New Projects​

Cara Michell

Policy Partner: Shanna Sabio, Co-Founder & Co-Director, GrowHouse NYC

Resurrecting Black Spatial Imaginaries: Participatory Mapping at the Flatbush African Burial Ground

In partnership with Shanna Sabio of the Brooklyn community arts organization GrowHouse, Cara Michell will facilitate a participatory mapping workshop series and research process rooted in the legacy of the Flatbush African Burial Ground. As part of Cara’s ongoing project, Black Psychogeographies, these maps will document spatial stories about Black memory, history, and future visions for the site. During the academic year, Cara will work with Boston teens and Brooklyn participants to analyze the mapping process and develop a youth participatory mapping toolkit. These community-based collaborations will lead to an academic publication that offers mechanisms for policymakers and urban designers to interpret artistic output as data that can inform culturally sensitive planning decisions.

Rebekah E. Moore

Policy Partners: Boston Public Health Commission; Boston Office of Arts and Culture

Black Artists Creating a Culture of Health through Arts-in-Health Collaborations

Ethnomusicologist Dr. Rebekah E. Moore and arts activist Aziza Robinson-Goodnight’s research explores how involving Black artists in public health initiatives can mitigate racialized health disparities in intensely segregated cities. To scale their pilot study to a citywide intervention, they need policy partners in public health and arts and culture. With C2C Seed Funding, they will establish research partnerships bridging the missions of a public health commission, which tracks health outcomes data and sets health equity priorities, and office of arts and culture, which coordinates grant opportunities and sets arts equity priorities, to mobilize policy advocacy for future arts-based public health research and interventions.

Jane Yamashiro

Policy Partner: Yuko Yamauchi, Executive Director, Okinawa Association of America (OAA)

Okinawan Community Writing Project: Decolonizing Culture through Research Justice

With the long-term policy goal of gaining recognition as an ethnic group on the U.S. Census and collecting demographic data about this unrecognized Indigenous population, this community-led project promotes recognition of “Okinawans” as an ethnic group in the United States through the creation of publishable materials on Okinawan culture and history. Okinawans are typically subsumed as “Japanese” despite their claims of ethnic difference and a pre-contact history as an independent kingdom. Dr. Jane H. Yamashiro is working with the Okinawa Association of America (OAA), a non-profit community organization based in California, to create a decolonizing infrastructure for training community members to research and write the OAA’s community-produced book on Okinawan culture and community in Los Angeles. This project may be a model for other underrepresented and marginalized groups as they try to reclaim lost cultural knowledge and histories – and eventually gain social recognition as ethnic groups and Indigenous Peoples.