Built to Bloom celebrates 6 years of the W.O.W. Project. With the mythological turtle carrying a blossoming Chinatown on its back, Built to Bloom honors the foundational work of not only W.O.W.’s femme, queer, and trans youth community, but of activists and organizers of Chinatown past. W.O.W. remains rooted in this legacy and committed to the collective work of building a blooming future for our communities.
6TH YEAR ANNIVERsary: built to bloom programs
Built to Fly: Resist Recycle Regenerate Final Showcase
Resist Recycle Regenerate’s youth fellows invite friends, family, and Chinatown community members to come together and celebrate a year of artmaking, leadership, and engagement with community leaders and artists. Fellows will present their individual projects as well as a collective kite project designed, built, and flown under the guidance of teaching artist Emily Chow Bluck. Come meet this year’s brilliant fellows and join us in celebrating five years of RRR with the alum, teachers, artists, and community members that keep us rooted in communal artmaking. Attendees will have the opportunity to design their own kites!
The People's Projection: Celebrating Chinatown's Labor History
Chinatown Art Brigade, The W.O.W. Project, and the Illuminator come together for a night of projections celebrating Chinatown’s labor history through slogans, animation, and moving image. We will invite attendees to activate our People’s Pad and project their own writing on the wall as they reflect on questions regarding our neighborhood’s future and its relationship to labor. The projection wall is located next to two former unionized garment factories—148 Lafayette and 150 Lafayette—to honor and activate the foundations of Chinatown’s garment laborers.
The W.O.W. Project alongside Workers United, APALA, and Central Labor Council come together to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the historic 1982 Garment Workers Strike. The event will include a host of interactive activities, speakers, dance, poetry, and song performances in Columbus Park, where 20,000 women workers once marched to demand better working conditions. This program honors both the landmark victory for Chinatown workers’ rights and the neighborhood’s continued legacy of femme and queer-led people power. Together, W.O.W. centers and celebrates Chinatown women’s work today as much as they did 40 years ago.
We Are One: 40th Anniversary Celebration of the 1982 Garment Workers Strike
Letters to Our Younger Selves: Bridging Futures Publication Launch
Bridging Futures presents Letters to Our Younger Selves, a publication that interfaces the now defunct Bridge Magazine with Chinatown’s creative futurities. Come meet the cohort and participate in activities that will activate the Asian American archive in new and exciting ways! Pick up a copy to enter further into dialogue with the longer genealogy of Asian American art, protest, and care.
八宝粥 Ba Bao Zhou: Artist Residency Collection Showcase
W.O.W.'s 6th Artist-in-Residence Joy Mao presents her 2nd year residency project, a capsule collection of easy-to-wear clothing inspired by the everyday abundance of Chinatown. Created in collaboration with Wing On Wo’s Lorraine Lum and W.O.W.’s Resist Recycle Regenerate youth fellows, the project engaged participants in a design process centered around a series of craft-making workshops and community interactions. At this celebratory showcase, take an immersive glimpse into the creative process and preview the collection itself.