What's in the Water?

Making Policy Public

What's in the Water?

Displaced From This Place?

Urban Investigations

Displaced From This Place?

Welcome to Health Care!

Making Policy Public

Welcome to Health Care!

Our Values, Our Voice, Our Vote

Making Policy Public

Our Values, Our Voice, Our Vote

Sign Up!

Public Access Design

Sign Up!

Get It Back!

Public Access Design

Get It Back!

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).  

Immigrants & NY

Making Policy Public

Immigrants & NY

What Does It Mean To Live In My Own Place?

Making Policy Public

What Does It Mean To Live In My Own Place?

Swept Up

Urban Investigations

Swept Up

Tenants' Rights to Repairs

Making Policy Public

Tenants' Rights to Repairs

Is Your Home Making You Sick?

Making Policy Public

Is Your Home Making You Sick?

Record It. Report It!

Public Access Design

Record It. Report It!

Block Party

City Studies

Block Party

What Is Zoning?

Envisioning Development

What Is Zoning?