(NEWARK, NJ) -- Express Newark has announced more than $200,000 in Third Space Awards. Awards aggregating more than $200,000 have been given to Newark artists who work collaboratively with Rutgers University–Newark (RU-N) faculty, staff, and students on creative projects.
The projects span a multitude of mediums including: humanities-focused projects, documentary film and digital content, exhibitions, creative entrepreneurship initiatives, climate justice initiatives, visual literacy workshops, and residency programming throughout Express Newark.
Occupying 50,000 square feet of the renovated, historic Hahne & Company building in the heart of Newark’s downtown, Express Newark is described as a “Third Space” Collaboratory. It is an arts incubator in which Newark artists and community residents convene, experiment, and innovate in partnership with Rutgers University–Newark faculty, staff, and students to nurture talent, cultivate engaged scholarship, and promote social practice. Express Newark provides state-of-the-art interdisciplinary public learning spaces where artists, community residents, and community partners create visual, spoken word, and electronic arts; foster democratic dialogue; and effect positive transformation.
Presently, Express Newark has more than 80 contributors, and its partners include: Artistic Passion & Purpose, Community Media Center, Design Consortium, Form Design Studio, Humanities Action Lab, Institute of Jazz Studies, NewAnce, New Arts Justice, Newest Americans, Paul Robeson Galleries, Shine Portrait Studio, Visual Means and XPress. Located at 54 Halsey Street, Express Newark’s neighbors in the Hahne & Company building include: Marcus B&P restaurant, Whole Foods, Kite & Key computer store, Launch Pad Coworking Space, Barnes & Noble, various other businesses, and residential apartments.
Read more about the specific programs and initiatives awarded below.
Jeffrey Billingsley
CUEED Newark Business Hub Media & Arts Entrepreneurs Program Phase II
The Center for Urban Entrepreneurship & Development (CUEED) is seeking to enhance the media and arts entrepreneurial ecosystem in Newark, NJ. The CUEED program builds on the ongoing efforts of Rutgers Newark Chancellor’s office Strategic Plan and to support The Garden State Film and Digital Media Jobs Act. The hub will serve 20-30 emerging; journalists, bloggers, digital newspaper publishers, public relations professionals, photographers, filmmakers, videographers, fashion & footwear designers, visual & performing artists; by training them through a series of business hub classes and workshops.
Chelsea Odufo
Black Lady Goddess Digital Series Pilot
Black Lady Goddess film pilot will be shot, edited, and distributed for a potential TV series pick-up. Additionally, the pilot will be screened around the city of Newark between January 2020 and June 2020. BLG is set in the year 2040 when the world discovers that God is a black woman and reparations have been issued to each person of African descent. The purpose of the film pilot is to engage RU-N students, Newark High school and residents with culturally enriching programming, which will enhance the Newark Arts ecosystem and regenerate engaged scholarship in the community. It will raise awareness around the issues of Racial Identity, Women Empowerment, Afro-Futurism, Reparations, Pan Africanism, Social Justice, and Activism. We hope to inspire the safe spaces for discussions around the topics related to BLG.
Newest Americans at Express Newark
Spoken Word at the Intersection of Race & Religion
Spoken Word at the Intersection of Race & Religion is comprised of two events (1) an evening of spoken word and slam poetry in the Fall of 2019, and (2) a grassroots convening in the spring of 2020. The slam poetry night will be led by keynote artists and joined by local artists and audience members. Prospective keynote artist includes; Alok Vaid -Menon, Alex Torres Marchado, Jasmine Man, Shane Fuller, and Marwa Abulhai. The event creates a space of artistic expression, dialogue and exchange of ideas at the intersection of race and religion with a focus on the voices and experiences of Muslims, Arab, and South Asian communities.
Artistic Passion & Purpose at Express Newark
Fall & Winter Fashion Show(s) Extravaganza
The Spring & Fall Fashion Extravaganza by Artistic Passion & Purpose will feature a New York Fashion Week style runway. This fashion show is designed to showcase the gifts and talents of local clothing designers, MUAs, and hairstylist to garner publicity for the Fashion & Design Creatives from Newark, the city of Newark NJ, and Express Newark.
Yvonne M Shirley
Newarkive Multimedia Archive
The Newarkive will be a boutique, living-multimedia archive that will allow the sharing of images their & connected stories, created by Newarkers. Newarkive will engage with Newarkers across the city, inviting them to share their meaningful narratives and personal images of thier lives. The project also connects to Newark’s already existing archives. These image-stories will be present through the Newarkive website & social media.
Isaac Jimenez
Newark Improv Classes & Festival
The Newark Improv will produce weekly community classes and a two-night festival located in Express Newark. The weekly classes will each have a capacity of 16 people and run for 8 weeks once a week. The festival will be held in or around February 2020 and will feature performances from the premier improv comedy groups from across the US including those taking part in the workshops. The 6th Annual Newark Improv Festival will free and open to the public.
Paul Robeson Galleries at Express Newark
Paul Robeson Galleries 40th Anniversary Programs Initiative
The Paul Robeson Galleries 40th Anniversary celebration will include three program initiatives. These programs include the public art event, Here I Stand & Robeson Salons, and a mural dedication to the achievements of Paul Robeson. Programming will be held at the Paul Robeson Galleries, Main Gallery at Express Newark, the Paul Robeson Galleries Workshops, X-Press, the Design Consortium, and the Express Newark Lecture Hall.
Dr. Genese Sodikoff Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Rutgers-Newark
Andy Razaf Documentary Film
In Spring 2020 undergraduate courses centered on the production of a documentary film about the life of Andy Razaf (born Andriamanantena Razafinkarefo). Razaf was an African American songwriter of the Harlem Renaissance with family ties to Madagascar. The production of this film represents a piece of a multiphase project about music and the politics of race in the United States and Madagascar as seen through the prism of one family’s experience.
Daniel Swern
coLab presentation of 37 Voices & Banished
In partnership with Rutgers Law School and Newest Americas, colab Arts will present two of the projects in Fall 2019 at Express Newark to anchor community discussions around their respective issues. Banished, created with support from Rutgers Law School, features interviews with individuals placed on the sex offender registry as juveniles. 37 voices, created with a partnership with Newest Americans, is a hybrid theater-journalism project featuring interviews with Essex and Middlesex County’s most economically venerable.
Carrie Stetler
Self-made Women Business Owners in Newark's South & West Wards—traveling exhibition
Women Business Owners in Newark's South and West Wards is a photojournalism project that profiles two subjects in each ward and culminates in a traveling exhibition, beginning at Express Newark's Box Gallery and moving to Akwaaba Gallery. It will feature a 44-page publication and website.
DreamPlay Media
Upward Classes DreamPlay Media
A multimedia e-learning series, tentatively named, UPWARD CLASS. The multi-part, short episode (3-7 min.) courses will feature experts in the Greater Newark area teaching introductory to intermediate level "master classes" in their field. These classes will be published on a new web platform and shared on affiliate channels. There will be a release party at Express Newark for the content launch in Spring 2020.
Matt Williams
I'm So Newark TV Show
The I'm So Newark TV show is all about creating and sharing positive, digital content about the city of Newark New Jersey, and it's people, past, present, and future. The Show will highlight artists, entrepreneurs, filmmakers, and residents from the Newark community. Most of the show will be shot and produced in Express Newark's Community Media Center, but will also have street crews capturing positive news that will coincide with studio interviews and shows.
Humanities Action Lab at Express Newark
Climates of Inequality: Stories of Environmental Justice International Launch
Climates of Inequality: Stories of Environmental Justice, is an event that will bring more than 150 issue advocates, university-community partners, and students from around the world to Express Newark for two days of interactive sessions and dialogue. The Humanities Action Lab (HAL) is a coalition of universities, issue organizations, and public spaces in 40 cities (and growing), led from Rutgers-Newark, that collaborate to produce community-curated public humanities projects on urgent social issues. This fall, HAL is launching our new initiative, Climates of Inequality: Stories of Environmental Justice (COi), which explores climate and environmental justice stories in 22 localities around the world. COi includes a traveling exhibit, web projects, public dialogues, and other platforms for civic engagement. To produce the COi exhibit and participatory platforms, HAL is partnering with Express Newark residents Newest Americans/Talking Eyes Media; RU-N faculty and students across departments and centers, including American Studies, Arts, Media & Culture, History, the Honors College, Honors Living-Learning Community, the Meadowlands Environmental Research Institute, and the Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Center; and community partners including the Ironbound Community Corporation and the Newark Public Library.
Alliyah Allen
LAND Collective Exhibition
LAND Collective, a Newark based collective of artists and creatives, plans to curate its first group exhibition, Blackness in the Urban Landscape. This will be a joint exhibition featuring works of Nene Diallo, a photographer, printmaker, and mixed media artist, and Chrys Davis, a photographer, and videographer. Along with the exhibition, we plan to introduce programming from other members of LAND Collective, including Gabe Riberio, who created the NORK Project - an ongoing archive of narratives of Newark, and Jillian Rock, a printmaker, and writer.
Emanuele Cacciatore
Visual Literacy Workshops
Collaborative Photography, Letterpress, and 3-D Printing workshops that introduce six Newark High School students and/or residents to a multidisciplinary creative experience within a themed framework that will enhance and broaden their social/artistic voices and vision. The workshops, created and facilitated by individuals at Express Newark, the Art, and Design program in the Department of Arts, Culture & Media at Rutgers University-Newark, and various community-based arts organizations, will entail a comprehensive art experience that is open and free to interested high school students and community members. Five professors and six talented art and design students will introduce the participants to, and engage them in, various creative and artistic modes of art-making. The objective of the workshops is to generate, print, and mat a series of photographs, letterpress prints, and 3-D printed pieces created at Express Newark that reflect each participant's expression and realization of their identity as a person and creative individual. The workshops will thus serve as programs that foster a multifaceted and continuous learning environment for Rutgers/Newark students, high school students, and non-artists as well; the focus of the workshops being "to record and highlight" the numerous and varied voices of both the Newark community and our Rutgers University students through the visual arts.
Shine Portrait Studio at Express Newark
Shine Portrait Studio + New Arts Justice Initiative Artist-in-Residence Program
Pictures and Progress is Shine’s and New Arts joint artist-in-residence program that invites artists to create new ambitious and hi-profile contemporary art projects that are aligned with our respective missions around art + social justice, art + healing, public art, photography, and in the broadest sense portraiture. Scheherazade Tillet's current Artist-in-Residence at Shine will continue with her foundational work from her 2018-19 residency. The result of this upcoming years residency will be the creation of a new locally engaged photography project; leading artist-activist workshops with young people; outlining the viability of an ongoing art+ activism initiative at Express Newark to empower young people; co-shaping programming for a forthcoming conference; and creating content for a forthcoming book publication.
Shine Portrait Studio at Express Newark
Shine Portrait Studio Residency Book Publishing
Shine Portrait Studio's Residency Program publishes books with artists, curators, and writers aligned with a socially engaged art focus and in the broadest sense portraiture. For the 2019-2020 academic year, Scheherazade Tillet is one of Shine's Artists-in-Residence and one of the outcomes of her residency will be the publishing of a photobook/catalog of her new locally engaged photography project. In addition, Shine will also invite and commission other artists, curators, and writers to collaborate on artists' books. This grant request is to fund the book publishing of resident artist and curator projects.
New Arts Justice at Express Newark
“A Soldier’s Story” Exhibition with Jamel Shabazz
Soldier's Story" is by Jamel Shabazz, the renowned photographer and lead artist in New Arts Justice and Monument Lab A Call for Peace exhibition in Military Park, October 9th to November 11, 2019. Shabazz's participatory project, “A Soldier's Story" will include 2 summer photo-residency days with Shine Portrait Studio with veterans and their families for free portrait sessions. Working with Monument Lab's open research hub, the goal of this exhibition is to welcome public imagination that engages the park's evolving racial legacy, its role as a major site of connection in Newark, and the story it reflects for the broader city.
Visual Means at Express Newark
Visualizing Equitable Growth
Visual Means and the Rutgers Center on Law, Inequality & Metropolitan Equity (CLiME) collaborating on new research based on CLiME's Displacement Risk Indicators Matrix / DRIM since Fall 2018, Professor Bernstein and students have been exploring the creation of abstract visualizations of the data, map-based visualizations utilizing software tools and code, and a website concept in which these visualizations could be experienced by both a policy maker and public audience, The concept currently also includes the creation of audio "stories" - testimonials related to the data and issues that would be part of the interactive experience, and offer another way to understand the impact these issues being explored are having/and could have in the future on Newarkers' lives, Additionally, the Visual Means team has been researching other potential sources of data that could be included in the project, such as Abandoned Properties, Population over time, Housing-related data (evictions, housing conditions), Child Protective Services, - NJ Family Care/Medicaid, Food Stamps SNAP Program) The Visual Means team has already begun to create elements of a potential campaign including logomark, and preliminary poster, and t-shirt concepts.
fayemi shakur
Access Art
Access Art is a series of master workshops organized specifically for students and artists to provide career, community and confidence-building tools to support creative practice. The free professional development workshops aim to share a range of expertise with Rutgers students and the local Newark arts community presented in collaboration with Rutgers-Newark faculty and Express Newark partners. Access Art, presented from October 2019 through April 2020, has a goal to broaden intellectual experiences and perspectives on the arts, inspire new synergies and cultivate creativity, providing an opportunity to learn from experienced art professionals and professors through informed and inspiring dialogue.
