Design Sprints

Ongoing

Design Sprints: Building Creative Capacity

In Spring 2025, our Design Sprints program partnered with New York City’s Department of Small Business Services (SBS) to explore the intersection between arts programming and economic development, with a focus on areas with high storefront vacancy.

Storefront vacancy is a nuanced issue impacting many commercial districts’ quality of life, public realm, and small business engagement. While addressing storefront vacancy requires a long-term strategy for investment and intervention, in the short term, immediate services are needed to address the impact the perception of vacancy has on commercial districts. Design Sprints: Building Creative Capacity provides community-based organizations with capacity building and design support, including project design and strategic planning, to understand and address storefront vacancy in creative ways.

Learn more about our Spring 2025 cohort and their projects below!

This initiative is supported by the NYC Department of Small Business Services.

As the oldest anti-displacement organization in the United States, Cooper Square Committee works with residents to preserve and develop affordable, environmentally-healthy housing and community and cultural spaces on the Lower East Side. They collaborated with artist Delphine Le Goff and graphic designer Scott Kelly to activate their storefront window on East 4th Street and two vacant storefronts located in a Housing Development Fund Corporation (HDFC) cooperative — a type of affordable housing co-op that’s collectively owned and operated by residents. Together, they’ve highlighted the history of HDFCs and the small businesses situated in them, and create a digital map showcasing local businesses.

Placeholders: Revealing the Hidden-in-Plain-Sight World of Storefronts in Affordable Housing Coops

Location: 165 & 169 Ave C — Loisaida Ave, Manhattan

Dates: On view through June 30, 2025

Due to decades of grassroots organizing, the Lower East Side is home to many Housing Development Fund Corporation cooperatives (HDFCs), a unique type of affordable housing collectively owned and operated by residents. HDFCs often rent their storefronts to small businesses, artists, and nonprofits that serve local needs, nurture creativity, and express culture. Collectively, HDFCs offer a stable model for residents and small businesses facing the threat of displacement.

Offering a glimpse into this vibrant community, Placeholders showcases items from local businesses located in HDFCs in a site-specific installation created by local artist Delphine Le Goff. Items include a camera from Fourth Street Photo Gallery, the city’s oldest Black-owned photography studio; a hand-painted mortar and pestle from Puerto Rican restaurant Casa Adela; and handmade Mexican folk art from La Sirena. The exhibition is supplemented by a map of local businesses.

Participating Businesses: 3rd & B’zaar, A&C Kitchen, Archie’s Press, Bungee Space, Casa Adela, Clove Hair Salon, El Rinconcito, Ergot Records, Fontanez Martial Arts Success Center, Fourth Street Photo Gallery, Green Map System, Jane’s Exchange, La Sirena Mexican Folkart, Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union, Michele’s Cleaners & Laundry, Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, Piccola Strada, Piragua Art Space, Relative Arts

For more information, visit coopersquare.org.

The Grand Street Business Improvement District (BID) is a nonprofit community development organization creating a vibrant commercial district along Grand Street in Brooklyn through advocacy, beautification, and sanitation efforts. They collaborated with branding and digital designers L&L Studio, ReFrame Architecture, and artist Sylvia Riveros to transform a large vacant corner storefront in Brooklyn. Their storefront window activation features an interactive art project highlighting the East Williamsburg community.

The People Make The Place!

Le Persone Fanno Il Luogo! ¡Las Personas Hacen El Lugar!

Storefronts: 237 & 246 Graham Ave, Brooklyn

Dates: On view through June 30, 2025

Public Event: Grand Street Neighborhood Bash | Monday, June 9, 5-7 pm

Featuring art and archival materials from neighborhood partners, The People Make the Place! spotlights East Williamsburg residents, honors the neighborhood’s leaders, and reflects its culture of co-creating public spaces. On the nearly block-long storefront at 237 Graham Ave, a photo-collage mural by L&L Studio celebrates the past, present, and future of East Williamsburg. Inspired by 1960–70s speculative design, the mural weaves together community-sourced images highlighting key places and people. It is framed by questions in Spanish, Italian, and English — languages historically spoken in the neighborhood — that prompt reflection on how viewers shape their community.

The mural is complemented by two window activations at Grand Street BID’s headquarters, located across the street at 246 Graham Ave. Re: Place, a series of geometric sculptures by ReFrame Architecture, references the forms of storefronts. Reflective surfaces place the image of viewers within the sculptures, emphasizing the vital role of community in sustaining place. Sylvia Riveros’ photo series Toñita provides an intimate look at the Caribbean Social Club — a long-time gathering space for Puerto Rican and Latin American communities — and its remarkable founder, Maria Antonia “Toñita” Cay.

Participating Artists: Vanesa Álvarez Díaz; Los Muralistas de el Puente; Danielle Mastrion; and SON-CORO, SINNED + Ria Burns-Wilde

Participating Organizations: El Puente, Evergreen Exchange, St. Nick’s Alliance, Powers Street Garden

For more information, visit grandstreetbk.org.

Throughout the sprint, a team of designers have provided strategic vision and guidance for both teams. MOS Architects advised on the cohort’s long-term plans to address storefront vacancy, with graphic design support from American Design Language. Farzana Gandhi Design Studio helped the teams prepare public programs and community engagement activities.

Through the sprint and storefront activations, Van Alen Institute and SBS have provided the cohort with hands-on guidance, facilitation and relationship-building techniques, and connections to design resources.

In this virtual workshop presented by SBS and Van Alen, community-based development organizations  learned about low-cost, easy-to-use design tools to create and improve their brand identity. They also discovered how design can amplify the impact of their work and how to collaborate with artists to create projects that respond to neighborhood needs.

Speakers:
Diana Araujo, Architect and Preservationist
Rosa Chang, Co-Founder and President, Gotham Park
BD Feliz, Design Strategist
Martha Hall, Illustrator
Scott Kelly, Graphic Designer

This workshop was funded by the New York City Small Business Services’ Organizational Development Avenue NYC grant.