Displaced From This Place?

Urban Investigations

Displaced From This Place?

The Wait

Urban Investigations

The Wait

Show Up

Public Access Design

Show Up

H2 Oh No!

Technical Assistance

H2 Oh No!

Child Support?!

Making Policy Public

Child Support?!

What You Need To Know About ACS

Making Policy Public

What You Need To Know About ACS

Meet the Teaching Artist: April Wen!

Meet the Teaching Artist: April Wen!

For our latest installment of Meet the Teaching Artist, we sat down with April Wen!

April is an artist, writer, and educator based in NYC, who collaborated with CUP on Care Aware, a Youth Education project that investigates NYC’s proposed “NYC Care” plan to provide health care for all New Yorkers, regardless of citizenship status.

1. Why were you interested in becoming a Teaching Artist?

I wanted to learn alongside people. Young people have a tendency to be the best teachers, and I felt inspired by them to improve my own practice as an educator and artist by learning at CUP how to merge the two. 

2. How would you describe your artistic practice?
I write prose and direct fiction films. My stories tend to revolve around people attempting to translate empathy into intimacy. 

3. What is a project you’re working on now that you’re excited to reveal soon?
I’m writing a feature-length film for improvisation, set in NYC, that I’m excited to bring to life in the only city I can say I know. The film is structured around the main character’s pure intuition, and her attendant struggle to keep that intuition alive in the only city she can say she knows. 

4. How did collaborating with CUP impact your work moving forward?
I come away from the CUP City Studies project with much more knowledge about how the city’s systems of education and healthcare work. The process of getting to that knowledge with my students has been illuminating for my own work, in which the city is a foundational setting.

5. What is your secret skill that has nothing to do with your art and educator work?
I am trained in the ways of the blade (foil, epee, and sabre).  

The Water Underground

Urban Investigations

The Water Underground

Museumopolis

Urban Investigations

Museumopolis

Safe Space?

City Studies

Safe Space?

I Got Arrested! Now What?

Making Policy Public

I Got Arrested! Now What?

Your Truth, Your Rights

Public Access Design

Your Truth, Your Rights

Step Right Up

City Studies

Step Right Up

Don't Bank On It

Making Policy Public

Don't Bank On It

Is Suspension The Solution?

City Studies

Is Suspension The Solution?