NEW AGORA
\nJune \u2013 September
\nMorning to Sunset
\nSaturday, June 25 | All Day
\nPoster Design: Vincent DiVito Spend a full Saturday each month, this summer exploring art and the outdoors with New Agora. Discover new creatives and perspectives with family-friendly workshops, conversations, tours, screenings, performance, music, and more!<\/p>\n
For June, New Agora is excited to collaborate with The Fortune Society to present their Annual Arts Festival celebrating community and healing through the arts. Join us for a day of workshops, performances, and readings. Founded in 1967, The Fortune Society\u2019s vision is to foster a world where all who are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated will thrive as positive, contributing members of society. Join us for this powerful celebration of the healing and transformative powers of imagination and creativity.
\nSCHEDULE
\n9:30 am & 11:00 am – Yoga | Free, No Reservations required<\/p>\n
10:00 am – 2:00 pm – Hellgate Farm Stand<\/p>\n
10:00 am – 2:00 pm – Astoria Food Pantry Free Store
\nThe Astoria Food Pantry will be in the park to distribute free clothes, books, and essential items. Accepting donations of non-perishables and clean clothes to bring back to the pantry for distribution to our neighbors also. Information about the Astoria Food Pantry and associated projects (including Astoria Free Store, The Rolling Library, and The People’s Bodega) will also be available on-site. Come say hello!<\/p>\n
11:00 am – 1:00pm – Socrates x Noguchi Field Guide
\nExploring a “New Nature” Gardens & Model making\u2013 RSVP required<\/p>\n
12:00 – 7:30 pm – Makina Cafe Food Truck
\nBorn in Ethiopia from parents of Eritrean descent, Makina Cafe founder Eden G. Egziabher is the first Eritrean-American female entrepreneur in NYC with a food truck serving \u201cHabesha\u201d food. Used as a term of pride, the word \u201cHabesha\u201d is used to eliminate the distinction between different tribes of Eritrea and Ethiopia and celebrates the unity of people of the same region.\u00a0Tasty, healthy, nutritious and something quite unique, Makina Cafe serves up breakfast and lunch to New Yorkers that are tired of the same old take-out options.<\/p>\n
ALL DAY –\u00a0Visit\u00a0H\u00c9LIO OITICICA’s\u00a0SUBTERRANEAN TROPIC\u00c1LIA PROJECTS: PN15 1971\/2022\u00a0and experience the short film, “Gazing Up at the Buildings” \u200bby Vincent DiVito and Nick Evans<\/p>\n
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2:00 pm – Welcome\/Official Kick-Off of The Fortune Society Arts Festival
\nLocation: Cobblestone Stage<\/p>\n
2:00 – 3:00 pm – Pennants & Poets Workshop with artist Jenny Polak
\nLocation: Grove of Trees<\/p>\n
Pennants & Poets is a public art installation and spoken word event created by Jenny Polak. In collaboration with writers from The Fortune Society and Hour Children Working Women, it features more than 50 flying pennants printed with poems and messages from people who have been directly impacted by incarceration. The pennants, with their nautical and sporting associations, create a resilient and celebratory image. The combined messages form a powerful collective call for an end to mass incarceration and support for the millions affected by it. The public will be able to engage with the installation and participate in a pennant-making workshop with Jenny Polak from 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm. With the pennants as a backdrop, performers from The Fortune Society will step up to the mic to share their original work in our headlining event.<\/p>\n
2:00 – 5:00 pm – Learn more about advocacy efforts from the\u00a0Center for Community Alternatives
\nLocation: North Path<\/p>\n
3:00 – 4:00 pm – Theater for The People
\nLocation: North Lawn<\/p>\n
Actors from The Fortune Society will perform excerpts from their favorite plays.<\/p>\n
4:00 – 5:00 pm – The Revolutionary Rhetoric of Hip Hop: A Conversation with Artists and the Hip Hop Heads Who Love Them
\nLocation: Cobblestone Stage<\/p>\n
Moderated by Trasonia Abbott<\/p>\n
Joined by
\nEddie Connor
\nRoque Rodriguez
\nLionel \u201cDoc da Edutainer\u201d Limage
\nlive painting session with artist Amira Hasib<\/p>\n
This conversation will bring together 4 different lovers of HipHop to engage with the revolutionary history of what is now the biggest music genre in the world. How did something started just 50 years ago with two turn tables and a microphone by black and Latino youth in the Bronx, take over the world? What can this ever-expanding genre teach us about our path to liberation?<\/p>\n
This conversation will also include a live painting session with artist Amira Hasib.\u00a0Amira Hasib is an Afro-Asian multimedia artist and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. She received a BFA in film\/video from Pratt Institute. Themes of Hasib\u2019s work stem from her background as an Asian\/African American to themes of introspection, love, politics, ancient folklore, and the general experience of being human.<\/p>\n
5:00 – 6:00 pm – Dances for Solidarity\u00a0Workshop + Performance
\nLocation: Cobblestone Stage<\/p>\n
Dancing Through Darkness\u00a0is the title of a seven-step movement score created by long-term collaborator Dushaan Gillum, who is incarcerated in in the Texas state prison system. He created the text as a tool for other people in segregation to learn to dance and create original choreography, and this performance creates a bridge from inside prison walls to the outside by way of individuals who have personally been impacted by incarceration. The choreography comes with an embedded narrative, using dance as a form of freedom to move from a dark place to a place of light. Ultimately, it is about overcoming obstacles and past hurt, shedding past identities and creating a new future.<\/p>\n
6:00 – 7:30 pm – Voices of Fortune\u00a0Performance
\nLocation: Cobblestone Stage<\/p>\n
Celebrate with Fortune’s poets, musicians, singers and commentators\u00a0as they share powerful performances rooted in liberation and healing.
\nPARTICIPATING ARTISTS
\nThe Fortune Society
\nBecky Jane Dunham
\nChon \u201cShy\u201d Smith
\nClemese Jack
\nDaniel Kelly
\nDave Coleman
\nDawud Rahman
\nErobos Abzu Lamashtu OKA \u201cE\u201d
\nFelix Guzman
\nFrancisco Lino
\nHelen Taylor
\nHilton N. Webb Jr.
\nJohn Runowicz
\nJonathan Finkelman
\nKarter Santana
\nKing David
\nLionel \u201cDoc da Edutainer\u201d Limage
\nMarcus Crenshaw
\nMark Lucas
\nMilklifshitz
\nMilton Jones
\nNestor \u201cPanama\u201d Eversley
\nRev. Keith Finesse Gadson
\nRhon Sanchez
\nRonette \u201cPink\u201d Cordette
\nRoslyn Svendsen
\nRubi Hochland
\nRyan \u201cBlustone\u201d Bennett
\nSamantha
\nSparks Alexander
\nThe Spiritual Activist Marvin Wade<\/p>\n
Contributing Artists
\nAmira Hasib
\nArt Gueverra
\nDances for Solidarity
\nJenny Polak
\nLaura Cer\u00f3n Melo
\nNick Evans
\nRoque Rodriguez
\nEddie Connor
\nTrasonia Abbott
\nVincent DiVito
\nABOUT The Fortune Society\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Fortune Society\u2019s (Fortune) mission is to support successful reentry from incarceration and promote alternatives to incarceration, thus strengthening the fabric of our communities. The agency offers support to New Yorkers following the trauma of legal system involvement and incarceration and helps to bridge the many systemic divides that are barriers to individual and community success. We do this through a holistic, one-stop model of service provision. Since the organization\u2019s inception more than 50 years ago, Fortune has been committed to using the restorative capacities of art and art-making to promote healing through the arts and to help to realize possibilities for more just collective futures.<\/p>\n
Learn more: http:\/\/fortunesociety.org Trasonia Abbott<\/p>\n
Trasonia is a multidisciplinary artist. Their work centers on their experience as a Black Nonbinary person. They have immense love for their community and culture and enjoy engaging in deep meaningful conversations with and about them. Trasonia has channeled this love into many different projects and events in the last couple years including Queens Liberation Project\u2019s mutual aid events, a Podcast called Identity Crisis with Pam and Trasonia, a Black History Month conversation series for Flux Factory Rhizome project, and Queens Solidarity festival, a day of thanking and paying BIPOC organizers in queens. They are currently working on a musical project.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.identitycrisispt.com
\nhttps:\/\/trasonia.bandcamp.com\/music
\nIG: @trasonia_abbot<\/p>\n
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