Speaker:
Artist Kanene Holder and biologist Paul Mankiewicz explore how people interact with nature in the urban landscape of West Harlem. Examine where urban planning has succeeded or failed to accommodate natural ecological systems and how people have used gardening to strengthen the fabric of the community.
Free and open to the public, but RSVP required.
Kanene Ayo Holder is an award winning educator and artist who uses the lens of human rights to enlighten and entertain. She has received grants from Franklin Furnace, Puffin Foundation, and UAI/NYFA amongst others and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Holder has been an artist in residence at Bard College’s Center for Media, Culture and Difference and The Colin Powell Center for Policy Study focusing on urban education reform. An excerpt of her thesis “Funds of Knowledge: Urban Education and Parental Involvement” is published in an education advocacy book by her former professor Dr. Blumenreich. Her latest work The MisAdventures of Fredriqua Douglass- Black Ops, is an exploration of political operatives.
Paul Mankiewicz serves as the Executive Director of the Gaia Institute and leads the staff in pursuing the Institute’s mission of exploring through research, development, design and education the interrelationship between human communities and natural systems. Dr. Mankiewicz received his Ph.D. in Biology from the City University of New York/New York Botanical Gardens Joint Program in Plant Sciences. He also received a B.A. in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research; an M.A. in Biology from Lehman College; and a M. Phil. in Biology from the City University of New York. He has substantial experience with enhancing, restoring, and constructing wetland and terrestrial ecosystems. A past president of the Torrey Botanical Society, the oldest such organization in the New World, Dr. Mankiewicz is a member and former chair of the Solid Waste Advisory Board of the Bronx and Treasurer of the Soil and Water Conservation District for New York City.
This event is sponsored by the CALL / FELLOWS program, which receives major support from the Adobe, Agnes Gund Foundation, Climate & Urban Systems Partnership (CUSP), The Greenwich Collection, Dorothy Lichtenstein, National Endowment for the Arts, the National Science Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, The Mellon Foundation, and The Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
