Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP)
Contact Info:
The Old American Can Factory
232 Third St. #B402B
Brooklyn, New York 11215
718-596-7721
info@anothercupdevelopment.org
The Centre for Urban Pedagogy works with schools in New York to offer planning and design resources for student projects. Together, CUP and students use the every-day experiences of young people to evaluate the urban environment. Students learn through investigation and express their findings in creative ways. Three environmental projects are featured, but CUP also explores issues of housing, social justice, poverty, water security, graffitti and waste management with students.
In "Schoolyard Visions” 2005 students examined the area around their school and imagined visions for change. In 2006, students at a Bronx school created the mobile “Green Information Centre” equipped with bike route maps, recycling and sorting info, and tree-planting information.
In 2006, students at the Academy of Urban Planning in Brooklyn worked with CUP to “reimagine the classroom” as a nomadic space. They looked at temporary spaces found in nature and considered what classrooms required to “house” students anywhere they wanted to go. The rules of the nomad classrooms required that each could be carried by a student, be assembled in 10 minutes or less and that nothing could be used as it was intended.
“Entry Sequence” was a CUP project in 2005. Students had to “enter their school through a side service entrance, wait up to 30 minutes to go through a metal detector, and walk up five flights of stairs”. Eighty (80) tenth grade students worked with CUP to imagine alternatives for their school which ranged from wider hallways to a five storey escalator.
Photo Credit: http://www.anothercupdevelopment.org/about
Kid-Powered Planning
For more information on CUP:
http://www.anothercupdevelopment.org
/about