“After all, the past is our only real guide to the future, and historical analogies are instruments for distilling and organizing the past and converting it to a map by which we can navigate.”
Michael Mandelbaum
THE MAP THAT VOICES THE HIDDEN
The map of the corridor highlights many aspects of Flatbush, including locations for black businesses and historically significant places. This map also includes all the signage placed all around the Corridor and around the Flatbush African Burial Ground (FABG).
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These places of pilgrimage connect past, present, and future. Our flagship projects - The GrowHouse and Dream Factory will join current Black-owned businesses and historic sites like the Flatbush African Burial Ground to create a vibrant, connected narrative about Black history, present, and future.
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We’ll add community crafted signs to spaces of Black heritage and cultural memory, showcasing the talent of our community.
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Our mission is to create collective memories for Africa and her diaspora, to strengthen and evolve culture.
Our signature blend of dynamic and contemplative activities, offer moments of vitality and respite, all rooted in the embrace of acceptance, joy, and rejuvenation.
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Connecting to each other while connecting to new technology need not be mutually exclusive. We’re partnering with innovators like Kinfolk Tech put human connection front and center.
We’re also reclaiming ancestral technologies, like urban agriculture and sacred psychology.
In the face of climate change and shifting demographics in Black Brooklyn, THE CORRIDOR opens a pathway for community resilience, healing, connection and inspiration, allowing our communities to tap into our shared legacy that empowers us to forge collective futures.
Through this initiative, we are not only preserving the past but also crafting a future by us, with us and for us, that resonates with the essence of Black people throughout the diaspora across generations.
CULTURAL ANCHOR:
FLATBUSH AFRICAN BURIAL GROUND
Since Juneteenth 2021, GrowHouse has spearheaded a movement at the Flatbush African Burial Ground using a cultural strategy that included art making/fence weaving, history walks and teach-ins that brought the various organizing groups and hundreds of community members together to learn, heal, strategize, and build.
Our long-term vision is to create a cultural ecosystem and economy that will support generations of thriving and pride for Black Brooklyn.
Art + Technology Partnerships
Kinfolk Tech - augmented reality archive of important yet unknown Brooklynites whose legacy we inhabit.
Brooklyn Hi-Art Machine - fence weaving technique as part of Global Fence Weaving Project
Laundromat Project - redesign of walking tour collateral and postcards
Parsons Transdisciplinary Program - branding guidelines for Flatbush African Burial Ground Coalition
The fence weaving is part of the Global Fence Weaving Project - a partnership between the Brooklyn Hi-Art Machine, A Blade of Grass, and Yvonne Mpwo.
Community Engagement
Using our ethos of working across disciplines and at the intersection of art + technology, history + healing, GrowHouse has engaged over 1000 allies and supporters through:
Flatbush African Burial Ground Coalition formation + Descendant Leadership Recruitment
Sankofa Walks (in person + audio/virtual)
Event documentation + archival work
Teach-ins + College partnerships
Community Days of Action + Remembrance
Press Kit development
Domain name purchase, initial site construction
Local Partner Recruitment and Engagement
Elected Official Engagement
Meet Our Partners
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Urban Design Forum + ANHD
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Ifeoma Ebo
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Deena Darby
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Immanuel Oni
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Kami Beckford
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The Flatbush African Burial Ground Coalition
FABGC
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Friends of Abolitionist Place
