Avoidance Mapping is a social exercise created by the NYC-based working group Perfect City, through our meetings and roundtable conversations. It helps us think about place-making. Where do you live? Do you feel you belong there? How do you move through space? What do you avoid? Where does policy interact with your day-to-day life?
We'll ask you to think of a time, place or situation where you feel uncomfortable, awkward, or unsafe. This can take place in the past or present. It can be a traveling route, indoors or out. It can be a specific building, a specific room. We'll draw maps of these spaces, compare notes, and talk about where policy intersects with our daily journeys, and how belonging can be the antidote to avoidance. Please note that this has very little to do with your drawing or mapping skills. We just want to know what you avoid, and why! Don’t be shy! If time permits, we may also look at how these maps can be the starting point or score for a performance.
From the Artist
Perfect City is a growing network for creative civic engagement, instigated by Aaron Landsman in 2016. We use tools from theater, community organizing, popular education, and design to help communities move away from polarization, toward more inclusive democratic practices. From small towns to bustling metropolises, we embolden people to embrace democracy and shape cities of unlimited opportunity. We believe cities thrive when imagination, belonging, and social justice fuel the development of legislation and policy.
Perfect City began life in 2014, as a performance called City Council Meeting, where audience members performed transcripts of local government meetings and political adversaries met in the safe space of art to respond to shared challenges. The performance ran in five cities and led participants in Houston and Tempe to run for public office. In 2016, Landsman founded Perfect City as a working group that uplifts city kids’ innate understanding of urban planning and systems; the group has created mapping tools, walking tours, and artistic projects led by young leaders of color. In 2022, Landsman and collaborator Mallory Catlett wrote The City We Make Together, detailing our process.
In 2023, with funding from Princeton’s Keller Center, we worked with artist and scholar Ebony Golden to launch a curriculum for organizers and educators. Keller’s goal of fostering scalable models for projects in the humanities, science and tech led us to pilot the curriculum at Henry Street Settlement in the Lower East Side of NY, and in Trenton, in partnership with HomeWorks, a non-profit serving global majority teen scholars.
Perfect City’s creative and joyous approach reminds us, in our bodies in real time, that solving problems together is how we evolve. Our roots in collaborative art help us ask bigger “What Ifs” together. What if creativity is necessary for sharing power? Everyone is affected by whether or not our civic life evolves. At a time when our challenges grow deeper and more complex, what if culture is how we rehearse liberation?
Credits
Jahmorei Snipes: Founding Working Group Member
Tiffany Zorrilla: Founding Working Group Member
Ebony Noelle Golden: Consulting Director of Cultural Strategy
Jahmorei Snipes: Founding Working Group Member
Tiffany Zorrilla: Founding Working Group Member
Ebony Noelle Golden: Consulting Director of Cultural Strategy
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