Communiversity
Youth Day
October 25, 2025
Youth ages 14 to 17, based in NYC, are invited to apply for these workshops. These workshops are NOT for adults. In order to attend sessions, young people will need to bring a signed waiver from a guardian or parent.
The sessions are offered at no cost to youth participants and space is LIMITED. Please only sign up if you are sure that you want to and can participate. You may only sign up for ONE workshop.
Circle Keepers’ Whose Voice? Our Voice! Workshop
Facilitated by Circle Keepers
11 AM to 4 PM [with a break from 12:30 to 1 PM]
The Circle Keepers’ Whose Voice? Our Voice! Workshop brings together youth ages 14–17 alongside educators, policy makers, community organizers, activists, and all stakeholders in mapping out power, problems, and possibilities through an abolitionist, arts-based youth participatory action research framework that centers the lived experiences of youth in the creation of solutions to the problems that most affect them. You will learn research methodologies centered in youth culture and arts such as theater, music, poetry, and media, as well as an abolitionist, antiracist political education!
Most importantly, all youth attendees will gain a new community of like-minded, justice-oriented youth with whom to organize to both dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline AND to weave/birth/build a world where collective liberation, healing, and joy are the norm for all.
Bread Riot: How Food Connects to Power
Facilitated by Hope Johnson
11 AM to 3 PM [with a break from 12:30 to 1 PM]
Why isn’t food free? Why are there cops in our grocery stores? How do we build a future where each neighborhood produces and shares food so that nobody goes hungry? The destruction of the earth by racist, capitalist forces makes food more expensive and less nutritious for working-class people. We must coordinate community food production and exchange in order to defend ourselves against the state, which uses hunger as a form of social control.
In this class, we will study how people in the Global South have resisted land theft and attempts to destroy food traditions. We will analyze how corporations control most of the grocery stores in our neighborhoods, linking low food access to the growing presence of cops in our supermarkets. Then we will imagine an alternative food system using roleplay. This class positions every participant as a teacher and a learner. The goal is to build up our collective knowledge through interactive activities and discussion!
From Barricades into Flowers: Abolitionist Artmaking
Facilitated by Cindy Hwang and Sara Zielinski
11 AM to 4 PM [with a break from 12:30 to 1 PM]
This workshop asks participants to imagine a world without prisons or police, beginning with the simple act of reclaiming the ubiquitous blue police barricade. Participants will carve fragments of barricades that have been taken out of commission, transforming them into instruments for woodblock printing. After inking and printing the blocks, participants will cut and fold their prints into vibrant paper flowers. Participants will have the option of gifting their flowers to individuals who have been arrested, arraigned, and released from Brooklyn Central Booking, via volunteers with Brooklyn Jail Support. How else might tools of oppression be creatively repurposed into objects of compassion and resistance?
Centering Authenticity, Connection, and Community
Facilitated by Ghania Miller and Crystal Bridges
11 AM to 3 PM [with a break from 12:30 to 1 PM]
This interactive "girl group" workshop invites young women ages 14–17 on an exploration that fosters self-discovery, teamwork, and a recognition of one's leadership potential through real conversations in an environment of trust that provide the foundation for a supportive peer community that bolsters self-esteem. This experience will allow participants to hear one another, connect through activities, develop new skills, and make new friends.
Intro to Zine Making: Independent Publication for Radical Self Expression, Connection, and Community
Facilitated by Chris Patch
11 AM to 2 PM [with a break from 12:30 to 1 PM]
This workshop will teach you how to make, publish, and distribute your own zine. A zine is any self-published collection of work and has a rich history as a tool for social change. We will explore historical examples of graphics for political activation such as: Guerrilla Girls, Avram Finkelstein, Emory Douglas, and Riot Grrrl. As well as exploring various methods for production and reproduction including: one sheet 8 page zines, half sheet zines, printmaking, collage, typography, grid method, and book binding. The workshop will result in students making their own zines, as well as gaining the skills to make a variety of publications in their future. If you have something to say to the world, this workshop is for you!