At the intersection of community organizing, artistic practice, and political movement-making has emerged a fertile ground of grassroots spatial strategies that simultaneously critique and provide an alternative to dominant forms of cultural production. Occurring on a small scale in place-specific communities, ordinary citizens, academics, and activists alike have been mapping, art-making, and change-making on a horizontal level.  How can we support grassroots movements that reclaim the public imagination? And what utopian images have emerged to map the political and social ideals of the future?

Anusha Venkataraman is based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work focuses on engaged artistic practices as tools for community development.  She has  worked with artist collectives in Providence, RI and Brooklyn on participatory urban interventions.