Bring Down the Walls Recap-Staging

Register for Passes

Spend Saturdays in May at Bring Down The Walls!

For a free, advance school or club pass to Bring Down The Walls, guests should register via Eventbrite.

By registering for a free school pass, you’re welcome to attend as many or as few sessions as you like, though please plan to arrive early as seating is first-come first-served. Registering for a free club pass will grant you entry to the nightclub, though everyone should plan to wait in line.

If you’re unable to register for a pass for the day or night programs you’re most interested in, we’ll be maintaining a wait list for the school and club.

School and Club Programming

During daylight hours Bring Down The Walls operates as a school for radical thought and political exchange featuring conversations, workshops, and convenings led by people directly impacted by the prison system and those working to change it. The curriculum represents the broad spectrum of perspectives and voices in the struggle for justice, offering new ways to build deeper knowledge around mass incarceration and prison abolition. Throughout the day, discussions exploring the history of house music are threaded into the dialogue. Direct services will also be available for free counseling on civil, legal, and housing issues.

When the sun goes down, Bring Down The Walls turns into a dance club, inspired by the ethos of early house music venues, which often functioned as hubs of political engagement as much as spaces of personal liberation and collective transcendence. Programmed in collaboration with Nowadays, a gathering place and party space, each Saturday will be hosted by different NYC collectives that celebrate the history and present-day role of nightlife as a haven of relief and transformation in which divisions of race, class, gender, and sexuality are often crossed in unexpected ways.

See the lineup for each Saturday below, and please note that Bring Down The Walls is an organically evolving communal space. Times may shift and programs added throughout the run of the project. Check back regularly for the most up-to-date schedule.

Saturday, May 5th

ORIGINS OF CONTROL

Setting the stage for Bring Down The Walls, this first week we look at the origins of the prison industrial complex, inviting global, historical and personal perspectives that question how and why our current culture of systemic control and punishment exists. Conversations will introduce the abolitionist position, as well as explore the intrinsic links between the current prison system and America’s history of racial exploitation, economic discrimination, and other oppressive social practices.

SCHOOL SCHEDULE FOR MAY 5TH

SOUL SUMMIT

10 PM – 6 AM / All spaces
Vibes by Soul Summit Music w. special guest DJ Kim Lightfoot!

Bring Down The Walls nightclub opens with The Soul Summit Music DJs. Soul Summit Music is a New York institution, known for “throwing one of the best house music jams in the city,” with their free summer dance parties in Fort Greene Park. The Soul Summit Music Festival combines dance, food, and family, and has developed a loyal following over the years, making it one of the most anticipated events of the summer. The festival highlights artists from various backgrounds including DJs, dancers, filmmakers, and photographers. Soul Summit Music will bring their high-energy soulful house experience to this rare indoor occasion.

Saturday, May 12th

THE CARCERAL CONTINUUM

The second Saturday of Bring Down The Walls examines the expansion of punitive and carceral practices, and the ways they have been codified to extend beyond prison walls – through policies on immigration, surveillance, drug laws, and bail. We introduce some of the campaigns and organizations focused on dismantling these practices.

SCHOOL SCHEDULE FOR MAY 12TH

HOUSE OF VOGUE

House of Vogue is a monthly ball in Brooklyn dedicated to underground ballroom culture and the vogue-house communities of New York City, hosted by one of the leading figures of the scene, DJ and producer MikeQ. The second Saturday of Bring Down The Walls is a House of Vogue takeover, featuring a ballroom competition with cash prizes, MCs, special guest performances, plus music courtesy of MikeQ and members of his label, Qween Beat Records.

Saturday, May 19th

SOCIAL VIOLENCE

Week 3 at Bring Down The Walls considers the radial impact of social violence and how vulnerable communities are impacted by the injustice system. We will unpack the ways in which the effects of the prison industrial complex extend into our everyday lives, targeting and bringing pervasive harm in particular to women, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, and people living with mental health challenges.

SCHOOL SCHEDULE FOR MAY 19TH

BRUJAS

Brujas, “a radical collective of activists, skaters, musicians, healers, and hustlers” convenes a night of local hosts, performers, and DJs for the third Saturday of Bring Down The Walls. Brujas is an urban, free-form, creative, and autonomous organization of born-and-bred New Yorkers seeking to build radical political coalition through youth culture, and expressing community through skateboarding, art, and political organizing. The night’s lineup is inspired by their new spring collection Seize Bellevue that calls for a compassionate and radical reconception of one of our more insidious carceral institutions – the pharmaceutical industry and mental health crisis system.

Saturday, May 26th and Sunday, May 27th

RADICAL FUTURES

On our final weekend, the conversation at Bring Down The Walls turns toward the future, inviting participants to imagine a society without prisons or jails. We will propose visionary ways of evolving beyond punitive injustice, and consider the most forward thinking approaches to achieving real change.

SCHOOL SCHEDULE FOR MAY 26TH

PAPI JUICE

Closing out Bring Down The Walls with an all night bash is Papi Juice, an art collective composed of DJ/producers Oscar Nñ and Adam Rhodes, and illustrator Mohammed Fayaz, that aims to celebrate the lives of queer and trans people of color. Structured around curated events, Papi Juice lives at the intersection of art, music, and nightlife. For the past five years, the collective has been changing the face of nightlife in New York City and beyond with intentional platforms for artists of color including panels, artist residencies, performances, and, of course, fabled DJ sets and parties.