Mean Streets

City Studies

Mean Streets

Store Stories

City Studies

Store Stories

Show Me the Money!

City Studies

Show Me the Money!

Is Your Landlord Using Construction to Harass You?

Technical Assistance

Is Your Landlord Using Construction to Harass You?

Record It. Report It!

Public Access Design

Record It. Report It!

Is Your Home Making You Sick?

Making Policy Public

Is Your Home Making You Sick?

Meet the Teaching Artist: April Wen!

Meet the Teaching Artist: April Wen!

For our latest installment of Meet the Teaching Artist, we sat down with April Wen!

April is an artist, writer, and educator based in NYC, who collaborated with CUP on Care Aware, a Youth Education project that investigates NYC’s proposed “NYC Care” plan to provide health care for all New Yorkers, regardless of citizenship status.

1. Why were you interested in becoming a Teaching Artist?

I wanted to learn alongside people. Young people have a tendency to be the best teachers, and I felt inspired by them to improve my own practice as an educator and artist by learning at CUP how to merge the two. 

2. How would you describe your artistic practice?
I write prose and direct fiction films. My stories tend to revolve around people attempting to translate empathy into intimacy. 

3. What is a project you’re working on now that you’re excited to reveal soon?
I’m writing a feature-length film for improvisation, set in NYC, that I’m excited to bring to life in the only city I can say I know. The film is structured around the main character’s pure intuition, and her attendant struggle to keep that intuition alive in the only city she can say she knows. 

4. How did collaborating with CUP impact your work moving forward?
I come away from the CUP City Studies project with much more knowledge about how the city’s systems of education and healthcare work. The process of getting to that knowledge with my students has been illuminating for my own work, in which the city is a foundational setting.

5. What is your secret skill that has nothing to do with your art and educator work?
I am trained in the ways of the blade (foil, epee, and sabre).  

Record It. Report It!

Public Access Design

Record It. Report It!

Es Tu Dinero, Decides Tú

Making Policy Public

Es Tu Dinero, Decides Tú

We Are Public Housing

Making Policy Public

We Are Public Housing

Record It. Report It!

Public Access Design

Record It. Report It!

Record It. Report It!

Public Access Design

Record It. Report It!

Pinned Down? Rise Up!

Making Policy Public

Pinned Down? Rise Up!

Get Money

City Studies

Get Money

Who Makes Bail?

Urban Investigations

Who Makes Bail?