SUPPORTING CLIMATE WORK HAPPENING NOW
& STEPPING TOWARDS THE FUTURE WE WANT.
From the top of Manhattan to the bottom of Brooklyn, the South Bronx to the heart of Staten Island, Imagined Futures works to galvanize, spotlight and hi-five climate work across the five boroughs of New York City. This means honoring the deep legacies of communities, centering our ecologies, and supporting an ecosystem of change and transformation.
Connecting you to seven waterways across NYC in various states of human impact and community care.
In each site we’ve built guided walks and immersive scavenger hunts that move from clue to clue to invite you into place through the eyes of community experts on the ground, audio stories of past and future possibilities, ecological treasures and inspiring your own visions for the future.
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Click here or scan to launch the scavenger hunts & walking tours
NEWTOWN
CREEK
NEW DATE
OCTOBER 24th
3-6p
Deep time and Future Feasts// Explore Newtown Creek!
Join us for a guided walk and place-based scavenger hunt featuring audio recordings from Newtown Creek whisperer Lisa Bloodgood, Newtown Creek Alliance’s Gus Perry, Smiling Hogshead Ranch co-founder and guirilla gardener gil lopez, artist Liz Ensz and a special AR installation from Everything Good Studio.
We’ll begin at the start of the Newtown Creek nature walk and hear meditations of glacial time as we walk down the ship hull’s path to the creek, where you’ll be invited to listen to various voices on the creek, learn past stories and present stewardship from Newtown Creek Alliance, discover your own haiku along the word bridge, take time drawing botanical leaves and find a virtual feast from the future, constructed in augmented reality by Everything Good Studio.
At the end of our walk, we will rendevouz with gil for a special potluck and creekside fire. RSVP to get details on this after gathering and location.
FLUSHING
CREEK
NEW DATE
OCTOBER 31st
11-2p
Daylighting our future/ towards a radical field station and unburied waters- Halloween Edition
Rescheduled from climate week. A walking tour & scavenger hunt of the undergrounded Flushing Creek and Halloween community celebration!
Join us as we walk the route of the propsed daylighting of Flushing Creek underground and through the relics of Robert Moses’ crumbling modernity. All in the form of a fun scavenger hunt with audio from Guardian's own local legend Cody Herrmann, ED Rebecca Pryor and joined by Artist Niceli Portugal for a live Quipu workshop right where the creek got buried.
We'll then head back to the Queens Museum for a community celebration of Guardians of Flushing Bay’s work and their proposed floating field station in Flushing Bay! There you can join workshops with artist Niceli Portugal, Precious Plastics, & get ready for your Halloween evening with special facepainting from Graciela "Fairy Hawk."
FAR
ROCKAWAY
Dune Dreams & Peninsula Power in the Far Rockaways
Come to the unsolicited NYC climate frontline on the narrow peninsula of Far Rockaway to stoke community care and transformation. Join a special Climate Cafe led by Gianna Lum of the Climate Imaginarium, Elizabeth Opurum grief doula and secretary of The Garden by the Bay and Carine Gibert of Grounded in Motion to process our climate emotions, be with our grief, and be introduced to the Rights of Nature movement.
Held at the East Arverne Coastal Conservation Center amid the newly planted dunes by RISE.
With tea & cookies. Feel free to bring something to share.
NEW DATE
NOVEMBER 8th
10:30a-1p
past EVENTS...
CONEY ISLAND CREEK
Shifting shorelines // International Coastal Clean-up Dance Party
Join artist and researcher Nora Almeida to explore migration and memory through a participatory sand study, clean the beach as a part of International coastal clean-up day, join our scavenger hunt featuring powerhouse Pamela Pettyjohn co founder of Coney Island Beautification bringing the voices of Coney Island Creek all the way to the UN as an example community driven coastal resiliency. With the Coney Island Clean-up Coalition.
9/19• 10a
SWINDLER
COVE
9/20 • 1p
Celebrating the hidden wetland along the Harlem River
Join us at the top of Manhattan on the banks of the Harlem River through Sherman Creek Park and Swindler Cove to celebrate the transformation of this once abandoned & polluted marina to an active wetland & magical hidden green space. Help restore a native wetland beach with the New York Restoration Project. Listen to the soundscape by artist Max Kutner amongst the wild bird calls. See what is possible when we intentionally transform an urban wasteland back to a green oasis.
BRONX
RIVER
Cultivating Abundance with Foragers in the Foodway and La Bruja
Make your way to the North Star of community stewardship and care with the Bronx River Alliance-- a fifty year deep legacy of showing up for the river, the land and the people in tandem. Learn from the amazing Journei Bimwala at the Foodway, an urban food forest and the first place to wild forage food. Followed by an invocation from renowned poet LA BRUJA, a guided offering to the river, and culminating in a performance of her odes to the rivers alongside a small feast from chef Nadia Ketoure. Not to be missed.
9/22 • 10a
NEW
CREEK
BLUEBELT
Walking the Bluebelt... NYC's largest stormwater management system
Peek behind closed gates and under the manholes for this exclusive look at the engineering of the system that can retain up to 8.5 million gallons of water. Join us first on the NYC Ferry or meet us at the public entrance to New Creek– with the heads of the NYC DEP Bluebelt team Sangu Iyer, Robert Brauman and Megan Edic alongside photojournalist Nathan Kensinger. We’ll move through the New Creek Bluebelt all the way down to where it empties into the ocean at Midland beach, near the first ever managed retreat process in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Not to be missed for any urban designers, environmental engineers, city history buffs and curious minds.
9/23 • 12p
CLOSING CELEBRATION
at KINGSLAND WILDFLOWERS
RESCHEDULED TO
5/1• 6p-9p
Wrap up Climate Week NYC in celebration of our city’s waterways, fortifying our wild resilience & wielding wonder for our imagined futures.
Bringing together water activists, urban ecologists, community stewards, neighbors, artists and friends, featuring artistic activations by artists Shahira Hammad and joined by Mycelium Choral Project to sing a giant group rendition of Big Yellow Taxi to the last of the fading sun. Special guest volumetric mycelium timelapse projections and DJ set from Winslow Porter. With virtual and literal morsels and libations from installations from Everything Good Studio, Grimm brewery and Brewheister’s late summer brew from Community Garden Hops. Made in collaboration with Noo Arts. If you are anywhere in NYC on the 27th, make your way here to end the evening and week.
Our program partners...
Supported by...
Scavenger hunt powered by
Watercolors and maps by Emily Garfield
Four years of Imagined Futures
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We love basking in the best things about our waterways– the new shoreline parks, public beaches, free community paddles– but most things are here because a lot of people have worked hard to preserve, restore and transform them.
There are countless orgs across the city doing vital work for our waterways. Applaud them. Visit them. Help them. Get involved. Join the scavenger hunt to learn more, put your hands in it, and get connected.
Celebrate where you are.
Fight for what you love.
Restore what we've lost.
Reimagine what is coming.
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Liz Paredes & Candace Thompson during Ferry Talk from Solar One Park at Stuy Cove to the South Bronx 2024 • Photo by J Lester Feder
Towards a future we want to live in.
Often when we imagine the future, we find our worst nightmares. Admittedly there's a lot to fear with what's ahead, and it's important to feel all of it. But what of the future we actually want?
From the youth just starting to raise their voices to the ones hoarse from years on the frontlines, a tide is shifting, and people are starting to demand something better from our systems, our way of business and even our own habits.
And the more we lean in to the people and ideas worth celebrating and supporting, the more we’ll make the future we need.
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Ferry Talk with Karen Blondel to Red Hook • Climate Week NYC 2024