In search of the waterfront

South Bronx Unite brings together neighborhood residents, community organizations, academic institutions, and allies to improve and protect the social, environmental, and economic future of Mott Haven and Port Morris.

We envision a South Bronx where everyone is thriving because we have equitable access to clean air, nutritious food, truly affordable and quality housing, good health care, resources to advance our contributions to arts and culture, community centers, open green spaces, good schools with adequate resources, jobs with livable wages, a transformative justice approach to public safety, and participatory decision-making for public policies and community development.

Founded in New York in 2013, Korea Art Forum (KAF) is an independent non-profit organization led by artists, scholars, and peacemakers with the mission of bridging the world through art. KAF aims to dismantle sources of inequality and exclusivity present in the contemporary art field while at the same time building an aesthetic framework conducive to a fair, just, and peaceful world of coexistence, cooperation, and shared prosperity.

Processional Arts Workshop (PAW) was formed to preserve, promote, and develop public processions and pageant puppetry as a distinct and vital artform. Informed by diverse, global traditions of vernacular street theater, large-scale puppetry, and ritual pageant, we seek to use processional art as means to build and sustain community spirit and awareness. PAW creates original works for established public events and festivals (most notably, leading New York’s Village Halloween Parade each year), as well as seeding site-specific pageant traditions in communities where no such events may have existed before. Drawing on regional cultures, history, folklore, ethnicity, and current sociopolitical concerns, our performances encourage local residents to participate at every stage of production. thus empowering them to identify, express, and preserve the narratives that uniquely define “local” in their own community, against the current tide of global homogenization.

In addition to public performances, PAW accepts theatrical commissions and organizes workshops in disciplines relevant to processional art, such as giant puppetry, mask and costume, musical instrument making, mobile theatrical design, and choreography and movement for pageants. PAW plans to further its mission through other educational activities, such as producing publications that explain and illustrate aspects of pageant puppetry and processional art and operating a visiting artist/artist-in-residency program, where facilities and support are given in exchange for public lectures, demonstrations, and other activities.

LINK HERE