9/14/18: Block Party Prep Party & some class resources
9/14/18: Block Party Prep Party & some class resources
Hi All,
I believe we'll be in touch this weekend regarding some possible updates to next Monday's class!
In the mean time I wanted to take a second to invite you all the 5th Annual Peter Cooper Block Party (Sat Sept 22nd)! The public/community Block Party which is sponsored by the Alumni Association (CUAA) is seemingly one of the few autonomous community events left which does not fall under the purview of Development, the Administration, or even Alumni Affairs. The event grew out of a defunct "fundraising" dinner which alumni decided to reassess upon the implementation of tuition back in 2014. For the past 3 years the Block Party has been coordinated by myself, Casey and many of other past and present members of the Projects class, Anton Luz (CE '18) is one of the co-organizers this year! 😎
I'm including below a few invite images below as well as some language about past and present themes. If you'd like to know more about this event, be involved, or help out please let me know! We're also hosting a costume making party @ Cooper *today Friday 9/14/18* from 5pm-midnight in the 6th floor lobby if any of you want to stop by! Thank you Faye and Owen for the posters!
block party 2018 invite
The theme of the Block Party this year is 'Are We There Yet?', as a means to invite the community and public to get up to speed with and weigh in on Cooper's plan to 'return to free'. This year's event is centered around arts/crafts and a sculpture garden taking inspiration from Cooper/cultural institutions/the tuition crisis as obstacle course, memory palace, labyrinth, participatory theater, etc! The date is set for Saturday September 22nd from 12-5pm outside of the foundation building at the same time as the annual 'Astor Alive!' festival, and for reference here are some of our old themes and sites (2017: Mission, Means, Union!and 2016: What's Going On Here?)
block party 2018 poster
another block party 2018 poster
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A few resources to start:
- a bit outdated but in progress, Projects Class Wiki is where we try to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for ourselves! If you're interested in learning to use the wiki, Casey can walk us through
-The Cooper Union History Project is spear-headed by Barry Drogin and has aggregated many of the historical and present going on as well as previous sites and initiatives by other community members as well as press
-last updated in may 2015 the Free Cooper Union disorientation site was a way to quickly pass on organizing tool-kits and meaningful writing by members of the community and press, there have since been a number of other publications, articles, etc that have been written that are worth sharing but we'll have to collate them together!
-are you interested in some of the seemingly invisible changes going on around campus? We set up this twitter to track changes to cooper.edu which helps highlight changes such as policy and fee/tuition updates, job listings, new hires, and some of the programs we heard about from Nicole. Of note, Casey just discovered two new website headers 'Initiatives' and "Courses Open to All Students' .
initiatives page on cooper website
See you all soon,
Victoria
