Radical Knowledge: Libraries as Community Catalysts

Radical Knowledge: Libraries as Community Catalysts is a year-round program examining how libraries serve as both vibrant learning institutions and centers for their communities, providing physical and virtual spaces to enrich civic life. This work is made possible in part with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. We are grateful to our program partners: The New York Public Library, Queens Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library, and the Metropolitan New York Library Council.

This series is being developed with learning institutions, community activists, and leaders across New York City’s diverse communities. Virtual, experiential, and participatory experiences for Radical Knowledge include conversations, workshops, site visits, self-guided tours, and a scavenger hunt. These activities are being designed to reach OHNY’s core audience of city explorers while also engaging underrepresented communities that are often not included in the power structures of New York City.

The series Moderator and thought partner, anthropologist Dr. Shannon Mattern is a Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research. Her writing and teaching focus on archives, libraries, and other media spaces; media infrastructures; spatial epistemologies; and mediated sensation and exhibition. She is the author of The New Downtown Library: Designing with Communities, Deep Mapping the Media City among other titles. Check out her regular column in Places.

Future program activities will soon be announced. If you would like to receive future Radical Knowledge announcements, please sign up here. Radical Knowledge is the sixth installment of OHNY’s Urban Systems infrastructure series.