The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP)
A vehicle for collaborative research, design, education, uplift, and output
I am co-founder and former executive director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy, an New York City non-profit organization that illuminates the built environment to help everyday people engage politics. The organization produces publications, media environments, and curricula through collaborative research and design. Initially a collaborative art and design practice, today CUP is a non-profit organization that employs scores of educators, designers, and researchers and connects disparate communities. I am enormously proud of the work produced at CUP during my time there, and the work that CUP continues to do today.
With CUP I produced many exhibitions and developed many ongoing programs: making policy public - a quarterly series of illustrated guides to public policy; Urban Investigations - a high school program that challenges young people to investigate the politics of their neighborhoods, and envisioning development - a series of teaching tools for community organizations dealing with land-use issues. I also organized, People and Buildings, a monthly series of public programs that provided a space for discussions at the intersection of design and politics.