well as much inspiration from the festivals, ceremonies, and mythic dramas from her mother’s native land of India.

Felicia Young has also developed a course " Art, Ecology and Community" for Princeton University. She has BA in Art History from Skidmore College and a MA degree in Performance Studies from New York University. 

Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met",[a] is the largest art museum in the Western Hemisphere. Its permanent collection contains over two million works,[1] divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park on Manhattan's Upper East Side, is by area one of the world's largest art museums. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains an extensive collection of art, architecture, and artifacts from medieval Europe.

Julian Schnable is one of the most seminal and virtuosic artists working today. His multidisciplinary practice extends beyond painting to include sculpture, film, architecture, and furniture. He is an award-winning movie director but primarily a painter. His use of preexisting materials not traditionally used in art making, varied painting surfaces and inventive modes of construction were pivotal in the reemergence of painting in the United States in the late 1970’s and the rest of the world. (artist’s website)

Skidmore College is a private liberal arts college in Saratoga Springs, New York. Approximately 2,650 students are enrolled at Skidmore pursuing a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree in one of more than 60 areas of study.

Jacques-Louis David was a French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era. In the 1780s his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward classical austerity and severity and heightened feeling,[1] harmonizing with the moral climate of the final years of the Ancien Régime.

David later became an active supporter of the French Revolution and friend of Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794), and was effectively a dictator of the arts under the French Republic.

Mbari: There is an artistic taboo among my people, the Igbo of Nigeria. It is a prohibition—on pain of being finished off rather quickly by the gods—against laying a proprietary hand on even the smallest item in that communal enterprise which they undertook from time, and to which they gave the name mbari. Mbari was a celebration through art of the world and of the life lived in it. It was performed by the community on command by its presiding deity, usually the earth goddess, Ana. Ana combined two formidable roles in the Igbo pantheon as fountain of creativity in the world and custodian of the moral order in human society. An abominable act is called nso-ana, taboo-to-Earth.

Once every so often, and in her absolute discretion, this goddess would instruct the community through divination to build a home of images in her honor. The diviner would travel through the village and knock on the doors of those chosen by Ana for her work. These chosen people were then blessed and separated from the larger community in a ritual with more than a passing resemblance to their own death and funeral. Thereafter, they moved into the forest and, behind a high fence and under the instruction and supervision of master artists and craftsmen, they constructed a temple of art. – Chinua Achebe

Carlton Turner Episode 47: Change the Story / Change the World.:  Carlton Turner is an artist, agriculturalist, researcher, and co-founder of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture). Sipp Culture uses food and story to support rural community development in his hometown of Utica, Mississippi where his family has been for eight generations.

Alternative Museum: The Alternative Museum was originally founded in 1975 as the Alternative Center for International Arts Inc. TAM served the public with more than 375 exhibitions and over 500 concerts and panel discussions as it provided a new paradigm for contemporary arts institutions. Projects focused on the pressing social and political issues of our times.

Dia de los Muertos: In Mexico, death rites date from pre-Hispanic rituals represented in murals, painted pottery, monuments, and artifacts, which shows how the Day of the Dead has its origins in the rituals practiced by the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Its precedents date to more than 3000 years ago when the Olmecs and subsequent Toltecs, Mixtecs, Zapotecs, Maya, and Aztecs honored death.

Those who passed are alive in our memories. A continuous echo that at certain occasions becomes louder. As the only answer to many of our questions, death is an integral part of life, and the living and the dead meet in this day to emphasize the importance of death in the cycle of life.

 Judson Dance Theater was a collective of dancers, composers, and visual artists who performed at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, Manhattan New York City between 1962 and 1964. The artists involved were avant garde experimentalists who rejected the confines of Modern dance practice and theory, inventing as they did the precepts of Postmodern dance.[1]

Judson Gallery: n 1957, the Judson Church offered gallery space to Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine and Robert Rauschenberg, who were then unknown artists. In 1959, the Judson Gallery showed work by pop artists, Tom Wesselmann, Daniel Spoerri, and Red Grooms. Yoko Ono also had her work exhibited at the gallery Manipulations (1969), a series of performances at the Judson Church by Fluxus artists Jean Toche, Steve Young, Nam June Paik, and Al Hansen, and work by Nye Ffarrabas.

Phyllis Yampolsky was active at Judson Church and at the Judson Gallery in the late 1950s and early 1960. Since the 1960s, Yampolsky has concentrated on participatory arts. Driven by a "burdensome missionary consciousness," she continues to be engaged in community projects in New York City. 

Kumbha Mela is a major pilgrimage and festival in Hinduism.[1] It is celebrated in a cycle of approximately 12 years, to celebrate every revolution Brihaspati (Jupiter) completes, at four river-bank pilgrimage sites: Allahabad (Ganges-Yamuna-Sarasvati rivers confluence), Haridwar (Ganges), Nashik (Godavari), and Ujjain (Shipra).[1][2] The festival is marked by a ritual dip in the waters, but it is also a celebration of community commerce with numerous fairs, education, religious discourses by saints, mass gatherings of monks , and entertainment spectacle.[3][4] The seekers believe that bathing in these rivers is a means to prāyaścitta (atonement, penance) for past mistakes,[5] and that it cleanses them of their sins.[6]

Chithirai Festival,[1][2] also known as Chithirai Thiruvizha, Meenakshi Kalyanam or Meenakshi Thirukalyanam, is an annual Tamil Hindu celebration in the city of Madurai during the month of April. The festival, celebrated during the Tamil month of Chithirai, is associated with the Meenakshi Temple, dedicated to the goddess