Our work at NYC Parks
New York City has one of the largest urban parks systems in the US. Parks take up nearly 14% of the city’s land, providing critical open space for residents. New urban parks initiatives around the country are raising awareness about the potential for parks to do even more, bringing people together and bridging divides. Through our work in parks, we aim to be a part of that movement here in NYC.
Since 2015, Street Lab has partnered with NYC Department of Parks and Recreation (NYC Parks) to bring its unique portable learning environments to parks designated for investment as a part of the city’s Community Parks Initiative (CPI). Through CPI, the city is working with communities to create thriving public spaces through capital improvements, enhanced public programming, and capacity-building work with local groups to care for and better use parks in low-income, dense, and growing neighborhoods that have not seen significant capital investment in a generation. More recently, we focused our collaboration on some public pools, where thousands of New York City kids receive free meals daily.
We currently schedule most of our work in parks during the summer months when kids are out of school, targeting low-income neighborhoods where the risk of “summer slide” is also greatest. Contact us if you know a park where you’d like us to pop-up, and see our calendar to learn more about our park schedule.
Our work in NYC parks has been generously supported in the past in part by Leaves of Grass Fund, and in Manhattan by Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer.
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Blog posts about our work in NYC Parks:
BUILD together in Astoria Heights Park
Our newest program BUILD NYC landed in the recently renovated Astoria Heights Park. Thanks to our host Friends of Astoria Heights Park and NYC Department of Parks and Recreation. BUILD NYC is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City...
Pop-up West Harlem!
Today, we launch a special series of pop-up installations serving West Harlem. First stop: Sheltering Arms Pool, where our BUILD NYC program (interactive building stations, playful materials, design challenges) will land every Friday through...
An open-air reading room and more for Union Square Park
On Sat, June 2, the Uni Project created a special, pop-up reading room for Union Square Park. We put together a collection focused on sustainability and urban nature, and we also deployed our EXPLORE program, inviting people to learn more about urban birds...
Uni open-air reading room to return to Washington Square Park in 2018
The Uni Project has been selected as a 2018 recipient of a Community Arts Grant from the Washington Square Park Conservancy, which will allow us to curate a special reading room for the park this summer and fall. Thanks to the Conservancy for partnering...
Help us level the playing field in 2018
We've come to the end of our 2017 season—146 days of outdoor reading rooms, drawing stations, and other learning environments across NYC. We couldn't have done it without your support. To keep things rolling into 2018, we've created a special fund drive to raise...
The Uni returns to Washington Square Park
On four Thursdays in September and October, we returned to one of our favorite places in New York City—the Northwest corner of Washington Square Park, right under the English Elm that is one of the city’s oldest trees. This year, in addition to a curated collection of...