WHAT WE DO
coLAB Arts’ mission is activated through direct creative engagement in studio, social, and civic practice.
Platforms
coLAB Arts cultivates creative and social advocacy partners through these regularly scheduled community-based and public programs. These are great ways to get involved with us and our community.
This storytelling workshop and story slam series encourages participants to creatively engage with their own personal narrative on their own terms.
litLAB promotes literary curiosity and creative writers in New Brunswick. We host weekly writing workshops and live stage presentations of new work in partnership with local social advocacy organizations.
coLAB Arts and New Brunswick Cultural Center produce stART, or Share the Art, an access program for regional high school students to attend performing arts events in New Brunswick, mingle with other area students, and meet professional artists and arts administrators.
Choreographers create new works of movement and dance in working directly with local social justice organizations and their constituencies. Motion is produced in partnership with Mason Gross School of the Arts-Dance Department at Rutgers University.
Teams of writers, directors, musicians, and actors are tasked with creating a new 15-minute musical in one weekend in response to a partner social justice organization and challenged with incorporating random props.
Teams of writers and illustrators are tasked with creating new 24-page comic books in 24 hours in partnership with a social justice organization. Comic books are presented in a live event performed by actors and underscored with newly commissioned music.
A monthly community market celebrating the food, art, and culture of New Brunswick and its diverse Latino community. Mercado Esperanza is co-produced with Elijah’s Promise and New Brunswick Tomorrow.
Projects
coLAB Arts creates sustained relationships with organizations and communities through focused issue and constituency-based creative engagement. The following projects have developed through continuously active studio, social, and civic practice.
#150YearsIsEnough is the culmination of months of listening to the stories of young people and their experiences in the New Jersey Criminal Justice System.
The work presented here was created by young people from the Youth Advocate Program (YAP) in partnership with staff and advocacy experts from New Jersey Institute for Social Justice (NJISJ) and artists and teaching artists from coLAB Arts.
coLAB Arts, in collaboration with Elijah's Promise and New Brunswick Tomorrow, is forwarding creative access and food equity to the Esperanza Neighborhood in New Brunswick through the Mercado Esperanza project, with generous support from the Kresge Foundation and their inaugural FreshLo grant. The #NuestraEsperanza portrait project celebrates the residents and culture of the Esperanza Neighborhood.
37 Voices is an initiative that combines journalism, oral history, research, and theater to change the narrative around economic vulnerability in New Jersey, one of the highest-cost states in the country. We hope that through 37 Voices, the stories of these individuals will present a more humane, whole and nuanced understanding about what it means to experience economic hardship. We also explore the structures and policies that make it difficult for people to break out of poverty.
Banished is an oral history and storytelling project documenting the harms of the sex offender registry. The contained works are co-written by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, a staff writer for The Appeal, and coLAB Arts producing director, Dan Swern.
Civic Voices is a photo series documenting the work and experience of the City of New Brunswick’s municipal workers. The photo series was produced by Christopher Sztybel.
Life, Death, Life Again: Children sentenced to die in prison by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg is a documentary theater piece that features interviews with individuals who were sentenced to die in prison for harm caused as children, and the grandson of a murder victim who forgave and reconciled with the girl who killed his grandmother. The play seeks to create a conversation that focuses on the humanity of those who cause harm and their possibility for redemption, the nature of reconciliation and radical forgiveness, and our civic responsibility to all parties of a crime.
Teatro Esperanza is a Spanish-language theater company that was founded by coLAB Arts and New Brunswick Tomorrow’s Esperanza Neighborhood Project. The group develops new work in response to the individuals and experiences of the Latino community in New Brunswick.
Trueselves is an oral history archive and documentary theater series that shares the stories of New Jersey’s transgender community and its allies. The archive has produced two plays, Trueselves: A play on gender and Truelove: An act of support.
New Jersey NOW brought a group of seasoned members together with a cohort of young feminists just starting their journey. The young women, already active in the movement in different organizations such as Generation Ratify, NOW and Period, Inc. were comprised of high schoolers, college students and recent graduates.
Thanks to generous support from the Henry Luce Foundation, New Brunswick Theological Seminary (NBTS), in partnership with Reformed Church of Highland Park Affordable Housing Corporation (RCHP-AHC), Rutgers University-New Brunswick, and coLAB Arts has launched a project to address the problem of housing insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic. This new initiative offers a rapid response to a pressing question for some of the most vulnerable people in the wider community: In an age of pandemic, what does it mean to shelter in place when you have no shelter?
Public Art
coLAB Arts uses public art to anchor larger community and neighborhood conversations related to place-based identity, community development, and social justice.
Mural by Duda Penteado. Located at 314 Handy Street in New Brunswick, created in partnership with New Brunswick Tomorrow. The mural features KN-95 masks, each uniquely designed by students from the city through coLAB Arts’ Summer Institute, Mercado Esperanza, Esperanza Neighborhood Project, Civic League of New Brunswick, and McKinley Community School. The mural was informed by oral history and themes found in the students’ work. Completed in November 2020.
Mural by Leon Rainbow. Located on the Prospect Street side of 111 French Street in New Brunswick, created in partnership with the Esperanza Neighborhood Project of New Brunswick Tomorrow. The mural responds to the idea that French Street, more than any other commercial area of New Brunswick has always reflected the residential community of the city. The mural was informed by oral history and conversations with the French Street Business District. Completed in November 2020.
Mural series by RH DOAZ. Located in Alice Jennings Archibald Park in New Brunswick, created in partnership with the City of New Brunswick. This mural series serves as a legacy piece between Alice Jennings Archibald, and the students of McKinley Community School. The mural series is in response to oral histories and interviews, and archive research with support from the New Brunswick Free Public Library and Scarlet & Black of Rutgers University. Completed in October 2020.
Mural by Leon Rainbow. Located in Elmer B. Boyd Park on the Raritan River, created in partnership with the City of New Brunswick. The mural was created in response to oral histories and community discussions related to personal experiences with the Raritan River. Completed in October 2019.
Mural by RH Doaz. Located on Pizza City at the corner of Maple and Somerset Streets, created in partnership with New Brunswick Tomorrow, American Hungarian Foundation, and the Sacred Heart Parish. The mural is a cross-cultural dialogue between the Latino, Hungarian, and Polish communities. Completed in August 2019.
Mural by Layqa Nuna Yawar. Located at French and Handy Streets, in partnership with New Brunswick Tomorrow and the Brodsky Center. This mural serves as an identity statement for the Esperanza Neighborhood Project at the entrance of the French Street Business Corridor. Completed July 2018.
Mural by Ingrid Morales. Located in Frank M. Deiner, Sr. Park, created in partnership with Rutgers University Student Affairs in celebration of Rutgers 250th Anniversary. The mural responds to President Barack Obama’s 2016 commencement address about the school, that “America converges here”. Completed in September 2017.
Mural by Ingrid Morales. Located on Bayard at French Street, created in partnership with New Brunswick Tomorrow and Elijah’s Promise. The mural was produced as part of the organizing efforts for the development of the Mercado Esperanza - a food and culture festival held monthly in New Brunswick. Completed in July 2017.
Mural by Marissa Paternoster. Located on the Plum Street Parking Deck on Somerset Street between Plum and Prospect Streets, co-commissioned with Don Giovanni Records. Completed in May 2014.
Summer Institute
coLAB Arts has developed an annual summer program that provides artistic training and project development for young people. All coLAB Arts programming uses the arts as a process to respond to complex issues. Students are presented with the tools to become creative change makers in their own communities.
