Van Alen Fall Fest 2025
Sat, Oct 18, 12–4 pm
303 Bond St, Brooklyn

Join us for a festive open house to learn more about Van Alen, meet your neighbors, and get insight into public art and design projects across NYC! RSVP recommended.

Drop in anytime for a lively afternoon of treats, tunes, all-ages art workshops, and a raffle for exciting prizes from local businesses, including:

• BK Dance Lessons
• Bond Craft Studio
• Clayhouse
• Craftsman Ave
• Four & Twenty Blackbirds
• Gowanus Wine Studio
• Strong Rope Brewery

Food provided by GG’s Fish & Chips, The Bearded Baker, Chip City, Cotton Candy Clowns, and Treelicious Orchards!

See what happened at last year’s Fall Fest here.

Presented in collaboration with Archtober, Gowanus Open Studios, and Open House New York.

Mookntaka (MOO-kin-tah-kah) is a Gowanus-based artist duo by Mark Zlotsky and Karyn Lao that creates art to encourage people of all ages to connect through play. They will feature The Friends and Follies — a cast of interactive, inflatable sculptures.

Textile Arts Center is an NYC-based resource facility dedicated to raising awareness and understanding of textiles through creative educational programs for children and adults. At TAC, we unite and empower the textile community and advocate for the handmade by providing accessible, skills-based classes that reinvigorate engagement with traditional crafts. Join us for two family-friendly art workshops all afternoon:

Needle Felting: Use felting techniques to create soft sculptures, experiment with color mixing, and learn about forms of 2D and 3D making.

Block Printing: Learn the process of block printing to create custom stamps on fabric, and explore how print can become a language beyond text.

Contribute to Gowanus Yearbook 2025, a growing wall of community portraits created by Ananaya Singh, Kaye Yuvallos, Rida Chaudhry, and Aaron Barboza. Take a “class photo,” decorate it, and mark the year you arrived or were born in Gowanus. This roving photo activation travels to different locations in the neighborhood, deepening a sense of belonging between longtime Gowanus residents and newer arrivals.

One Love Community Fridge works to connect, empower, and engage the community through education and access to fresh, healthy foods. They’re building a stronger, healthier community one fridge at a time. Their community fridge hosted at Van Alen Institute is a shared space where neighbors can give what they can and take what they need — promoting food access, sustainability, and love. From 3 to 4 pm, join them for an Herb Bundling Session: Bundle fresh herbs for the fridge and your neighbors. It’s a fun, calming way to give back, connect with others, and share knowledge about healing and flavor.

ArtBridge

ArtBridge empowers local artists to transform construction fencing into canvases for art and works with muralists to adorn buildings with imagery that speaks to the surrounding neighborhood. We seek to place artists at the center of public life, while prioritizing exhibitions that amplify the voices, cultures, and histories of local communities. ArtBridge’s exhibitions have covered more than 60,000 square feet of public space, providing unprecedented exposure for hundreds of artists.

Buro Happold

Buro Happold is a global engineering practice with strong roots in our local office communities; providing engineering, consulting, and design services. We are committed to supporting activations and art in our public spaces through direct project involvement and technical advice to community groups. The Happold Foundation, our non-profit arm, focuses on empowering educators and changemakers through activities, scholarships and grants.

Powerhouse Arts

Based in Gowanus, Powerhouse Arts is a not-for-profit organization committed to creative expression. Join us all afternoon to learn about our upcoming programming and create your very own woven masterpiece with repurposed materials from Materials for the Arts.

Public Housing Community Fund

Through a powerful public-private partnership with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), the Public Housing Community Fund invests in programs that uplift the lives of half a million public housing residents across the five boroughs. We bring together non-profit, government, philanthropic, and private partners, along with everyday New Yorkers, to strengthen public housing communities. Our work focuses on leadership development, community health, workforce training, and financial empowerment, with programs tailored to residents’ unique needs. From open-space improvements and community center redesigns to public art installations, we drive lasting change to create a stronger, more equitable New York City.

TYLin

In the United States, TYLin’s Buildings Sector currently comprises 200+ professionals including 70+ professional engineers and 20+ LEED accredited personnel. TYLin is proud to participate at the Van Alen Fall Fest; their Building Equity Initiative (BEI) provides pro-bono and low-bono professional structural engineering services to support the efforts of non-profits and public programs.