The Laundromat Project Alumni Convening, Part 1 Artists as Neighbors: Living Liberation

Founded in 2005, The Laundromat Project (The LP) is a Black-rooted and POC-centered organization that advances artists and neighbors as change agents in their own communities. We make art and culture in the community while fostering leadership among our neighbors through our celebrated Create Change artist development programs and our creative community-building initiatives rooted in our home in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, and across New York City.

Over the last 17 years, The Laundromat Project has intentionally built a community of 200+ artists and community members through our Create Change Residency and Fellowship, Create &(Re)Connect micro-grant initiative to achieve our goal of building a stronger, more connected alumni & community network, we are holding a two-part Alumni Convening, which is focused on our 2023 year-long theme of liberation.

The culminating public event will unite LP alumni with members of the Bed-Stuy neighborhood, and the larger field of POC-Centered, community-centered, art & change-based organizations. The convening, titled Artists As Neighbors: Living Liberation, recognizes that artists are not an abstract entity, but are everyday people and invested community members living directly in our neighborhoods. After a set of community conversations (preceding this culminating event)––focused on themes of public art and displacement, as well as memory and history as tools for reclaiming community spaces–– we will use this large community gathering as opportunity to address the wide and complex challenges facing both artists and neighbors in a time of immense change. Together, we will share our strategies for building community and nurturing our collective creativity in ways that ensure we are living out the liberation we hope to enact every day.