Practicing in Public (Conversations on Socially Engaged Art in NYC)

What does art look like when it is embedded in movements, communities, and public institutions rather than confined to galleries? These conversations trace how artists are organizing, collaborating, and working in the open—testing new ways of practicing, imagining, and building collective futures amid crisis.

Practicing in Public gathers a vital new body of conversations and interviews emerging from Social Practice CUNY, a network of artists, organizers, and educators working with communities beyond the university, predominantly across New York City, to confront the most urgent questions of our time. Contributors span staff, collaborators, and faculty and graduate students across the CUNY system, reflecting a wide range of disciplines, lived experiences, and political commitments.

Across these exchanges, artists and practitioners explore activist organizing, coalition building, environmental and economic justice, art and climate change, unruly queer archives, and the role of cultural work in an era of overlapping crises. Grounded in real-world projects addressing immigration, affordable housing, information sharing, and climate response, the book asks a central question: What futures become imaginable through interdisciplinary, socially engaged practice?

Edited and introduced by Catherine LaSota, the anthology draws inspiration from SPCUNY Fellows’ projects, cross-institutional collaborations, and conversations from the podcast Part of the Practice. Together, these dialogues document the possibilities, frictions, and contradictions of working publicly—within and against institutional constraints—while offering concrete models for collaboration and collective action.

Deeply rooted in the largest urban public education system in the United States, City University of New York, Practicing in Public is both a record of experiential learning and a provocation: a field guide for artists, students, organizers, and cultural workers seeking new ways to practice, organize, and imagine a shared future as old systems fracture.