Stories that make words, words that make stories: What are your L.E.S. stories?

Grad students from Critical Pedagogy, Artists, and the Public Sphere.

As part of their final project, students in Critical Pedagogy, Artists, and the Public Sphere developed a workshop to hear and collect stories based around the Lower East Side. The workshop focused on people’s stories about the L.E.S. in relation to four words/concepts: belonging, displacement, territory, and resistance/insistence. These words share an overall theme of gentrification and were chosen based on the students’ discussions of their unease as NYU students taking up neighborhood space in a vastly changing area. Students asked passerby to write their story of displacement or belonging in the L.E.S. on post-it notes to place on a map of the area. The workshop was held in two locations with vastly different interactions: St. Mark’s Place and the Tompkins Square Library.