On June 4, Groundswell had the privilege of being asked to share our work at Partnering for Impact!: Innovative Collaborations for Effective Change, a conference and exhibition celebrating partnerships between grassroots community organizations and resource groups. Photos from the event can be found here.

Jules Joseph, Groundswell's Youth Advocate, served as a panelist for the "Empowering Youth through Hands-on Art, Design, and Planning" workshop where he discussed his role as teaching artist on last summer's Making His'tory project "Yesterday I was ____, Today I am ____, and Tomorrow I'll Be ____." Along with representatives from the Museum of the City of New York, Local Spokes, and the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), Joseph offered insight into collaborative youth development programs that use art and design to explore social justice issues. There to offer his support was Ben Smith of Brownsville Community Justice Center, a partner on the project.

Additonally, "Yesterday I Was..."  one of seventeen projects selected from fifty proposals to be featured in an exhibition of posters. The posters were created by designers at CUP whose mission it is to produce educational tools that demystify complex policy and planning issues to facilitate civic participation by under-represented communities. You can view all the posters here.

Groundswell spent the day in the company of innovative organizations that do such important and meaningful work through an emphasis on partnerships and collaborations. It was inspiring to hear about the projects that other community-driven groups are engaged in and it is helpful to learn about successes, failures, and best practices for collaborative social justice work straight from the source!

Partnering for Impact was presented by The Community Development Project at the Urban Justice Center, the Center for Urban Pedagogy, and the Hester Street Collaborative with support from the Surdna Foundation and co-sponsored by the New School for Public Engagement.