#150YearsIsEnough is the culmination of months of listening to the stories of young people and their experiences in the New Jersey Criminal Justice System.
The work presented here was created by young people from the Youth Advocate Program (YAP) in partnership with staff and advocacy experts from New Jersey Institute for Social Justice (NJISJ) and artists and teaching artists from coLAB Arts.
coLAB Arts, in collaboration with Elijah's Promise and New Brunswick Tomorrow, is forwarding creative access and food equity to the Esperanza Neighborhood in New Brunswick through the Mercado Esperanza project, with generous support from the Kresge Foundation and their inaugural FreshLo grant. The #NuestraEsperanza portrait project celebrates the residents and culture of the Esperanza Neighborhood.
37 Voices is an initiative that combines journalism, oral history, research, and theater to change the narrative around economic vulnerability in New Jersey, one of the highest-cost states in the country. We hope that through 37 Voices, the stories of these individuals will present a more humane, whole and nuanced understanding about what it means to experience economic hardship. We also explore the structures and policies that make it difficult for people to break out of poverty.
Banished is an oral history and storytelling project documenting the harms of the sex offender registry. The contained works are co-written by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, a staff writer for The Appeal, and coLAB Arts producing director, Dan Swern.
Civic Voices is a photo series documenting the work and experience of the City of New Brunswick’s municipal workers. The photo series was produced by Christopher Sztybel.
Life, Death, Life Again: Children sentenced to die in prison by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg is a documentary theater piece that features interviews with individuals who were sentenced to die in prison for harm caused as children, and the grandson of a murder victim who forgave and reconciled with the girl who killed his grandmother. The play seeks to create a conversation that focuses on the humanity of those who cause harm and their possibility for redemption, the nature of reconciliation and radical forgiveness, and our civic responsibility to all parties of a crime.
Teatro Esperanza is a Spanish-language theater company that was founded by coLAB Arts and New Brunswick Tomorrow’s Esperanza Neighborhood Project. The group develops new work in response to the individuals and experiences of the Latino community in New Brunswick.
Trueselves is an oral history archive and documentary theater series that shares the stories of New Jersey’s transgender community and its allies. The archive has produced two plays, Trueselves: A play on gender and Truelove: An act of support.
New Jersey NOW brought a group of seasoned members together with a cohort of young feminists just starting their journey. The young women, already active in the movement in different organizations such as Generation Ratify, NOW and Period, Inc. were comprised of high schoolers, college students and recent graduates.
Thanks to generous support from the Henry Luce Foundation, New Brunswick Theological Seminary (NBTS), in partnership with Reformed Church of Highland Park Affordable Housing Corporation (RCHP-AHC), Rutgers University-New Brunswick, and coLAB Arts has launched a project to address the problem of housing insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic. This new initiative offers a rapid response to a pressing question for some of the most vulnerable people in the wider community: In an age of pandemic, what does it mean to shelter in place when you have no shelter?
For the past 25 years, Lauren Weinstein has worked as a cartoonist, graphic journalist and educator. Weinstein believes fervently in the transformative power of combining words and pictures: words engage the intellect, and pictures which engage the gut. She taught the women to draw and make comics which became a cathartic outlet for them during a time of crisis: a special space to manage their emotions. Currently, the women meet regularly to have a devoted art time. Weinstein was struck by the parallel of how time functions in comics and at Town Clock CDC.
