Recess Activities

Recess programs reimagine traditional studio, exhibition, and classroom platforms, offering artists, communities, and participants resources to generate new works that present alternatives to dominant and oppressive systems. Our core programs operate within an ecosystem wherein each initiative supports and informs the other.assembly offers system-impacted young people aged 18-26 an inroad to art and connections to working artists, while serving as an alternative to incarceration and its intersecting systems of oppression. The curriculum empowers young people to take charge of their own life story and envision a future through art.for systems change and narrative shift. Critical writing supports a writer producing a new critical text in dialogue with our artists' projects. Partnerships take our programs offsite in partnership with groups and organizations that share our commitment to art as it intersects with social justice. Our meeting place in clinton hill was selected based on its close proximity to diverse communities, artists' studios, public schools and nearby nycha housing. We are embedded in a socially and economically vibrant neighborhood and work locally to develop deep and mpactful relationships. Recess supports artists & communities that have been historically excluded in the creative field. Our emphasis on process affords artists and participants the opportunity to focus on a project's development rather than its resolution, enabling artists to take on ambitious goals that evolve in dialogue with their chosen public. Recess is committed to promoting diverse and underrepresented narratives, and offering creative perspectives that nurture empathy and collective re-envisioning. The assembly curriculum empowers youth to take charge of their own lifestory and envision a future through art and self-actualization-dismantling the dominant narratives of the "criminal". Participants can elect to deepen their involvement with Recess at various stages of the program, honing both hard and soft skills while building meaningful relationships. Our commitment to equity begins by pursuing new models internally (staff, operations, board governance) as well as externally (programs, fundraising, communications) in order to imagine and realize an ethos of care and accountability that constantly strives toward abolition.in 2020, guided by our care & accountability toward abolition framework, Recess restructured organizational operations and board governance, introducing co-leadership at the director and chair levels, and advancing our commitment to equity by raising our universal staff salary to $80k for all full time staff and $40k prorated rate for part-time staff.