In Mark Read’s class, in cooperation with our community partner organization Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES), the students collectively undertook a multi-faceted cultural organizing project. With the intention of increasing the visible and vocal presence of GOLES in the Lower East Side, they worked together to transform their 600 square foot meeting space on Avenue B, into a community event space and art gallery, and called it, La Sala.
They programmed a series of events over a weekend in December, including a Grand Opening for the space and an oral-history recording session where activist elders came and told stories of past struggles to a group of young women.
This project was arrived at through a series of long conversations between the class, the staff at GOLES, and community organizers, and is currently ongoing, with students continuing to program events for the space and work on collecting oral histories.