Healing Spaces 2.0
Project Type: Workshops, Public Installation, Design/Build
Collaborators: Youth Design Center, Brownsville Community Justice Center, Oni Emmanuel, Amy Obonaga, and The Next Generation Gems
Special thanks to Chaos Built, Silman’s Building Equity Initiative & Camille Esquivel.
ALL PHOTOGRAPHS BY CAMILLE ESQUIVEL
A+A+A Studio launched the first iteration of Healing Spaces in partnership with the Youth Design Center in October 2020. Designed for the Brownsville Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, A+A+A conducted a 5-week-long workshop with Brownsville youth to design and build shared healing spaces. The mobile Healing Spaces were deployed in Brooklyn’s Osborn Plaza before embarking on a neighborhood-wide community healing tour.
The Healing Spaces project was conceived by the spatial activation team at the Brownsville Community Justice center as a response to the host of traumatic events unfolding over the past few years. These dedicated spaces for healing - both in group and individual settings take the form of mobile temporary installations. The Healing Spaces invite Brownsville community members to enter, engage, and find comfort. Beside providing publicly-accessible community spaces for healing, the goal of the project is to empower youth with the tools for problem solving through design.
Healing Spaces 2.0 began the summer of 2021 and culminated in a new community-designed mobile healing unit, which was launched during Brooklyn’s Be On Belmont Street Festival. A+A+A conducted a 6-week design/build workshop with Brownsville’s Next Generation Gems youth group to collaboratively imagine, design, and build a new collective space for anger release called the Release Room. The space features a punching wall, anti-anxiety weighted bean bags, and a punch-and-paint mural on the exterior. These installations will continue to be used by the Next Generation Gems to re-interpret healing through their programming of the space.
The New Generation Gems
Launch Day (From left to right): Brittany (YDC) Arianna (A+A+A) Oni (BCJC, MOCTO NYC)
