Project Type: Workshop, Public Installation, Design/Build

Collaborators: Youth Design Center, Brownsville Community Justice Center & the young people of Brownsville

Special thanks to Chaos Built, Excelsior Iron Works and Jeniffer Carmona and Riana Tan from the Cornell AAP NYC Program.

Healings Spaces is a project for the Brownsville Community Justice Center, in partnership with the Youth Design Center (Previously known as Made in Brownsville). A+A+A carried a 5 week design framing workshop with youth in Brownsville to re-imagine, design and build shared healing spaces during a time of physical distancing brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. The mobile Healing Spaces were deployed for the first time in late September at Osborn Plaza, a first stop on its community healing tour.

The healing process is different for everyone. The first 3 weeks of design development with the youth group uncovered a need for creating both spaces for community healing as well as personal healing. Together, we came up with one centered Community Sanctuary and three Headspaces.

COMMUNITY SANCTUARY

The Community Sanctuary focuses on the idea of shared healing and self-expression amounting to an archival of feelings. The greenhouse is a container and infrastructure for different expressions of release- through the act of writing or drawing, storytelling, and sharing healing objects. These acts create a safe mental and physical space for the community to heal together.

Visitors enter and see a narrow table with various writing supplies - on their left the ceiling gives way to a mosaic of notes and expressions of their neighbors - as a release of trauma, expressions of love, forgiveness and aspirations. To the right a phone is mounted to the desk - symbolic as a verbal release of secrets, stories untold, a way to metaphorically communicate with those in the community and beyond. And finally the rear wall anchors the archive with a series of small cubbies where visitors can leave personal or communal objects of healing - a crystal, incense, photograph, stress ball - each to bring an energy of comfort and welcoming to the space.

On the outside, tubes are attached to either side of the structure. They are an outdoor echo of the telephone line inside, the words “listen to the om” and “share a secret/wish” prompt passerbys to listen to the sound of the wind as it passes through or release a secret without fear of judgement.

Headspaces

The personal healing Headspaces propose realms of imagination and escape–individual immersive environments that envelop and transform one’s reality. There is no one size fits all solution to a healing practice. They aim to reinforce a sense of choice in choosing a journey through different environments.

The first headspace feels like stepping into a forest, or secret garden - at eye level with plants and immersed in natural scent and soundscape one is surrounded by the healing quality of nature through greenery, earthiness and filtered light.

The second headspace feels like an underwater landscape - under a floating shelf of water and surrounded by dichroic surfaces with the sounds of the deep sea one is transported through soft reflections and a neighborhood seen anew through rose tinted glasses.

The third headspace feels like stepping into a soft, quiet and dark cocoon - it offers the ability to minimize visual senses, distractions and the noise of the city to turn inward. Those who enter can be accompanied by music, sounds, guided meditations, breathing exercises, and other guided practices of internal reflection and self-soothing.