Street Works Earth Impact & Archive
Thanks for joining our free street arts & climate action festivals! 2 years in a row, we’ve spent the day co-creating with artists and learning about environmental & climate action on 34th Avenue's Open Street in Jackson Heights, Queens. We're just getting started!
2025
95+ participating artists + climate activists
6000 passersby
50 terrariums made
47 postcards collected by ALIGN calling for green public schools. Combined with 2024, postcards will be delivered to the NYC mayor's office 1/26/2026.
5 (and growing) collaborative projects seeded/expanded: 3 from 2024, TimeBank, Financial Literacy Working Group
2024
75+ participating artists + climate activists
100 participants pledged to vote, (31 pledges, 6 new voters registered)
3000+ passersby
73 postcards collected by ALIGN calling for green public schools
200 letters mailed to get out the vote
3 collaborative projects seeded: Queens Mutual Aid, Future@Work, Production Collab
Interviews
Projects and Creations
Installations, Sept 22, 2024
What does a joyful future, free of climate change, look like to you? Join Frontline Resource Institute in a visioning of our collective future inviting participants to make artwork — with watercolor, pencil, pastel, and more — reflecting on this question. Over the day, we’ll combine everyone's artwork into a single image, like an unfolding puzzle.
What are the impacts of food waste on the environment? And what can we do about it? Help the Veggie Nuggets create a painting made of block brints and vegetable dyes that represent the food we waste. The canvas, which rotates throughout the day, will slowly change colors. While you're there, learn from about the benefits of turning food scraps into “black gold.”
Stop by for an open, informal discussion on dealing with extreme heat, including an introduction by Queens Climate Project and Nitin Mukul. We'll have a simple circle of chairs and welcome you to take a seat, share your thoughts, and/or listen in.
What does a joyful future, free of climate change, look like to you? Join Frontline Resource Institute in a visioning of our collective future inviting participants to make artwork — with watercolor, pencil, pastel, and more — reflecting on this question. Over the day, we’ll combine everyone's artwork into a single image, like an unfolding puzzle.
Join El Puente and the Brooklyn Queens Expressway Environmental Justice Coalition (BQE-EJC) in an art-marking and storytelling journey to imagine how the public spaces that are disrupted by highways today can be transformed into futures in which we prioritize community health & environmental wellness.
Collaborate with Nitin in creating an improvisational artwork made by layering paint in sheets of ice, freezing each layer so it accumulates color and texture, and then watching it melt according to natural weather conditions while it’s filmed. As you're making a new one, you can watch an existing one melt in the open Jackson Heights air.
Join Remember Y(our) Connection in a creative exercise inspired by the power of mushrooms to clean our environment. Mushrooms will blossom on a log over the day as participants envision more beauty & compassion in our world. (Image: Connecting to our environment through mobile-making w/ found objects, Remember Y(our) Connection Chill 'n' Grill, Flushing Meadows, 10/23. Photo: Molly Hein.)
Participants contributed their favorite songs on freedom and liberation alongside perspectives on climate change to Bayeté Ross Smith’s mix tapes on the climate change crisis, part of a sculpture made of sugarcane and cotton boombox replicas. Their songs and voices were mingled with pre-recorded perspectives from Street Work participants. (Photo by Cindy Trinh.)
Passersby joined Kaimera for an interactive journey into imagining and shaping our own climate futures, creating climate superheroes, sharing stories, and participating in community creations that blend art, movement, dance, and imagination. (Photo by Brentton Wilson.)
Green plays hide & seek in a tapestry of grey asphalt and brown buildings in Jackson Heights. A lack of trees means a dearth of places birds can call home. Participants joined Purvi & Troy in explorations of how green space helps increase clean air, limits the heat index, and gives space for our feathered friends (and people!) to nest & soar. (Photo by Cindy Trinh.)
Join Kaleidospace for coloring, workshops, and dance performances. For the first half of the day, participants will color in a replica of Kaleidospace member Mark Saldana’s mural in Travers Park, nearby, co-created with NICE. Stick around near the end of the day for a final performance in Travers Park.
How do local communities respond to climate change? Participate in building an archive of Queens climate actions facilitated All Street Collective. There will be workshops and interviews throughout the day on zine-making and more. By the end, we’ll have recorded our community's history in their own words.
Small actions can make a big difference in the future of our planet and oceans. Join Jing (Ellen) Xu for an interactive art installation of colorful foam and cardboard rocks reflecting on how small actions can tip the balance. You’ll have about 2 minutes to balance seven foam rocks of different colors. (Spoiler: it's not easy!)
Join Sabina Sethi Unni for a play starring an anthropomorphic flood sensor who wants to be a movie star, designed for brown aunties and communities. Halfway between public theater and culturally competent emergency management, audience members will leave nourished: bellies full of chai and pakoras, good vibes, and emergency planning materials.
What are the impacts of food waste on the environment? And what can we do about it? Help the Veggie Nuggets create a painting made of block brints and vegetable dyes that represent the food we waste. The canvas, which rotates throughout the day, will slowly change colors. While you're there, learn from about the benefits of turning food scraps into “black gold.”
"Prepare for an impending collapse!" is how the government and the media express the failure of our society to support our lives. Colonial-capitalist systems continue to profit from disaster, without contributing solutions. Join Mazorca Colectiva in healing circles reflecting on collapse. Participants will create poetical work, which will be composted into something beautiful. In a space of rest, they’ll imagine the seeds to plant for the future that will emerge.
Did you know that writing a letter to someone on why you vote can actually increase the odds that they will? Hang out with MJN to write nonpartisan letters encouraging young voters across the country to participate in our democracy in the upcoming Federal election. (Photo by Cindy Trinh.)
Participate in an environmental mapping activity to pinpoint sources of pollution and, separately, sources of resilience on a map of Queens. We’ll also be coloring maps of Queens all day, talking about all our favorite places, and learn about the role that environmental pollution plays in maternal and child health.
Join MJN members, Ernest and Anjali, in the locally loved craft of community beading. As local stewards of this wearable art, we're excited to reflect with participants on the story of climate change, by co-creating a glittering bead curtain mapping global temperatures. (Photo by Cindy Trinh.)
Collaborate with Solar One’s Youth Advisory Council (YAC) to explore how your unique skill sets and experiences can help you make meaningful changes in the climate space. You'll also have the opportunity to generate actual, physical energy by playing with solar panels and circuits!
Art of Letter Writing to Get Out the Vote & MJN
Participating ARTISTS, partners, tablers
Ernest Verrett is co-founder of Street Works and co-founder of Dabima, a tech platform making it more affordable for kids to get advice and project management tools to apply to college.
Anjali is an MJN co-founder and Street Works co-founder, artist, game designer, and writer dedicated to creating for, with, and in community in public spaces.
Kaimera [kai-mee-rah] provides platforms for audiences to come together in dialogue and examine some of the hardest questions our global society faces.
KALEIDOSPACE is a Queens-based collective focused on the intersection of art, activism, and community: Sunny Roberts, Manuela Agudelo, Kacia Flórez, Kelly Arango, Mark Saldana.
Veggie Nuggets is a Queens youth climate action group. They have worked on multiple projects, including helping to stop the NRG Astoria power plant and creating a public garden for Queens’s diverse communities to enjoy.
Bayeté Ross Smith is an artist, visual journalist, filmmaker and education worker, working at the intersection of photography, film & video, visual journalism, 3D objects and new media.
Purvi Shah seeds healing and transformation through anti-violence advocacy and creating art.
WE ACT’s mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and/or low income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices.
ALIGN is a longstanding alliance of labor and community organizations united for a just and sustainable New York.
At the New York City level, ALIGN leads Climate Works for All, a coalition of labor, community, faith, environmental justice, and climate organizations fighting climate change and inequality in NYC by demanding a Just Transition for workers and Environmental Justice communities. Our mission is to decarbonize and make resilient NYC’s building sector while centering workers and environmental justice communities to improve people’s quality of life, health, our environment, and climate
Central to this work is our Green, Healthy Schools campaign. NYC 3K-12 students, teachers, parents, and school staff deserve safe and healthy workplaces.
Make Justice Normal (MJN), a collective founded in 2021 to develop and implement justice-centered organizing models—like equitable budgeting, democratic decision-making, and circular leadership structures.
PaintCare makes it easy to recycle leftover paint. In states with paint stewardship laws, we operate recycling programs on behalf of paint manufacturers.
NYPA's mission is to lead the transition to a carbon-free, economically vibrant New York through customer partnerships, energy solutions, and the responsible supply of affordable, clean, and reliable electricity.
Bringing together co-op and condo owners who want to upgrade their buildings.
Queens Climate Project is a group of Queens neighbors and residents advocating for equitable clean energy policies and developing initiatives that increase clean energy, with a focus on Queens and achieving climate justice.
Solar One fosters sustainable practices and environmental equity across New York City through programs in K-12 environmental education, green workforce training, solar installation technical assistance, and eco-park stewardship.
Art Retail Therapy is a creative, all-inclusive, & community-responsive Latine and Queer-owned & operated art store. We aim to bring art to everybody in the best borough, Queens, & beyond.
El Puente is a youth-centered human rights organization, focusing on education, the arts, environmental justice and wellness to inspire leadership for social justice. Its mission is to inspire and nurture leadership for peace and justice, working as a human rights institution in NYC and Puerto Rico with national and international impact.
Mazorca Colectiva fosters alternative intergenerational spaces of care, mutual aid, collective storytelling, and cultural revival. Through community workshops and a community garden located in East Elmhurst, Queens, Mazorca Collectiva centers ancestral practices and nourishing traditions for Indigenous children, Elders, community teachers, and immigrant community that are often overworked and highly exploited by racial capitalism.
A HUD-certified non-profit counseling agency with over 28 years of housing and advisory services for local residents of Queens. NHS of Queens’ mission is to preserve and revitalize underserved neighborhoods in Queens.
NY Renews is a coalition of over 380 environmental, justice, faith, labor, and community groups, and the force behind the nation’s most progressive climate law, the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act.
Chhaya was founded to address the housing and economic needs for low-income South Asian and Indo-Caribbean New Yorkers.
The Frontline Resource Institute supports frontline communities working to advance environmental justice and climate justice by providing the resources and technical assistance to build a world where all can achieve healthy, safe, and sustainable environments.
Environmental Defense Fund's mission is to build a vital Earth. For everyone. By leveraging our deep expertise in science and economics, EDF delivers bold, game-changing solutions to address the biggest challenge of our time — climate change.
Street Works is a community of artists and neighbors building relationships and civic action with art. We create opportunities in public spaces for people to collaborate in making beautiful work that introduces community issues in unusual ways.
34th Avenue Open Street Coalition is a community of volunteers and local residents dedicated to developing community programming on 34th Avenue’s 26-block open street in Jackson Heights. Activities occur nearly seven days a week and include arts and cultural programming for people of all ages, immigration clinics, ESL classes, gardening classes, and more.