During transitional periods, like starting college or a new job, change stirs stuff up inside us. Often changes are fast and hurried, with so much to do, but it’s important that we slow down our pace and take time with transitions. Packing for college should include resurrecting your childhood memories as you clean out your room. Starting a new job should include long lunches when you get to know your coworkers.
Even though New Urban Arts is only moving three doors down the street, from our current studio space to a permanent home next year, this transition is a chance for us to come together. As one of our alumni has said, “We can’t just throw up orange walls and call it home.”
We have convened a team of students, artist mentors, alumni and staff to facilitate a community wide celebration of 745 Westminster Street over the next 5 months which will explore notions of homemaking in a way that is playful, fun, nostalgic, personal, meaningful, memorable, creative and collaborative.
Stay tuned for invitations to participate in this historical moment at New Urban Arts from the following work groups who are currently thinking and brainstorming for lots of rituals and memory collecting to say goodbye to this space and make the new space our home including:
* Farewell Celebrations at the Art Party May 20 – the last big event taking place at 743 Westminster Street, where we have called “home” for over a decade!
* Guerrilla Marketing Campaign – to spreading the word that we’re moving
* Summer Mail Art Exchange
* Ghosts of New Urban Arts Past, Present & Future
* Before and After We Move, A Photography Project
* Oral History Project – “Stories from a Generation”
* The Sentimentalists & Historians Committee is plotting a lantern processional for August and a hidden time capsule project