Pratt Institute
AC-5: Immersive Experience

The following is a brief list of Immersive Educational Study Programs offered at Pratt Institute.

ADE 408/624: Art, Community, and Social Change
Art, Community and Social Change, is a hands-on exploration of urban art and design and their relationship to local communities. Through research and realization of a community-based project in Pratt’s “backyard”—Downtown Brooklyn, Fort Green, Clinton Hill or Bedford Stuyvesant—students will study and work with local community based organizations. Students will explore the following questions as they do their research and work on the community-based project: How do artists, designers, planners, architects and art educators shape and develop a sense of social responsibility at the community level? How do they become informed about and learn from the communities in which they work? How can art and design contribute to community-based efforts to address urban issues such as gentrification, foreclosure, community health, and access to healthy and affordable food?
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Pratt Berlin Program (Summer 2022): The 2022 Berlin Summer Program focuses on issues of urbanity, social entrepreneurship, and civic engagement. It aims to train students to develop a sense of strategic innovation and empowerment through design. The students are asked to be community focused, and employ bottom up design processes. The seminar invites students to develop adaptive reuse concepts for the former Flughafen (airport) Tegel Terminal A building and area. Built in 1975, the visionary design by a young architecture firm served as a lifeline for the walled-in city well beyond the fall of the Berlin wall. Its iconic hexagonal layout became a visual marker for anyone traveling to or from Berlin. https://prattdotberlin.wordpress.com/the-program/
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GCPE: NYC Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA) fellowships
In partnership with Pratt Institute, NYC-EJA is recruiting current graduate students in the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment to work directly with our member organizations, supporting community planning, outreach, research, GIS, and policy analysis. Positions are open to GCPE Students with an interest in environmental justice, climate resilience, sustainability, racial justice, and community-led planning. Up to six (6) Fellows are placed, based on organizational need and match. One other student works directly with NYC-EJA, often with regard to technical support such as GIS. Fellows will work 1 day per week at the respective organization.

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(GCPE) SWIM Coalition Fellowship:
The SWIM Coalition Fellow attends SWIM’s meetings with elected officials to discuss waterway steward concerns, attends NYC DEP and NY DEC public meetings with SWIM staff and steering committee to learn about the City’s various water quality improvement plans, attends public hearings where SWIM testifies on green infrastructure and clean waterway related legislation, plans or programs. Fellow also attends and helps coordinate community workshops that SWIM conducts with our member organizations. Fellows with a graphic design skill set can also work on fact sheets and other materials produced for the Clean Water Steward program, and those with GIS skills can help generate maps of project areas where SWIM is supporting Community Action Plans to reduce CSO’s in local waterways. In 2019-2020, one fellow worked for 10 hours a week, for 15 weeks in each of the Fall and Spring semesters.
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Pratt Center for Community Development worked with graduate students to assist with a planning project for East Flatbush, Brooklyn and Brooklyn Community District 17 more broadly. Five (5) student interns worked on this project during the Fall 2019 semester, for 10-15 hours a week. Pratt students worked closely with a selected cohort of local high school students by helping to design a community engagement process that the high schoolers can participate in, helping to train them to conduct outreach, supporting their community engagement efforts in the field, and by exposing them to the field and practice of community-based planning.

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The Quinhagak Project (Alaska)
This research/education project consists in supporting the Quinhagak community in building resilience in response to the threat posed by climate change to their traditions and way of life, focusing on three main strategic and sustainable ambitions: (a) Food Security through year-round container-based hydroponic farming, (b) the development of autonomous Energy Generation involving eolic and biogas generators, and (c) the creation of a Trade School designed to ensure the community has the skills needed to benefit from the employment opportunities that the previous two initiatives will generate. Furthermore, the trade school's main objective is to empower the youth through education in various disciplines, including but not limited to construction, farming, natural resource management, and cultural preservation. This project will be formed by Pratt faculty members and students together with members of the Eklutna Community (Alaska).

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Barcelona Sustainability and Resilience
This course is offering a three-week-long Barcelona Summer Program, a transdisciplinary seminar/workshop for students from the School of Architecture, School of Design, and School of Liberal Arts and Science. Barcelona is a model of community resiliency and sustainable urban change for other world cities and offers a rich contemporary culture, design, architecture, and gastronomy as well as an important political and historical background. This course aims to understand how Barcelona thinkers, designers, and local communities’ social resilience respond to challenges such as climate change, energy scarcity, the rezoning process, social justice, and (tourist and green) gentrification. The Pratt Barcelona study abroad course will focus on lectures, pop-up sustainability, and resilience thinking workshops by guest creative thinkers and designers, visits to different social innovation initiatives in the city, public and private institutions, and community-based organizations.