Join Next City for a webinar with guest presenters Dr. Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani and Kaushik Panchal, founders of Buscada, as they discuss “How Immersive Oral Histories Can Shape Neighborhoods”. Tune in on Wednesday, April 14 at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.
As a neighborhood gentrifies, newcomers rarely explore or address the needs of long-time residents who have lived there for years.
In the late ’60s, for example, the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA), a neighborhood on the Lower East Side of New York City, existed in disarray. In 1967 most of the buildings in a 14-block radius were condemned, which resulted in the displacement of low-income residents, most of whom were people of color. Promises of new, affordable housing never came to fruition – developers were not interested in building these sorts of units. What resulted was 40 years of disuse and hostility regarding unfulfilled commitments and increasing gentrification.
Prior to the 2015 construction of Essex Crossing, a new, multi-use development in SPURA that finally included affordable housing, Buscada solicited immersive oral histories as a way to shape the future of the neighborhood. Through their Layered SPURA project, Buscada used stories from both former and current residents to highlight the complexities of the area and its numerous imagined futures.
“Many communities claimed this site and imagined divergent futures for it,” Buscada's website says. “Our Layered SPURA project created new spaces for dialogue about this future.”
In this webinar, Bendiner-Viani and Panchal will discuss how Buscada engaged and collaborated with SPURA community members to create a valuable and productive conversation between organizations and their communities.
Urbanist, curator and artist Dr. Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani is the founder of Buscada, which creates vital spaces for dialogue to foster more just cities by fusing art, design and research. Gabrielle is the author of Contested City: Art and Public History as Mediation at New York's Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (University of Iowa Press, 2019) — a finalist for the Municipal Art Society’s Brendan Gill Prize — and teaches urban studies at Bryn Mawr College & the New School.
Kaushik Panchal is a designer and strategist who creates simple, compelling, tactile experiences for a wide range of media including interactive TV, web, print, and exhibition design. He is principal of Buscada, and over two decades has worked with companies including BBC, Apple and Yahoo, as well as with arts and education organizations such as MIT, Scholastic, PBS, the SVA, and the Center for Architecture at Bryn Mawr College & the New School.
This webinar is to pay what you wish to register. Pay any amount that you would like or nothing at all. Those who become sustaining members of at least $5 a month, or who make a one-time donation of at least $20, may receive “The 20 Best Solutions of 2020” — Next City’s solutions of the year magazine. Next City now accepts both Apple and Google Pay. Your contribution toward this seminar will be used to find even more amazing guests, cover hosting fees and organize seminars like this one more frequently. A video of the webinar will be made available to those who register.