Joshua Barndt is a professional community-based artist and curator with a specialization in mural making, documentary video, and sculptural installation. He completed his BFA in 2008 in Interdisciplinary Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montreal. In his personal practice Barndt creates immersive multidisciplinary installations often utilizing discarded materials and organic mater. As a community artist, Barndt coordinates participatory public art projects with youth and adults in underserved neighborhoods in Toronto. In 2011 Barndt was recognized for his exceptional work in this area, receiving the Toronto Arts Foundation’s first everArtists for Community Engagement (ACE) Award. As an emerging curator, Barndt specializes in facilitating art projects that activate the public realm with a focus on the material (e.g., use of recycled materials), social (e.g., engagement of specific communities), and spatial and temporal contexts (e.g., site-specific interventions) of the urban environment. As the program director of Whippersnapper Gallery, a radical government funded emerging artist centre based in Toronto, Barndt has curated over 18 exhibits and public art projects. He has additionally played a key administrative role in multiple emerging arts organizations in Canada. These roles include; Co-Director of the Art Matters Festival 2008 (Montreal), Coordinator of Youth Week of Art and Activism 2009 (Toronto), and the Executive Producer of Late Night in the Bedroom from 2009-2010 (Toronto). http://www.joshuabarndt.com/
Alex was recently the Director of Development for Watts House Project, an artist-driven urban redevelopment project located across from the historic Watts Towers neighborhood in South Los Angeles. Originally from upstate New York, Alex received her M.A. in Art History from the University of Southern California and graduated magna cum laude from Middlebury College. Alex is currently working to design radical strategies to leverage local skills and talent and empower communities to reimagine and redesign their city on their own terms.
Braden received his undergraduate degree in Landscape Architecture from The Pennsylvania State University. While there, he became a passionate urbanist, artist and student activist. After graduation, Braden continued to pursue community and environmental advocacy by founding Groundswell; A Community Environmental Rights Initiative. On November 8th, 2011, Groundswell passed a Community Environmental Bill of Rights banning Fracking by a popular vote in State College, PA –the first successful popular vote on such an initiative in the country.
Aubrey is a filmmaker and educator who focuses on the complex relationships between social and ecological life. She received her Bachelor of Art at Columbia College in Chicago, concentrating on film editing. She continued to study alternative pedagogies in early childhood education and English as a Foreign Language. She is currently receiving her Master of Science in Design and Urban Ecologies at Parsons the New School for Design. She is interested in how communities relate to water resources and new models for engagement that transcend disciplinary bounds.
Joel is an urbanist, civic ecologist, researcher and designer helping individuals, groups and institutions manage uncertainty in times of economic, societal and environmental change. Drawing on a background in urban planning, community development and sustainability, he employs innovative and participatory methodologies to embed himself into the urban complex and, using design, transform places of conflict into emergent and imaginative urbanisms that are able to anticipate the future.
Charlie Wirene is a green builder and GIS mapper living and working in NYC. He is currently working for the New York City Mayors Office creating GIS maps for city-led post Sandy recovery efforts.
Common Praxis 