CUP: About

Find out more about CUP through this short video from the Curry Stone Design Prize.

What We Do

CUP takes two approaches to increasing meaningful civic engagement: youth education programs in which students work with Teaching Artists to investigate some aspect of how the city works and create final products that educate others about what they learned; and community education programs in which CUP collaborates with designers and advocates to produce tools, workshops, and publications that explain complex policies or processes for specific audiences.

Community Education

CUP works with advocacy organizations, policy experts, and designers to produce publications, workshops, and other teaching tools that explain important policy issues for the people who most need to know. CUP publications and teaching tools are made for and with specific groups in specific places, but they reach a national audience of people interested in civics education and graphic and information design.

CUP’s Envisioning Development Toolkits are interactive workshops that teach people about basic land-use terms and concepts, enabling them to participate meaningfully in neighborhood change. For example, the What Is Affordable Housing? teaches participants about income demographics and the technical definitions of affordable housing to help them understand proposed development and advocate for community needs. The toolkits are developed in close collaboration with community organizations throughout New York, such as Good Old Lower East Side, Fifth Avenue Committee, Housing Conservation Coordinators, and ANHD. Learn more here.

Through Making Policy Public CUP collaborates with community organizations and design professionals to produce foldout posters that make complex policy issues accessible. For example, Healthy Salons For All is a five-language poster that helps nail salon workers know their health, safety, and labor rights. Collaborators have included designers like MTWTF, Candy Chang, WeShouldDoItAll, and Silas Munro with organizations such as the Urban Justice Center, the Brennan Center for Justice, Community Voices Heard, and the Pennsylvania Farmworkers Project. Learn more here.

Public Access Design projects are print, digital, and motion graphics created through short-term collaborations of CUP staff, community organizations, and designers or animators to make complex issues accessible to the New Yorkers most affected by them. Each project results in a short video or animation, a pocket-sized foldout, a small booklet, or an interactive website. For example, Housing Court Help is pocket-sized booklet that helps tenants fight landlord harassment and eviction. Collaborators have included community organizations such as Housing Court Answers, Damayan Migrant Workers Association, and the Immigrant Defense Project, and designers such as Petra Farinha, Raj Kottamasu, and James Dunphy. Learn more here.

Through our Technical Assistance program, community organizations and advocacy groups can hire CUP to create custom outreach and organizing tools. For example, Weathering the Storm is an interactive website showing residents of coastal areas how flood insurance changes will impact their homes. Collaborators have included designers Manuel Miranda, Nikki Chung, and Phillip Niemeyer, and organizations such as the Center for NYC Neighborhoods, the Participatory Budgeting Project, and MinKwon Center for Community Action. Learn more here.

To find out more about working with CUP, click here.

Youth Education

CUP partners with schools and afterschool programs to produce experiential, project-based curricula that get students out of the classroom to interact with New York City and the people who make it work. Our education programs vary in length from one day to one semester and reach over 500 students each year – from the Bronx to South Brooklyn and everywhere in between.

CUP’s Urban Investigation projects ask basic questions about how the city works and answer them over the course of a semester. Where does our garbage go? Where does our water come from? Who built public housing? Students make site visits and conduct interviews while working with Teaching Artists and CUP staff to produce award-winning videos, exhibitions, magazines, and other media that communicate what they’ve learned to a wide audience. These products are screened in theaters, exhibited at museums, and used by advocacy organizations to educate others. Learn more here.

For example, the Sewer in a Suitcase, a working model of a city streetscape and combined sewer system developed by CUP with students from City-as-School, has been featured on Design Observer, and is currently being used by educators at organizations like the Harbor School, the Lower East Side Ecology Center, and the Trust for Public Land to teach people about wastewater management and combined sewer overflow.

City Studies projects are in-class and afterschool, project-based curricula for high school students, from single-session workshops to 10-session projects. For example, in Soda Census, CUP developed a curriculum with a teacher at the Academy of Urban Planning in Bushwick to help students understand how to use information graphics in their persuasive writing. After conducting an on-the-street survey on a proposed soft drink tax, students created their own figures, charts, and graphs to help them develop arguments for or against the tax. Learn more here.

We also provide Teacher Trainings, professional development workshops for teachers and administrators that help educators connect students to their communities through art and design. We develop custom programs to meet the needs of a particular group, from a two-hour site assessment project to a week-long set of workshops. Learn more here.

For more information on working with CUP, click here.

How We Do It

All of CUP’s projects use design and art to improve civic engagement. Here are some other things you’ll find in all of our work:

Unique and unexpected collaborations. CUP is committed to bringing individuals from different fields together in creative dialogue. All CUP projects include CUP staff, artists or designers, community-based or advocacy organizations, and the people directly affected by the issues we address. CUP projects increase the capacity of our partners to advocate for social change, both through the products we create together and through our participatory design practices.

Visual communication. Every CUP project results in a piece of visual communication. CUP works with artists and designers to create everything from documentaries to posters to comic books to contraptions, all with a strong visual presence and a focus on making information accessible, enjoyable, and meaningful. CUP projects have been featured in art museums, design magazines, film festivals, and other venues, including the Venice Biennale and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s Design Triennial; publications like Print, Good, and The New York Times; and venues from Exit Art to the New Museum for Contemporary Art.

Products that are useful in the real world. CUP projects produce visual tools designed to be used by constituencies that can most benefit from the information. These audiences include community organizations, who use the products in their own organizing efforts; educators, who use the products in their classrooms; and other constituencies addressed in particular projects, such as New York City street vendors or residents of public housing.

A focus on social justice. While CUP aims to foster greater and better civic participation across the board, our projects emphasize engagement of historically underrepresented communities. Our youth education programs are all based within the New York City public school system, and our community education programs help communities access the information they need to effectively advocate for themselves and participate in decision-making that impacts their lives.

Fun and funny. CUP is serious about civic engagement, but we think it works better when it’s fun. We find these topics inherently interesting but we know they can often be intimidating. We think it’s easier for people to engage with projects that capture their imaginations, make them laugh, or give them a chance to play.

Who We Are

CUP projects work through a hub and spoke model that places our staff at the center of a large network of collaborators from numerous disciplines. Our staff run the organization from day to day and initiate and manage our projects. The spokes are individual project teams, made up of artists, designers, educators, activists, and researchers, who collaborate on the individual projects.

CUP Staff

Christine Gaspar, Executive Director
Frampton Tolbert, Deputy Director
Yasmin Safdié, Director of Programs
Mark Torrey, Program Manager
Amanda Finuccio, Program Manager
Fielding Hong, Program Manager
Sucharitha Yelimeli, Program Coordinator
Clair Beltran, Program Assistant
Siyona Ravi, Communications and Program Assistant
Leigh Taylor, Development and Program Assistant
Elijah Bobo, Fellow for Change in Design

See a list of everyone who makes CUP projects happen.

CUP’s Board of Directors

David Smiley, Chair
Ariel Fausto, Vice Chair
Beom Jun Kim, Treasurer
Christine Coletta
Inbar Kishoni
Jeremy Robinson-Leon
Dan Wiley
Ayanna Oliver-Taylor
Rebecca Karp
Mari Yahagi
Sabrina Hall

Some of the people we’ve worked with over the years.

Where We Came From

CUP was founded in 1997 by Damon Rich with co-founders Jason Anderson, AJ Blandford, Josh Breitbart, Stella Bugbee, Sarah Dadush, Althea Wasow, and Rosten Woo, who drew on their backgrounds in art, architecture, history, public policy and political theory, and graphic design to collaborate on projects investigating how the city works. They made publications, videos, and exhibits on topics like urban renewal, housing subsidies, and the history of public housing. Over time, they brought more and more collaborators, from more varied backgrounds, into their projects.

In 2001, CUP organized Building Codes, an exhibition at Storefront for Art and Architecture on the 100th anniversary of New York City’s Tenement House Act that used multiple methods to investigate and represent the politics of urban development. The next year, CUP conducted its first Urban Investigation project, Garbage Problems, where CUP collaborated with students to look into waste management and then create posters, models, and a video about what we learned.

In 2002, CUP received its 501(c)(3) status, and Damon Rich and Rosten Woo became its first full-time staff in 2004.

That same year, CUP began to develop some of the partnerships that have become core to our practices. That year, CUP began to hire project-based teaching artists, expanding our circle of collaborators and spreading our impact. That year, CUP also partnered with a community-based organization for the first time, Public Housing Residents of the Lower East Side (PHROLES), to create Public Housing Television, a visual tool for popular education and organizing for residents of public housing in New York City. This was one of CUP’s first Technical Assistance projects.

CUP began to create more structured collaborative frameworks for advocacy organizations, designers, and CUP staff in 2007 with the introduction of Making Policy Public.

Over the years, CUP has worked to take the core methods developed in projects like the Building Codes exhibit—stakeholder interviews; collaborations with students, organizers, advocates, educators, and visual artists; and the use of visuals to break down and communicate complex policy and planning issues — and developed a series of programs that meet specific community needs. Though we don’t make exhibits any more, we continue to use print, video, and other media to create visually-based projects that help communities all over New York City (and beyond) to understand and be a part of the decision-making that shapes their communities.

Who Supports CUP

CUP is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. All cash and in-kind contributions to CUP are tax-deductible and fully support our educational programming.

Current Supporters

CUP’s programs are made possible in part with public funds from:

National Endowment for the Arts
New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature
New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council
Council Member Antonio Reynoso
Council Member Ben Kallos
Council Member Brad Lander
Council Member Diana Ayala
Council Member Ritchie Torres
Council Member Vanessa Gibson

CUP is also supported by the generosity of:

Capital One
Kresge Foundation
Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund
Lily Auchincloss Foundation
Mertz Gilmore Foundation
M&T Bank
Neighborhoods First Fund for Community Based Planning
New York Foundation
Robert & Arlene Kogod Family Foundation
Shelly & Donald Rubin Foundation
Sigrid Rausing Trust
Surdna Foundation
Tecovas Foundation

Thank you!

CUP is extremely grateful to the following donors who supported our work in 2019.

Social Justice Allies

Cycle Architecture + Planning, Deborah Berke Partners, dlandstudio, H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture, Samuel Marks, Marvel Architects, Jeremy Robinson-Leon, David Smiley & Lauren Kogod, and Powerhouse Arts

Sustainers

Daniel Arnow, Chicago Title Insurance Company, Christine Coletta & Matt Bockelman, Susannah Drake, Matthew Hart, Jason Kim & Leticia Wouk Almino, Leslie Kogod & Laurie Goldberger, Matthew Hart, Stuart Kogod & Denise Garone, Francis Lam, Warren Leon & Cynthia Robinson, Sarah Madigan, the Mehretu-Rankin Family, NYC Ferry, Grace Robinson-Leo, Slater & Beckerman PC, Thanh Tran, and Zac & Tracy Wydra

Supporters

Alamo Drafthouse, Mark Allen, Alan Appelbaum, Architecture Research Office, Mercedes Armillas, Belmont Freeman Architects,Gregory Bianco, Sarah Brennan, Sharon Davis, Neil Donnelly & Iben Falconer, Meghan Downes, dresscode, Rachel Fine & Martin Dunn, Hector urban design, planning & civic arts, Julie Hertzog & Gabrielle Esperdy, Home Studios, Birte Falconer, Sean Flynn, Tim & Elizabeth Howell, Karp Strategies, Aaron Koffman & Heather Gershen, Leroy Street Studios, Faizah Malik & Zaahir Syed, Marble Fairbanks Architects, Tal Schori, Smith & Architects, TLM Associates, TransitCenter, Tsao & McKown Architects, Verona Carpenter Architects, Shawn Watts & Rosemary Suh, and Dan Wiley, Anonymous (2)

Contributors

Gideon Friedman, Matthew Galek, Rosalie Genevro, Stina Hanson, Margarett Jolly, Inbar Kishoni, John Krauss, Josh Lerner, Carrie McLaren, Faye Premer, Leslie & Timothy Renjilian, Nelson & Sherrie Rich, Joshua & Elizabeth Ring, Claire Silberman, Andrew Sloat, Patrick Sullivan, Kyle Taylor, Chat Travieso, Nans Voron, Benjamin Warnke, Betsy & Ron Weis, and John Willoughby

Friends & Fans

Carlos E. Acevedo, Alexis Agathocleous, Shalini Agrawal, Jordan Alexander, Beth & Mike Anderson, Jason Anderson, Paul Anderson, Melissa Jane Andrada, Jessica Anigma, Lynn Appelbaum, Caron Atlas, Raymond Audain, Jason Babbie, Christian Bachrach, Lea Bacon, Brett Bainbridge, Bindu Balan, Matt Balik, Ruth Ballenzweig, Charlie Bardey, David Barker, Allison Barlow, Priyanka Batra & Chris Leary, Vanessa Bayer, Cara Bayles, Lauren Belfer, Hana Bendy, Samuel Biederman, Derrick Biney-Amissah, Eileen Blank, Dorian A. Booth, James Boyd, Jay & Sue Boyd, Elizabeth Boyd, Katherine Bradley, Elaine Braithwaite, Peter Bray, Ian Brownell, Erica Brusselars, Nicholas Burka, Tei Carpenter, Nicole Carroll, Stephen Cassell, Daniel Cawley, Matthew Chachere, Chloe Chang, Cindy Chang, Yawen Chen, Alicia Cheng, Colette Chisholm, Ahra Cho, Yoonjai Choi, Lucy Christiana, Alayna Citrin, Charlotte Cohen, Rebecca Coates Finke, Natalie Connor, Ellen Copley, Caitlin Cowger, Marika Crider, Rebecca Crimmins, Diana Crum, Olivia Crumm, Catalina Cuervo, Donald D’Aries, Elizabeth Daly, Jennifer Damm, Emily Demarest, Ken Diamondstone, Tess Drahman, Kate Dunham, Sara Durkacs, Holly E. Dowell, Judy Eady, Keller Easterling, Emre M. Edev, Julie Egan, Nisrin Elamin, Crystal Ellis, Anne Emig, Ellen Epstein, Chris Eshelman, Pavel Ezrohi, Ariel Fausto, Amanda Finuccio, Madeline Firkser, Benjamin Flanner, Katherine Fleming, Glenn Forley, Tara Foster, Karen Fox, Lily Francis, Alice Friedman, Meryl Friedman, David Frisco, Samuel Frommer, M Salome Galib, Jennifer Gardner, Erin Garnass-Holmes, Gisela Garrett, Tony & Ceu Gaspar, Peter Gee, Laura Beth Giles, David Gladstone, Reinhard Goethert, Amelia Goodman, Allen Gorospe, James Graham, Sophie Green, Michael Grinthal, Vincent Guerrero, Alexis Guyton, Dave Hadden, Sarah Hagey, Michael Haggerty, Elizabeth Hamby, Brian Hamlin, James Harris, Damian Harris-Hernandez, Barbara Hart, Michaela Hartman, Chris Havens, Kennis Hawkins, Michael Heimbinder & Daisy Deomampo, Naomi Hersson Ringskog, Christian Holland, Everett Hollander, Samuel Holleran, Joseph Holtz, Aimee Hong & Bryant Briggs, Jenny Hong, Anne Hong, Maddie Hopfield, Michael Hopper, Nick Hornig, Mandy Hu & Tyler Survant, Alan Hui-Bon-Hoa, David Hunt, Ewurabena Hutchful, Kemi Ilesanmi, Valerie Jackson, Nicole Johnson, Jennifer Jones, Catherine Sloss Jones, Jennifer Kahn, Jerry Kajpust, Matthew Kane, Susan Kaplan, Alexa Kasdan, Adam Katz, Michelle Kaucic, Alexandra Keeling, Anisa Keith, Aisling Kelliher & Thanassis Rikakis, Tara Kelly, Anne Kember, Sean E. Kennedy, Keith Johns, Trevor Kenmure, Franny Kent, Nelson Kies, Isaiah King, Drew Kiriazides, Matt Klein, Sarah & Dylan Klevan, Joel Kolkmann, Juliet Koss, Raj Kottamasu, Karen Kubey, Charlotte Laffler, Ronald Languedoc, Vanessa Lash, Daphne Lasky, Matthew Lasner, Jessica Lax, Eric Lee, Katherine Lee, Nolan Levenson, Asher Levinthal, Sasha Levites, Susan Lob, Deborah Lolai, Sara Lopergolo, Ashley Louie, Rosa Luna, Daphne Lundi, Ellen Lupton, Hester Lyons, Erik Madsen, Jeff Maki, Jeff Malamy, Tamara Maletic, Grant Marani, Galina Mardilovich, Bryan Markovitz, Marpillero Pollak Architects, Dan Martensen, Lindsay Martinez, Duncan Maru, Savannah May, Erin McCue, Meghann McKale, Rustam Mehta, Susan Mello, Yael Meridan Schori, Kate Mikuliak, Manuel Miranda, Lize Mogel, Mariana Mogilevich, Kate Mollison, David Moore, Shahin Motia, Ethan Mulligan, Monica Munn, Zach Neumeyer, Emily Ng, Anthony Ng, Minna Ninova, Kevin Noble & Linda Neaman, Barbara Noble, Marc Norman and Jonathan Massey, Oscar Nuñez, Katharine Offinger, Luke Ohlson, Ayanna Oliver-Taylor, Noa Osheroff, Anna Ostow, Ashley Oved, Annabel Pang, Peter Park, Zoe Parker, Dennis Parker, Daniel & Lucy Payne, Kate Pedatella, Jennifer Pehr, Hillary Petrie, Erica Platt, Adam Pogoff, Susan Poliwka, Angelika Preschitz, Sean Quinn, Stephanie Rabins, Annya Ramirez, Alex Ramirez-Mallis, Gail Ramster, Nina Rappaport & Chris Hall, Red Hook Civic Association, David Reeves, Kate Reil, Jack Reilly, Aaron Reiss, Ashraf Rijal, Cameron Ringness, Julie Rochielle-Sievert, Evalynn Rosado, Martha Rosler, Margaret Ross-Martin, Anna Rubbo, Paula Rubira, Rumors, Maria Isabel Sanin, Jocelyn Sargent, Maxwell Scales, Joan Scholvin, Jacob Schori, Asher Schranz, Lori Schlabach, Paul Schuette, Jason Schupbach, Perry-Elena Segura, Richard Semegram, Sierra Shaffer, Jesse Sherril, Ron Shiffman, Jae & Dayoung Shin, Andrew Shurtz, Scott Simpson, Abigail Sindzinski, Mikhaela Singh, Lira Skenderi, Paris Smith, Ryan Smith, Jonathan Solomon, Claire Sperka, Jey Sterrenberg, Jeff Sterrenberg, Will Stewart, Joel Stillman, Kevin & Kathleen Stokes, Alexandre Su, Celina Su, Caitlin Sullivan, Anna Tabet, Meredith TenHoor, Bruce & Kathi Torrey, Lindsay Torrey, Julian Tost, LaTarro Traylor, Billie Tsien, Seth Ullman, Kenny Ulloa, John Valladares, Julia van den Hout, Vyoma Venkataraman, Sharmila Venkatasubban, Irina Verona, Roxana Verona, Joseph Vidich, Mariel Villere, Irina Vinnitskaya, Emily Viola, Nicole Vlado, Brad Vogel, Elisa W. Almino, Justine & Andrew Wantanabe, Cheyenna L. Weber, Erica Weiner, David Weis, Natalie West, Tony Wheeler, Lynette Widder, Sarah Williams, Barbara Wilson, Madeline Witenberg, Anna Witenberg, Nathaniel Wojtalik, Paul Woody, Steven Yavanian, Helen Yentus, Danny Yoder, Reed Young, and Kimberly Yao, Michael Yeung & Max Worrell, Charlyne Yi, Abdul-Razak Zachariah, Leanne Zick, Jess Zimbabwe, and Andros Zinz-Browne, Anonymous (3)