Five Boro Story Project Creator Bridget Bartolini grew up hearing her grandparents’ stories of living in the bustling tenements of the Upper East Side, where people raised pigs in their apartments and lit bonfires in the street, until the rising cost of living drove them to one of the furthest corners of the city: South Richmond Hill, Queens – “the boonies,” where the quiet kept them up at night. Her family has stayed there till this day, and seen enormous changes in the neighborhood and the city. Growing up in South Richmond Hill, an area that’s culturally rich but deprived of public resources, Bridget learned that “making it” meant getting out. Achieving success, and even having fun, was oriented towards Manhattan. But why?

Inspired by family stories of the old neighborhoods and her love of New York City, frustrated by negative stereotypes about the outer boroughs and the inequitable distribution of resources in the city, and motivated by her belief in the power of storytelling to connect people, Bridget began organizing community events under the Five Boro Story Project to create a platform for neighbors to come together and document unheard stories of the city, highlighting all there is to appreciate in the people and places that make up our homes.

AGSTEM is  a publisher of picture books that show girls as the main characters in stories with science, technology, engineering, and math themes. Our target audience is girls from 4-9 years old, with an emphasis on girls from underrepresented minority groups.

By creating a series of children’s books that follow their characters’ interests in astronomy, robotics, marine life, and a host of other topics, we can present STEM subjects to girls as viable career goals and options in an entertaining way. Further, by drawing girls of different ethnicities as the main characters in different series, we can show a wide audience of girls someone who looks like them and who takes an interest in science and the world around them. We therefore will use picture book stories to model the kind of world we want our girls to live in, the world of the future where tech is as natural and necessary as the air we breathe.

The Free Portrait Project paints a portrait of a place through its people by giving oil-painted portraits to residents of Crown Heights for an entire year, creating a physical record of who we are now amid shifting demographics, documents our community, and quietly breaks the tradition of portraiture reserved only for a wealthy few by giving these paintings to people from all walks of life.

Begun in June 2015, portrait artist Rusty Zimmerman (portraitist for Governor Andrew Cuomo) began inviting residents of Crown Heights, Brooklyn to his studio to sit for a portrait from life. Partnering with StoryCorps, Rusty has recorded conversations that explore each individual’s relationship to the neighborhood, revealing a multi-faceted living history at a pivotal moment in time. Each oil-painted portrait measures 18” x 24” and represents all subjects on equal stature — state senators next to shelter residents, local merchants next to museum custodians. The project showcases commonality and fosters engagement to integrate the disparate cultural communities within Crown Heights. Furthermore, the project has benefitted neighbors who may not otherwise have access to portraiture by granting them this painting at no cost, formerly a fancy thing for fancy people.

Exhibitions run through the year in over 10 venues and culminate in 200 portraits at the Brooklyn Museum in July 2016, where the community will gather to celebrate each other and a newfound commonality.