We can’t believe the Summer Institute only has one week left to go! Our participants are preparing to show off their work—from art to poems to stories to games—at our showcase on August 14. If you’re in or around NYC, RSVP to join us in celebrating their creations at CARA!
We’ve been imagining cities of the future at the Institute, with guest teachers in urban planning facilitating discussions about how rising temperatures impact city dwellers and how we can design spaces to keep our communities safe in a changing climate. With emergent maps and speculative storytelling exercises, participants explored the natural and constructed elements that shape how we feel in different urban environments.
From imagining cities, our students went on to build worlds with Hugo Award-winning author N. K. Jemisin, author of the Broken Earth trilogy and many other acclaimed works of speculative fiction. Through the lens of mythmaking, students examined what the collective stories that people create communicate about power and social roles.
Our participants also visited Gather, a collective that brings together professional writers from a wide range of backgrounds. By conducting interviews with authors whose work is centered around investigation and asking questions, students learned about new career paths and the steps they can take to enter creative fields.
On a field trip to the Billion Oyster Project, our students became community scientists. They gained hands-on experience supporting New York Harbor’s best “ecosystem engineers”: the oysters that help boost ecological resilience by fostering biodiversity, filtering water, and acting as a natural barrier to storms.
Make sure to follow our Instagram for more news from the Institute over the next week, plus highlights from our Summer Showcase!