Participant Comments
Thank you so much for including us! We had an amazing time, as did our participants, and are very grateful for the opportunity. It was a beautiful evening. Please keep Toasted Marshmallows in mind for any future projects like this– we are excited about possible future collaborations!
Thank you again for all your hard work in pulling together such a fantastic event, and for getting us involved!
All our best,
Anoushka and Marcelitte, Toasted Marshmallows
From Art Effects NY:
Thank you so much for everything! The girls and I had such a wonderful experience and felt a beautiful sense of community on the whole block! Thanks again for your tremendous work.
I want to thank you for inviting Groundswell to participate in the Stoop Conversations. It was an amazing experience and we feel extremely fortunate to have been involved.
– Daonne Huff, Stoop Leader for Groundswell: Voices Her’d Visionaries
Congratulations on the event last night, I think it came together really beautifully, and it’s amazing how much coordinating and organizing you guys all did to make it happen! My favorite part was the opportunity to sit down with the participants who came with me and get to have this in-depth conversation about gender, One of the women told us she had never had a conversation like this before, and that it helped her realize she needed to prioritize herself more in her household, which I thought was really amazing.
A comment that Ms. Lacy made at the orientation last night really stuck with me. I’m probably misquoting, but I think she said “for me art is about building coalitions.” I feel like through all the amazing work you guys have done you’ve brought together a lot of ingredients for building a coalition, but that we still have to mix them together and see if there’s something that rises out of this.
– Emma Yorra, Center for Family Life Cooperative Business Incubation Program:
I really can’t tell you how amazing it was to be part of this project and how everything turned out. It was exciting and made us nervous but it was an amazing experience and the girls from the stoop loved it! They appreciated the effort that Creative Time and The Brooklyn Museum as well as Suzanne Lacy put in to this project, giving them a space to really speak without boundaries. That, for them, was the biggest gift.
– Yousma Natalia, Stoop Leader of Turning Point for Women and Families
It was truly an honor! Thanks to both of you for the hard work putting this piece together. I’m so glad we were able to inject sex workers issues into this broader feminist convo. My stoop participants were incredibly moved by the experience, as was I. It was hard to imagine what it would be like, and it really came together in a magical way. I’m also so happy with the way my stoop participants were treated throughout the process when issues arose. Hats off to you for caring about the details!
– Sienna Baskin, Esq. Co-Director, Sex Workers Project, Urban Justice Center
Dear Project Organizers and Participants: “Between the Door and the Street”
A reflection regarding the open letter circulating re: payment for participants…
There is no more important art than this kind of project, as well as the kind of work London based artist Banksy is doing right now in the streets of New York City: public art that isn’t about an exchange of capital, that moves the museum out into the streets and transforms art into a (real) art of the people. I think we have to believe in the power of that kind of act and that kind of art, to believe in the power of art (as both an “image” and) as political praxis.
Recently, a similar such enactment occurred on the streets of New York City: the day after the astonishing verdict in the George Zimmerman case was announced, there was a very large demonstration, a symbolic public action taken in defense of murdered teenager, Trayvon Martin. We marched from Union Square to Times Square, shutting down many city blocks. We were quite a spectacle …but no one asked for payment. Yes, we were invited to participate. Yes we did participate. Yes we were a symbolic political spectacle happening in public space… which some might call “art.”
In exactly the same way, I would not ask for payment in connection with this coming Saturday’s event, “Between the Door and the Street”—a spectacular public dialogue we have volunteered to participate in. …Because we care about women, both the women we know and love and the women we will meet on Saturday. Because we understand the need for women to connect across and between solidarities, identifications, spheres, sexualities. Because we care about the world beyond our own homes and our own selves and because we are willing, voluntarily, to put our care where our time is. To be civically engaged in social justice and social justice art without payment.
Yes, there are complicated inherent questions, old and new—important issues of labor facing artists, especially in this hyper-capitalist civil society where art is so painfully devalued and erased, rendered visible for the most part only as and when the artist is co-opted as arm of the profit motive and of corporate power—but this event is about women coming together, in a moment of solidarity, in a public demonstration of love, as and for and about each other.
Let us understand, and remember, this moment like that one on July 14th, 2013 when New York City came together—across all lines of difference—to stand in solidarity and love with Trayvon Martin. Seeing that connection requires awareness of art NOT (only) as a cordoned off painting affixed to a museum wall, but as demonstration, as political action, and as radical public dialogue.
…In solidarity, in art,
~Maureen E. Ruprecht Fadem, Assistant Professor, Kingsborough Community College
We just wanted to take a moment to send you a BIG THANK YOU from Sadie Nash and our young women. We had an amazing time at Stoop Talk and really appreciate all of the time and energy you put into working with us to make it happen!
We were honored to participate and to give 20 of our fierce and bold young women the opportunity to “tap in”/”tap out” of the conversations.
Thank you again!
Warmly,
Michelina and Meera, Sadie Nash Leadership Project
I want to thank you and the Creative Time team for a wonderful experience yesterday. All of us on the Hand in Hand stoop really enjoyed the conversation and found it moving and inspiring. While I was tired last night, my spirit is energized and I think we were all reminded how powerful deep connection and meaningful conversation can be. Please thank Suzanne for us.
Susan Lob, New York Organizer, Hand in Hand: The Domestic Employers Association