Iva Brito, Emma York, Tobey Eugenio, and Kristen McCullin

Our Collective Imagination Team includes New Bedford-based artists, educators, architects, and nature enthusiasts. Together we will envision how our city can better utilize urban greenspaces to offer young people from New Bedford opportunities to connect, create, and transform themselves and their community through the arts. Public art organizations and greenspaces have emerged to enrich the urban landscape, but young people of color have not always felt ownership over them. Our collaboration aims to build an ecosystem capable of further integrating New Bedford’s youth, who predominantly come from low-income, immigrant, and BIPOC families, into the public artmaking process. We want to envision new ways that urban greenspace can be used to elevate their voices and offer opportunities for them to wield their creativity to ensure that public art is shaped by, and adapts to, the evolving needs of our community.