Celebrate Earth Week with The New School
Earth Day 2022 is just around the corner, and both this week and next, The New School has an exciting lineup of virtual events focused on the changing climate, environmental justice, and more. In addition to these events, we’ve also gathered resources from our community to help kick off the week.
We hope you use the information below as a starting point to understanding and bettering the world around us, not just during Earth Week, but throughout the year.
RESOURCES
The New School’s Tishman Environment and Design Center has a list of book recommendations perfect for Earth Week and beyond. “We wanted to share some works to help understand the world we are living in and a more just world that we want to see,” TEDC says. Click here to check out their Earth Week reading list.
The Tishman Center serves as a nexus between academia and the environmental and social justice grassroots movements, with a specific focus on underserved communities. To learn more about their research, click here.
In February 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a historic report based on the contributions from Working Group II which assesses the impacts of climate change and options for adapting to it. Professor of Urban Ecology and Director of the Urban Systems Lab Timon McPhearson was the lead author of the report. Read more about it here.
The work of The New School Urban Systems Lab can be placed within eight converging fields: Big Data & Artificial Intelligence, Community Engagement, Data Visualization & Design, Urban Ecology, Environmental Justice & Equity, Nature-Based Solutions, Urban Policy & Planning, and Urban Climate Resilience. To learn more about their work, click here.
The New School’s Climate Justice club will be celebrating Earth Week in University Center Cafeteria (63 5th Avenue, 2nd Floor) where they’ll be starting conversations about Climate Justice and sharing giveaways with The New School community.
Visit them at the cafeteria:
Monday, April 18, from 12–4 pm
Tuesday, April 19, from 11–12 pm
Wednesday, April 20, from 12–1 pm
Thursday, April 21, from 12–3:30 pm
Friday, April 22, from 1–2 pm
To learn more about the Climate Justice Club, follow them on Instagram or check out their Narwhal Nation listing for more information about upcoming events and how you can get involved.
The Climate Justice club also worked with Parsons Paris student Anisa Williams (Fashion Design BFA ’25) who created her own Earth Week celebration on the Parsons Paris campus. Williams will be at the St. Roch lounge from April 19–22 (details above) where she’ll be raising money for Zero Waste France.
In one of its recent gatherings, the Climate Justice Club played Ekos: The Path to Resilience, a multi-player board game exploring issues of urban resilience, social equity and green infrastructure created by Ryann Abunuwara (BAFA Product Design and Environmental Studies ’23) and the team at the Urban Systems Lab. Want to learn more about Ekos? Click here.
The Parsons Healthy Materials Lab podcast Trace Material explores the convergence of our lives and the lives of the materials that surround us. The podcast’s latest season focuses on plastics and uncovers the human stories behind the synthetic material. To learn more about or subscribe to Trace Material, click here.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Online: Nancy Dayanne Valladares: PHOTO/SYNTHETIC: Plants and the Metabolic Image
Monday, April 18, 2022, 6:00PM to 7:15PM (EDT)
Join The Arts department at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School for a conversation with Interdisciplinary artist Nancy Dayanne Valladares. Valladares’ practice closely examines photography’s historical entanglement with botanical imaginaries and chemical legacies. In this talk, Nancy will present their ongoing research that traces plant agency in historical narratives of visuality.
Online: Climate Change and Cities: From the Global IPCC Report to Local Action
Tuesday, April 19, 2022, 2:00PM to 3:30PM (EDT)
In February 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a historic report based on the contributions from Working Group II which assesses the impacts of climate change and options for adapting to it. Join the Urban Systems Lab and Tishman Environment and Design Center as they bring together researchers, scientists and practitioners involved in the IPCC and NYC Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) to discuss regional and local implications based on the report’s findings, as well as adaptation options and best practices to ensure equitable resiliency planning and governance.
Online: Street Futures: How Covid-19 has Changed our Streetscapes
Wednesday, April 20, 2022, 5:30PM to 7:00PM (EDT)
At this point, two years into the pandemic, how has our conception of the public street changed? What do we want to bring forward from recent practices as we look ahead to the future? Using the conversion of parking spaces into alternative temporary uses for restaurants, seating areas and public spaces as the focus of discussion, a panel of distinguished guests will examine the intersection of design, public policy, and social justice that coalesce around the future of our streets. Hosted by the Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School and the Parsons School of Constructed Environments.
Online: The Steel Miller’s Daughter: Love in a Changing Climate
Friday, April 22, 2022, 5:00PM to 6:30PM (EDT)
Join the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis for a screening of and conversation surrounding The Steel Millers Daughter. Stephen Kennedy Murphy’s modern adaptation of Franz Schubert’s The Millers Daughter is a one-hour series of video vignettes that reimagine the classic musical story through the lens of global warming and climate disasters. The story follows a steel worker’s pursuit of his boss’ “green-movement” daughter against the backdrop of the mill towns of Pennsylvania.
Online: New School Alumni Presents Convenient Fantasies About Climate Change
Wednesday, April 27, 2022, 12:00PM to 1:00PM (EDT)
Join us for a conversation with New School alum Tri Vo, MFA Industrial Design ’20, and Founder and President of CarbonBetter and Nicole Sullivan, Climate Services Manager at CarbonBetter, for a conversation focused on jargon like “net-zero,” “carbon neutral,” “energy transition,” “RSG,” and more. Vo and Sullivan are leaders in energy and sustainability and will share their insider perspectives on the words and concepts that may not be moving us forward.
Online: Magdalena: a Threatened River of Music, Knowledge and Culture
Friday, April 29, 2022, 2:00PM to 3:30PM (EDT)
Join the Tishman Center, Pratt Institute GCPE and Bomba Estero for a conversation about the environment, history and culture of the Magdalena River, the main River of Colombia. This event will feature people speakers that have intimate knowledge of how the river has shaped the not only the history and culture of Colombia, but also the world. Since most of the event will be in Spanish, interpretation to English will be available.
Other Earth Week events and celebrations in New York City:
- Celebrate Earth Day in Union Square with our neighbors at the Union Square Partnership. Learn more.
- Our friends at NYC Parks have numerous free, exciting events coming up across the city. Learn more.
- NYCgo has also put together a list of events taking place throughout the city. Explore them here.
At The New School, our buildings department has numerous sustainable initiatives that address climate change in a variety of ways. To learn more about these initiatives, click here.
In 2021, the Tishman Center led the effort to complete The New School’s AASHE STARS Certification. The university retained a silver rating and a slightly higher score than its previous assessment. This report is not only a snapshot of the school’s sustainability efforts today, but it also provides guidance for things that we can do to improve even more.
