ARTS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE
Mission: We are a rapid response creative production team, made up of comedy writers, comedians and activists, on call 24/7 to make videos, artistic memes and create national actions that respond instantly to the breaking news surrounding reproductive rights issues. We will within minutes, or hours, blast the perpetrators dispensing damaging information about abortion, crisis pregnancy centers, birth control as well as taking down those who shame and stigmatize women for wanting, having and demanding safe and healthy sex lives on their own terms. At AAF (formerly Lady Parts Justice League), we vigilantly drop information about what’s at stake for reproductive access into pop culture spaces, AND we bring all the fun of pop culture back to reproductive health spaces to boost morale and provide aid and comfort. A crucial part of our mission is to support and raise awareness about independent abortion providers – clinics that bear the brunt of anti-abortion legislation and harassment. Our Tour is a year-round comedy and music tour that borrows from a USO format- bringing entertainment, elbow grease, and love to abortion providers and their communities. AAF creates a fresh space for people to take action who haven’t necessarily seen a place for themselves before in political or reproductive rights movements.
Website: https://www.aafront.org/resources/
Volunteer form: https://secure.everyaction.com/1RNbHRbbC0ini0T-bSm0IA2
Phone: n/a
Email: n/a
What volunteers do:
art
ASL interpretation
audio production
comedy writing
costuming
dance
direction
graphic design
hair/makeup
help fundraise
host parties
improv
provide legal expertise
motion graphics
music
organize evening events
perform shows in community places to raise awareness about reproductive health while building relationships between clinics, advocates, and communities
photography
production design
puppeteering
singing
Spanish translation
video editing
videography
voiceover
web design
Mission: Art Start uses the creative process to nurture the voices, hearts, and minds of historically marginalized youth, offering a space for them to imagine, believe, and represent their creative vision for their lives and communities. Through consistent workshops with long-term partners, including youth organizations, schools, alternative sentencing programs, and residences for youth and families experiencing homelessness, art becomes the starting point of a larger life process, and the start of larger conversations about the future of our communities.
Website: https://www.art-start.org/support/volunteer
Email: info@art-start.org
Phone: 212-460-0019
What volunteers do:
help lead Creative Collectives workshops in visual arts, music, dance, theatre, photography, gardening, and music recording for children between 5 and 21
mentor youth between 14-20 in the Creative Connections program program (help youth set and achieve project goals, learn or improve a creative skill, visit cultural events)
FYI:
Creative Collective workshops are 1.5 hours long and take place on weekdays between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Creative Collective commitment is one night per week for a three-month session
Creative Collective volunteers must have background or interest in the arts and willingness to help lead a project
Creative Collective volunteers must have experience working with groups of children or teens (classroom, summer camp, daycare, large family)
group info session, one-on-one interview, $60 fingerprint and background check and 2-3 hour mentor artist orientation required
mentors meet mentees two to three times a month
Borough: Brooklyn and Manhattan
Mission: Art and Resistance Through Education (ARTE) engages young people around human rights, using art as the mobilizing vehicle to inspire them to organize for change and to amplify their voices. First, we use art to educate youth around the issues that impact their communities. Then we provide them with the space to express their own experiences around human rights through the arts. Finally, through our interactive, multimedia visual arts programs, we equip them with the organizing tools to fight for human rights in their communities and in connection with global human rights movements. These tools enable students to work more effectively in the collective task of steering society towards greater justice. Across all of ARTE’s programs, youth develop the language, confidence, ability, and drive to address the human rights abuses that directly affect them. Along with ARTE’s workshops in school classrooms, ARTE also operates in jails and in community-based organizations throughout New York City.
Website: https://www.artejustice.org/join
Volunteer sign-up form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfCrKA8LcncEw91-FJegpqs6_OnkAP6HNX3Mng5IEZmaukMrw/viewform
Phone: 347-493-5081
Email: info@artejustice.org
What volunteers do:
support funding and development initiatives (e.g. organize community events, research grant and fundraising opportunities.)
help design promotional materials (including website)
help curate Women’s March Art Digital Archive
FYI:
valuable skills include strategic planning, fundraising, computer skills (Office programs, Google sites, social media platforms, Photoshop and other design programs, and website development)
Borough: Brooklyn office; programs in Queens, Bronx, and Manhattan
Mission: In 1979, Avenues for Justice first reached into some crowded Manhattan criminal courtrooms and found kids who might turn their lives around if they only had a second chance. What AFJ did next was unheard of. We presented the courts with an option: instead of sentencing youth to jail, judges could send them to AFJ for counseling, training, education and employment assistance. That simple tactic -- keep kids out of prison -- has saved the lives of hundreds of young people every year for more than three decades. At a time when the U.S. incarceration rate is the highest of any nation in the world and a cycle of arrests and imprisonment has become the norm within many low-income communities, AFJ has bucked the trend to become one of history's most successful and cost-effective crime prevention programs.
Website: https://www.avenuesforjustice.org/volunteer
Email: info@avenuesforjustice.org
Phone: 917-689-3785
What volunteers do:
artists, educators, and assistants help with weekly art projects.
tutors help students with school work, and prepare them to take Regents tests in history, English, math, and science
Borough: Manhattan
Mission: Project Renewal’s mission is to end the cycle of homelessness by empowering men, women and children to renew their lives with health, homes and jobs. Men and women struggling with homelessness, addiction, mental illness and other chronic health issues need comprehensive services to achieve their goals for independent living. Our range of innovative programs are designed to meet the holistic needs of the most vulnerable homeless men and women. The Bowery Arts Project’s bi-weekly art classes serve a community of men (clients) seeking help with their drug and alcohol addiction. The clients are short-term residents of the non-medical detox floor at Project Renewal's 3rd Street facility.
Website: https://www.projectrenewal.org/get-involved/volunteer/
Email: volunteer@projectrenewal.org
Phone: 212-620-0340
What volunteers do:
participate in Project Renewal morning meeting with residents
teach classes (optional)
make art alongside residents
listen to and share time with residents
FYI:
classes Wednesdays and Thursdays 9:15 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.
amount of participation flexible
no art-therapy training required
Borough: Manhattan
Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute
Mission: The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) uses the power of design and art to increase meaningful civic engagement. CUP projects demystify the urban policy and planning issues that impact our communities, so that more individuals can better participate in shaping them. We believe that increasing understanding of how these systems work is the first step to better and more diverse community participation. CUP projects are collaborations of art and design professionals, community-based advocates and policymakers, and our staff. Together we take on complex issues—from the juvenile justice system to zoning law to food access—and break them down into simple, accessible, visual explanations. The tools we create are used by organizers and educators all over New York City and beyond to help their constituents better advocate for their own community needs.
Website: https://welcometocup.org/volunteer
Phone: 718-596-7721
Email: info@welcometocup.org
What volunteers do:
help set up and manage a CUP event like a screening, final presentation, or party
lead high school students in a field research exercise or street interviews
be a design critic at a review of a high-school student project
transcribe interviews from a CUP student project about policy, planning, or infrastructure
translate text for one of our projects, like Making Policy Public
help CUP staff and board members organize a benefit party
help assemble or fabricate parts of a CUP project
FYI:
valuable skills include copyediting, fact-checking, translation, design critique (not the mean kind, the friendly, constructive kind), woodworking, photography, programming - HTML, PHP, JavaScript, mapping, event planning, sales (talking to strangers about buying CUP products or donating to CUP) fundraising (excluding grant writing)
Mission: Community-Word Project is an arts-in-education organization that inspires children in underserved communities to read, interpret and respond to their world and to become active citizens through collaborative arts residencies and teacher training programs.
Website: https://communitywordproject.org/get-involved/
Volunteer sign-up form: https://communitywordproject.org/about/contact/?subject=donate
Email: https://communitywordproject.org/about/contact/
Phone: 212-962-3820
What volunteers do:
work one-on-one with CWP students to prepare their original poems for publication in an anthology which each student receives and shares with friends and family (anthology days)
join young artists in painting a collaborative canvas mural based on a class community-poem (community paint days)
support student performers as they take the stage and share their writing and artwork with their classmates and teachers (end-of-year celebration)
organize cultivation or fundraising events
guest blog on arts education topics in your area of expertise
Mission: Culture Push nurtures artists and other creative people who are approaching common problems through hands-on civic participation and imaginative problem-solving. Culture Push supports a lively exchange of ideas between many different communities: artists and non-artists, professional practitioners and laypeople, and across generations, neighborhoods, and cultures. The programs of Culture Push focus on collaboration and group learning through active, participatory experiences. The current focal program is the Fellowship for Utopian Practice, which supports creative practitioners of many types, especially people who may be outside of the mainstream, as they develop ideas that combine artistic practice, civic engagement, and social justice.
Website: https://www.culturepush.org
Volunteer sign-up form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdGb4KtDX9SNX2cfUV5pFd_tJgxJlbjCko9GWNkicoPDwlkRA/viewform
Email: admin@culturepush.org or cp@culturepush.org
Phone: 917-306-6363
What volunteers do:
support special events (set-up and break-down, welcome crew)
support fundraising efforts by researching and requesting in-kind donations and grant and fundraising opportunities
general errands and technical support
communications and support for Fellows
website design and functionality
marketing and outreach, including documentation of events for the organization and the Fellows
install and maintain of gallery shows
FYI:
Culture Push can accommodate a range of skills and time commitments
ideal volunteers are responsible, prompt, and respectful; and want to support marginalized voices, and the expansion of artistic practice into new realms.
Borough: floating “office” in Brooklyn and Manhattan; events take place throughout the five boroughs
Mission: The mission of Interference Archive is to explore the relationship between cultural production and social movements. This work manifests in an open stacks archival collection, publications, a study center, and public programs including exhibitions, workshops, talks, and screenings, all of which encourage critical and creative engagement with the rich history of social movements. The archive contains many kinds of objects that are created as part of social movements by the participants themselves: posters, flyers, publications, photographs, books, T-shirts and buttons, moving images, audio recordings, and other materials. Through our programming, we use this cultural ephemera to animate histories of people mobilizing for social transformation. We consider the use of our collection to be a way of preserving and honoring histories and material culture that is often marginalized in mainstream institutions.
Website: http://interferencearchive.org/what-powers-interference-archive-volunteers/
Phone: n/a
Email: info@interferencearchive.org
What volunteers do:
staff events
curate exhibits
create podcasts
assist with cataloguing/archiving
Borough: Brooklyn
Mission: We amplify the creativity that already exists within communities by using arts and culture to build community networks, solve problems, and enhance our sense of ownership in the places where we live, work, and grow. The Laundromat Project believes art, culture, and engaged imaginations can change the way people see their world, open them up to new ideas, and connect them with their neighbors. When artists have the opportunity to build and contribute their unique skills and perspectives to the needs of their neighborhoods, they can be invaluable assets in furthering community wellbeing. When the skills and strategies for igniting creativity are made broadly available to everyday people and purposefully applied as tools for visioning a new and better world, these can be powerful forces for positive, transformative change. We know we have been successful when, over time, our neighbors—artists and everyday people, newcomers and old-timers, individually and collectively—become more involved in the civic and cultural affairs of their communities, feel more deeply connected to the places and people where they live and work, and bring a sense of creativity to community concerns. Our arts education work takes place through hands-on, community-centered art workshops and public programs at local laundromats and other community spaces. We aim to make art education more readily available to all our community members—regardless of income, age, or background. We believe it is a basic human right to use our imaginations in the service of a better life.
Website: https://laundromatproject.org/volunteer-at-the-lp/
Volunteer form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfQtfwLZEff8d6zavz8Kpq0PrhymUovzhap5JP1KdCezTtfFQ/viewform
Email: info@laundromatproject.org
Phone: 718-574–0798
What volunteers do:
help at special events (e.g., neighborhood festivals, field days, sidewalk drop-in art workshops)
aid teaching artists at outdoor art workshops
assist artists with public art projects
assist with annual benefit (set-up, management, clean up, break down)
assist with public-art potluck
create LP merchandise
assist staff in The LP office
FYI:
volunteer orientation provided
Borough: All (core programs are in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Harlem, and Hunts Point/Longwood)
Mission: Make the Road New York (MRNY) is a 20,000-strong member organization that builds the power of Latino and working-class communities to achieve dignity and justice through organizing, policy innovation, transformative education, and survival services. At MRNY, we believe that to organize effectively for justice, the people most impacted by injustice must lead. That is why we are a membership organization and why we are led by working class immigrants and people of color. MRNY members work through issue committees: civil rights and immigrant rights; workers’ rights; housing and environmental justice; LGBTQ justice; education justice and the rights of parents and students in the public schools. We also run an extremely active youth program and a nonpartisan voter engagement program. Our organizing campaigns and innovative service programs have tangibly improved the lives of millions of working people and have served as models for others across the nation. We’re now facing the biggest challenge in Make the Road New York’s history. We are ramping up to work harder and more bravely than ever before. We’ve jumped into action to respond to the surge need for services to provide legal support and help adults and children in the immigrant community handle stress, anxiety and fear. We’re connecting community members to mental health providers and opening our community centers as safe spaces for healing, story sharing and peer support.
Website: https://maketheroadny.org/volunteer-sign-up/
Phone: 718-565-8500 x4463 or 631-255-7626
Email: https://maketheroadny.org/contact/
What volunteers do:
photography
videography
graphic design
Mission: Mass Transit Street Theater & Video is a Bronx-based theater known nationally for a dynamic mix of storytelling, song, dance, and film that entertains and provokes thought about contemporary issues of urban life, the value of diversity, and visions of what could be if we learn to work together. Following the show, actors and the audience join in a lively discussion of the play and the questions it raises. Since 2007, Mass Transit has been offering original plays, films and workshops primarily to young people in schools and community centers. Through film festivals, screenings, mediation/conflict-resolution training, and plays we are promoting emotional, economic and environmental literacy in schools and neighborhoods throughout the city. MTSTV offers workshops for students and staff in schools and community centers in empowerment poetry, character and plot development as it relates to one’s own values and life path, and conflict resolution. Starting out from our home base in the Bronx, we have performed in neighborhoods from East Harlem to Las Vegas on stages from Lincoln Hospital to Lincoln Center, for spectators ranging from youthful offenders in detention centers to union delegates in convention centers. And along the way, we have demonstrated that good theater and video with a social/political edge is very much alive and in demand by contemporary audiences.
Website: http://www.mtstv.org/
Email: solidgroundnyc@gmail.com
Phone: 718-882-2454
What volunteers do:
assist with the production of plays, videos, film festivals and workshops for youth
assist with administration
assist with fundraising
assist with PR/marketing
assist with outreach/distribution
Borough: Bronx
Mission: Founded in 2000 by actors and educators, Opening Act seeks to level the playing field for our students by specifically partnering with NYC schools that have lower than average graduation rates (as few as 33% of students graduating in four years) and an evident lack of theater programming. Opening Act gives high school students opportunities to develop leadership, community, and commitment through its innovative, high quality, free after-school theater program. We strive to remain a consistent and positive force in our students’ lives, regardless of fluctuating school budgets and priorities.
Website: https://openingact.org/volunteer/
Volunteer form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScwfRCZSLKlTs2IKH4z5csKGImdNQYMtIxQ0105U09P0xMSsQ/viewform
Email: info@openingact.org
Phone: 646-418-7088
What volunteers do:
professional actors, dancers, directors, techies, and designers work with Opening Act’s students as guest artists
work at student shows
assist with fundraising
mailing, data entry, general office support
FYI:
guest artists should email a resume and brief statement of interestto Marcus Denard Johnson
Mission: PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. The Prison Writing Program sponsors an annual writing contest, publishes a free handbook for prisoners, and provides one-on-one mentoring to inmates.
Website: https://pen.org/mentoring-program
Phone: 212-334-1660
Email: penmentor@gmail.com
What volunteers do:
mentor prison writers through correspondence, minimum of three exchanges between mentor and writer
Mission: RPGA Studio is a social practice nonprofit that uses art + design + education + technology to address community issues. Our areas of focus are: youth, commercial corridors, transportation safety, garbage, and revitalizing outdoor spaces. "Women Who Build: Artist Who Own' is about empowering women and girls by giving us the tools they need to grow, the networks they need to succeed, and the confidence they need to persevere. It’s about women working together to learn to build with their own hands in an industry dominated by males. The skills women learn help them go back to their homes and communities, feel empowered, and have stronger women networks to draw strength from. RPGA also works with students to paint murals, and on virtual-reality projects that help communities change behaviors around litter and transportation.
Website: https://www.regoparkgreenalliance.org/
Phone: 718-433-4659
Email: Yvonne Shortt (founder) yvonne@regoparkgreenalliance.org
What volunteers do:
help with Tiny House build (no prior experience necessary, just an interest in learning how to use tools)
fundraising and marketing
volunteers with construction skills, architects, industrial designers very helpful
one-time activities in neighborhood revitalization (2-3 hour commitment) include: help students paint murals, design and plant local gardens, staff a virtual-reality stand
Borough: Queens
Mission: RTA's mission is to use the transformative power of the arts to develop social and cognitive skills that prisoners need for successful reintegration into the community. RTA serves 200 prisoners at any one time, teaching in at least one facility every day of the week, year-round. More than 30 arts facilitators travel to remote prisons in 3 New York State counties to teach a wide variety of artistic media. In RTA's latest development, we have begun to follow participants as they are released to the community to nurture the creative experience they found so meaningful inside. Our first project is to develop a play about the many challenges of reentry.
Website: https://rta-arts.org/get-involved/
Phone: 914-232-7566
Email: info@rta-arts.org
What volunteers do:
help with props, costumes, sets (outside of prison)
work in prison
FYI:
work in prison requires advanced arts training and extensive background checks
Mission: Seeing for Ourselves focuses on American lives, their work-a-day stories, and how they see the world around them. The content originates with those generally seen through the prism of outside observers very different from themselves. Participatory photography, the Seeing for Ourselves practice, corrects that distortion. We look to provide fresh perspectives by equipping and training primarily disenfranchised and marginalized groups to take control of their own narratives. How? By taking photographs that command attention; promote self-actualization; and shift dominant paradigms. To ensure top-quality work, we equip participants in our programs with suitable film or digital cameras, train them in the art of photography, inspire them with what the masters have done, and encourage them to document their lives. With cameras in their hands, these eager students, young and old, become the creators, frame by frame, of the pictures and words that tell the story of their lives. We then provide a platform—a book, an exhibit, or a movie—to share the results with the wider world.
Website: https://www.seeingforourselves.org/contact
Email: info@projectlivesbook.com
Phone: 917-855-4909
What volunteers do:
teach participatory photography
catalogue photographs
prepare or host exhibits
FAQ: Classes are 1-2 hours once a week and last 12 weeks
Mission: Theatre of the Oppressed NYC (TONYC) partners with social service organizations and city agencies, forming theatre troupes with community members who face pressing social, economic, health, and human rights issues. These troupes devise plays based on their real-life struggles, and perform them before diverse audiences. After each performance, actors and audiences engage in theatrical brainstorming – called Forum Theatre – with the aim of catalyzing creative change on the individual, community and political levels. Legislative Theatre – a particular type of Forum Theatre – brings citizens, legislators and policymakers together into creative dialogue about the policies and laws that affect communities facing oppression. We use theatre, in other words, to spark concrete civic change.
Website: https://www.tonyc.nyc/volunteer
Phone: 646-504-4582
Email: Holly Sansom holly@tonyc.nyc
What volunteers do:
front of house, usher, food sales at TONYC shows
setup and breakdown shows
photography
neighborhood outreach, tabling at advocacy fairs, flyering
work at spring legislative theater festival
collect audience policy ideas
develop policy suggestions