‘ART NOT ARRESTS’ – Collaboration with Ground Up Designers
Located in the Crow Hill Community Garden, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, our art installation/fundraising platform focuses on bringing the community together to build something beautiful in memory of last summer’s Labor Day shootings. If launched, the installation will help raise awareness and funding for organizations in Brooklyn that are working to stop gun violence through the use of art and education programs for the youth.
We believe that the key to reducing gun violence in Brooklyn isn’t a more extreme police force (as we often see as a response to shootings), but is better art and education programs for the youth. In light of this, we’ve designed a canopy for the community garden made of disposable handcuffs — each cuff will be individually sponsored by a participating member of the community, showing that they would like to see more art programs available for the youth as a means of getting kids off the streets and preventing gun violence, not more arrests.
We decided to use the handcuffs as a symbol of both the youth violence and the overbearing police presence, that our neighborhood is continually confronted with. Using the handcuffs as a part of the art installation is not meant to trivialize these sensitive topics — in fact we hope that they will keep the conversation geared toward these important issues as we come up with creative ways to tackle them.
DESIGN AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS:
‘Art Not Arrests’, was awarded 3rd Place in the Black Spectacles Un-Competition Project, an international design competition focusing on self initiated/community oriented design projects.
‘Art Not Arrests’ was exhibited at “Build On” the follow up event to The Un-Competition Project: January 19th at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
‘Art Not Arrests’ will be Exhibited at “Slap Dash” a monthly series that brings together different art forms for a semi-cohesive mixed-media event: June 2012 at LaunchPad
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