Art Submissions are now being accepted for 2013 May, June, and September exhibitions

Ponds, streams, swales & a solar-powered composting greenhouse

Please send digital files to Paula Hewitt Amram, openroadpark@gmail.com for consideration in our May, June, and September exhibitions in public school cafeterias and Children's Museums citywide.

Criteria:
Art, Architecture and 3D art will be considered on the topic of Food. A systems and campus approach grounded in real locations is preferred.

Artists whose work is accepted will receive an installation fee. Please contact us for more information. openroadpark@gmail.com

Open Road Rooftop 350 Grand Street at Essex in Manhattan

Update: Rooftop sessions will begin again soon for LoMa students on the roof

In 2012 we had a team of 50 skaters + artists from all over NYC volunteering at the roof with kids from all 5 schools in the building. Thank you all.

This year we will focus on after school for-credit skate sessions with Loma, Lower Manhattan Arts Academy, a High School in the 350 Grand Street Campus, since we will be working around roof construction schedules.

Food and Body Art @225Adelphi

I was at the school building today to talk with Augusta about art and food. We met in the cafeteria, under this tree.

We're thinking about a late May art show with a snack bar, and a late June art show with a lunch. We'll grow the food all around the schoolyard and make food art in the classrooms and outside. Food Art will be open to interpretation. A seven year old made the Banana and an adult made the Kitchen.

For the late May show maybe we could put a thousand tiny holes in the cafeteria tree. PS20 students made it for an April event and they have to demolish it when they're done. We'll ask if it can stay a bit longer. The tree can sprout art, some from the bark like tree ears, some from the leaves like strange fruit hooked into the tiny holes.

Lightweight garlands and stained glass panels made of translucent paper and thinly sliced fruit can hang over windows so the light can shine through.

For the June show the GREEN ARCHITECTURE team will show its work . Based in the school, this team is making digital models of the building, green roof, and playground. Some will be printed on Sound Absorbing panels made of cotton and wool that slip in and out of metal brackets. Others will be printed by Cornell students on foam core board light enough to hang on Velcro strips. Easy to change.

Here are some people from GREEN ARCHITECTURE working:

Vice article on Skateboarding in the Community

Click the pic to read about skate clinics we do every summer

"I arrived in Brownsville and cruised down Grant avenue, crossed the highway, and entered Robert Venable Park... Fortunately, all nine skateboards were still in the skate mobile after a full week of touring distant parks ranging from Fort Green, to Red Hook, and now further into Brooklyn, Brownsville. We have met the halfway point of the two week long Open Road: “Learn to Skateboard” program"

ESPN article on Skateboarding Advocacy

Paula Hewitt (lower right) and the crew at the White House

"....For Hewitt, their cause is a civil rights issue, so the White House was a perfect venue. "Skateboarders are a class that is discriminated against," she says. "They are often prevented from engaging in a legal activity in public places." Click the pic for the article on ESPN. 

Schoolyard spots: Food, Skateboarding + Art

FOOD

FOOD is an environmental art project with artist, architect and youth leadership. Through free art, architecture, and garden design sessions we create new gardens, improve existing growing environments, and create access to fresh healthy food with youth leadership. We are working in low income neighborhoods in Lower Manhattan, the North Shore of Staten Island, Crown Heights Brooklyn, Fort Greene Brooklyn, Jamaica, Queens, and the South Bronx.

Food related art communicates with the community to expand the impact of these gardens. We are changing menus of free public food programs in each of these five zones to incorporate fresh food grown in NYC gardens and local farms.  We hold free public events involving the community in designing, growing, cooking, and reimagining food systems.

Art & Illustration by Paula Hewitt Amram

 

Schoolyard

In this Schoolyard design you can see the original 1949 design with areas for composting, miniature greenhouses, food gardens, and outdoor classrooms. Children and teenagers working with us have added baseball fields, ponds, and grass fields. Architects added a conceptual design for a green roof. Click the word "Schoolyard" above to see it in 3D.

Schoolyard II

Here is the same schoolyard, with different designs shown, including a track, skateboarding ledges that double as benches, baseball and tennis.
NYC Public School Green Roof and Schoolyard :

Food Map

Youth working with Open Road are mapping Schools, Parks, Pools, and Public Housing Projects that serve free meals to kids and teens. We’re working to include more fresh, local fruits and vegetables.

These maps include locations of after school and summer programs where children in the programs depend on these free meals.

When the meals are served at a place with a school garden, or public housing garden, the map shows this. Nearby farmers markets, food cooperatives, and urban farms and gardens are also shown.

We are using data for the maps from public lists of free meal locations and we are doing site visits to confirm that meals are served there, that anyone under 19 is welcome, and whether fresh fruits and vegetables are included in the meal. We're mapping the condition of food producing gardens, if any.

We are working on collecting and mapping data in five zones in NYC.
Zone 1: Lower Manhattan, based in the Seward Park Campus at 350 Grand (at Essex).
Zone 2: Staten Island, North Shore, based in Faber Park and Pool on Richmond Terrace.
Zone 3: Brooklyn, Fort Greene and Crown Heights, based in PS20 Arts & Letters, 225 Adelphi.
Zone 4: Queens, Jamaica/Far Rockaway, based in Susan B Anthony Intermediate School 238.
Zone 5: South Bronx, based in JFK High School.

As this data is collected we are immediately putting it on a free public map. http://goo.gl/maps/pCi86
This map will be offered free to www.oasisnyc.net, GoogleEarth, and any other free mapping sites.
We need volunteers to do any of these three things:

1) Take lists of public meals locations and put them on the map. Add dates meals are supposed to be served.
2) Visit any of these locations and see if meals are being served. If you visit with a person under 19, see if they are allowed to take food, without showing any i.d. Check if fresh fruit and vegetables are served.
3) Work with us to cultivate a team of youth and adult advocates working on this subject.

#1 you can do this from home, or a public library with an internet connection, or anywhere you like.
#2 you can do this on your own at any public meals site at the time & date shown as a public meal time.
#3 you can do this with us.

If you are interested in being involved for any amount of time between April and October 2013, please email Paula Hewitt Amram at openroadpark@gmail.com. Or, just go ahead and add to the map.

You may volunteer once, or for the entire project. Any of your help is sincerely appreciated.
For more information please see
www.playgrounddesign.blogspot.com

Pros + Cons: Artificial Turf and Live Grass Fields

I've designed, planted, and installed playing fields in public art and playground projects for over 30 years in NYC, Newark, and Boston. Outside the US I've helped with grass fields, gardens, and playground projects in Cuba, Mexico, and Toronto. All public, high traffic projects with active play. I've monitored and studied the fields I've designed, installed, or helped with, some now over 20 years old. Based on this experience I would say almost any product (except a toxic one) has its uses DEPENDING on the conditions you will use it in. Therefore there is no general recommendation here on brands, or types of fields. Live grass, breathable artificial turf, and Astro-Turf all have their place in the world.

Artificial Turf
There are now many brands of artificial turf besides the famous "astro-turf". I've used a lot of "breathable" brands that allow air and water to go through the turf into the soil below. Some we installed with infill (little rubber bits made of recycled tires) and some without. You can find brands that are "cooler". There are many cons to artificial turf but I still install it, because it makes a soft play area in previously unusable spots. You can look for a brand with high recycled content, softer blades of grass, breathable material, and non-toxic infill. Look at the MSDS (material safety data sheet) and look up the brand with CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission).

Pros:
You don't need to water artificial turf and it doesn't need re-seeding or rest, like live grass. Breathable artificial turf can protect and improve the soil below when installed with a green, living systems approach. Topsoil can be conserved, moisture levels can stay stable, worms and soil microorganisms can be protected and improve the health of the soil below over time. This all depends on how the turf is installed, how it's maintained, and how the soil is treated once the turf is eventually removed. Cooler brands are more comfortable. You can buy artificial turf with a high percentage of recycled content and you can also shop around for a softer "blade" of grass. You can ask companies to send you samples so you can feel them.

Cons:
There is no such thing as "no maintenance". An artificial turf field is just as hard to maintain as live grass. Any object in a public place with moving parts (like blades of real or fake grass, infill) will be high maintenance. Artificial turf needs to be combed and fluffed up and you need to have skilled people do this by hand or by truck. Turf with infill gets messy. Turf without infill gets hard. Infill is the little rubber bits that keep the blades of grass up, and make the turf feel spongy. The little rubber bits accumulate along the lowest points of the field. Piles of infill start to form. The infill gets in hair in clothes. The infill degrades and becomes dust. This dust is made of petroleum and rubber products and isn't healthy to breathe. Even "cooler" brands get much hotter than live grass on a hot day. A "heat island" effect gets set up, where the heat from the sun and surrounding air bounces back up onto you from the field and it is intolerable. Companies know this and are working on it but it's still hot. The infill dust is toxic if it's made of petroleum products. Look it up on the MSDS. You can buy vacuums and brusher-trucks to keep the infill loose and vaccuum up the extra bits, but then you lose a lot of infill over time.  You can't just put it back in, since it needs to be mixed with the turf a certain way in the factory.

Turf without infill gets compacted (packed down) and hard. With maintenance the turf can stay fluffier, but it will be much harder than turf with infill. These infill/turf systems are really designed to be used with the infill. If you buy repurposed turf you can buy it without infill for about $1/square foot. It also weighs less without the infill. With infill it weighs several pounds per square foot, without about a pound per square foot.

Live Grass
In high traffic locations (10+ kids a day) fields need periods of rest. During the resting time, they need to be reseeded, aerated (a fork or a pencil inserted down into the grass loosens roots and compacted soil), and carefully watered.

Pros
Live grass fields are beautiful, smell great, attract a wide variety of organisms, and can host multiple species of grasses and small flowers (clover, dandelion) within a living system. When you fall on a live grass field it "gives" to some degree. You don't get a rug burn like you can on artificial grass. It is much much cooler than artificial grass. It provides oxygen and a cooling effect on the air around it.

Cons
Even with very good care a live grass field is very difficult to maintain. When people see your field in a resting period they hop the fence and play on it anyway, and allow their dogs onto it, and the rest time is over. It becomes a muddy pit that changes into a dusty hard central circle of dirt surrounded by a little live grass. Any successful public live grass field gets a lot of rest, irrigation (by hand or underground pipes), and frequent re-seeding. Education can help to improve the relationship between your community and your field.

Writing & Photographs by Paula Hewitt Amram. For more info: openroadpark@gmail.com

Art, Skateboarding, Food

Art by Paula Hewitt Amram from AIR, a wordless comic

Our Flatbush Director Keith White

http://espn.go.com/action/skateboarding/story/_/id/8724826/airwalk-already-famous-campaign-film-project-premieres-nyc

The Art of FOOD

This summer 2012 join us as Open Road connects fresh local food from NYC community gardens and NY State farms with free food, skateboarding, and art programs.

Where: In Fort Green/Clinton Hill and Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Jamaica, Queens, and in St. George and the North Shore of Staten Island.

What: Our programs take place after school, weekend, and summer, and use the resources available within schools and within the public feeding programs based in schools to serve the public.

How: Open Road Youth leaders are teaching peers, adults, and kids to plant, grow, harvest, prepare and cook their own fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs. We're working with families to help them use SNAP benefits to purchase food growing plants in local farmers markets. This mutually supports the family, the farmers market host park, and the farmer. These plants are grown in community gardens located in school yards, rooftops and inside school buildings. This helps the school with summer care of the garden, and helps the family with a free place to grow food to harvest.

Why: Resources that already exist can be improved. Our Open Road Youth leaders are negotiating with public feeding sites (schools where free breakfast and lunch is served to anyone under 19). These negotiations aim to include more fresh locally grown fruits and vegetables in these free food programs in Fort Green/Clinton Hill, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Jamaica, Queens, and in St. George and the North Shore of Staten Island.

Our Open Road Youth leaders and Open Road adult staff are negotiating with and maintaining programs with School Food managers and cafeteria staff and the USDA. The aim of these relationships is the have the USDA buy additional quantities of the fresh fruits and vegetables grown in the school gardens, in amounts adequate to serve the entire feeding site.

Our kids at PS 20 Arts & Letters interview Wyclef

Film copyright Arts & Letters

Jobs available with Open Road

This summer 2012 our youth staff are creating art & videos about skate brand corporate structure and researching support vs. exploitation of urban, youth, and black culture.

This includes core brands like Alien Workshop and Krooked, as well as brands like Airwalk and Nike

http://www.unc.edu/~andrewsr/ints092/vandu.html

As of January 1, 2012 our organization declined any Nike donations or athletic sponsorships based on Nike's sweatshop practices internationally.

As of June 1, 2012 our organization will not accept Airwalk donations or athletic sponsorships.

Join us Sunday June 3 at Canarsie Skatepark for a skate jam with contests in between with KeithTooBlackTooBeWhite!

Join us Sunday June 3 at Canarsie Skatepark for a skate jam with contests in between with KeithTooBlackTooBeWhite!

Please welcome our new Flatbush Director Keith 2Black2BWhite

For Immediate Release:
February 29, 2012
For more information contact Paula Hewitt Amram openroadpark@gmail.com

Please welcome our Flatbush Director Keith 2Black2BWhite as he kicks off the End-of-Winter-that-Wasn’t contest series.

Join Keith at PS 206 this Sunday March 4th from 2 to 6pm

Keith is throwing each contest at a surprise new spot in Brooklyn each week. Come skate spots you never knew. The series is sponsored by NYC skaters and skater run companies: Homage, Banco Tendencies, Culture Skateboards, Jason Oliver Goodman, Open Road and Keith.

This Sunday March 4th at PS 206 the format will be best trick on (or off) the ledge. Prizes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd place.

To RSVP and for updates: http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/137141079742091/
Address:
PS 206, Brooklyn
Joseph F Lamb School
2200 gravesend neck road,
Brooklyn NY

Open Road is a NYC based non-profit that advocates for public access to public places for everybody.

Keith 2Black2BWhite has been quietly holding down the NYC skate scene for years with his volunteering and raw hypeness at events. Finally given the chance to do something, he decided to put on his own events for the kids of Brooklyn because there aren’t many events in this borough.

Citywide Skatepark Map Featured Park: Rockaway

Click here to go to the Map. Photo: Yasmine Tucker

Today in Fort Greene

In the playground of PS 20 Arts + Letters in Fort Greene Brooklyn skateboarding, BMX, and basketball co-exist with kindergarten kids playing, unfenced, nearby.

An ollie over the gap contest that pitches the skateboarders right into the busy play equipment doesn't faze anyone. In fact the kids follow the skaters around, asking to borrow their boards. And when someone lands a trick they shout. Then they try it.

Tarela Kelvin Ebiotu, (above), a graduate of PS 20 and now a college student nearby, shows the kids how it's done. Thanks Tarel.

Winter Contest + Skate Advocacy at Susan B in Jamaica Queens Dec 28 2011

photo by Eric Cooper

Skate Contest and Advocacy Wed Dec 21, 4pm

Join us Wed Dec 28 Wed Dec 21 at 4pm at Susan B 238 in Queens. Contest 4-5, Advocate for public access to public parks (including 12+A) 5-6pm.


New Breed skateboards - Jamaica clip from newbreedskateboards on Vimeo.

For Directions click here

Please Welcome our New Director of Skateboarding Rob Campbell

For Immediate Release

December 18, 2011
For more information please contact: Paula Hewitt Amram, openroadpark@gmail.com

We are pleased to announce that Rob Campbell, pro skater, NYC native, and owner of New Breed Skateboards, is the new Director of Skateboarding for Open Road.

Please join us in welcoming him at his upcoming work with us in our Skateboarding Physical Education classes, our annual skateboarding events, and our advocacy to ensure skate spots remain open to the public citywide.

Welcome Rob!

For more information:
http://www.nyskateboarding.com/2010/07/introducing-new-breed-skateboards-by-rob-campbell-2010/
http://www.nyskateboarding.com/2010/03/after-midnight-am-springsummer-lookbook-2010/
http://airspeed.us/team/detail/35
http://www.openroadny.org/

Help get 12+A open to the public

join us Thur 4pm at the Rooftop, 350 Grand Street, NYC. RSVP to openroadpark@gmail.com

12+A/Open Road Park

Donations from Vans this past summer 2011, were spent to pay Sean, Billy, Tim, East Side students and skaters to keep the park open under Paula's volunteer supervision, up until August 18, 2011. This public access for skaters and everyone else was led by Paula, Open Road/12+A founder, until the school shut down public access.

As of September 2011 Vans donations have instead gone directly to East Side. East Side is now saying the park is closed to the public. Please contact us at openroadpark@gmail.com to advocate for public access.

Income: May to August 2011, 4 months x 1750 = $7,000

Payments: May to August 2011: $7,183.00

Funds paid from Open Road, May to August 2011 to
Sean Nguyen, Billy Rohan, Tim Rutgers, for work at Open Road Park/12+A from May 1, 2011 to Aug 18, 2011 and to summer jobs for East Side students/skateboarders: Maria Grant (East Side student/skater), Joshelly (East Side student/skater), Swing replacements for Park; parts and hardware: $400.00 (receipts)

Total: $7,183.00

Breakdown by person

Sean Nguyen, May 1, 2011 to June 30, 2011: $1,533.00

Billy Rohan, July 7, 2011 to August 18, 2011: $1,450.00

Tim Rutgers, July 7, 2011 to August 18, 2011: $1,400.00

Maria Grant and Joshelly: July 7 to August 18: $2,400

Paula Hewitt, May 1, 2011 to August 30, 2011: 10 hrs/wk for 10 weeks provided to supervise public access for skaters and everyone, volunteer

connect the beat

Join us on the Rooftop Sun Nov 6 1:30 to 4:30 for Connect the Beat

Advocate for Healthy Food in Your School Cafeteria. Come to this event at 350 Grand Street, NYC Monday Oct 24 at 12noon, in the school cafeteria. RSVP to openroadpark@gmail.com

New Design and East Side High Schools: food gardens + skateparks with teenagers

Prove It: Improving Parks with Youth

Right now, youth/adult teams are planning improvements to Faber Park in Staten Island, Forest Park in Queens, and Betsy Head Park in Brownsville, Brooklyn. You can add your own information about any park to the NYC skate/BMX park map so everyone can see it.

Click the pic of the Forest Park locals to see our NYC skate/BMX park map combined with Oasis. You can create a custom map showing your skatepark together with subways, flood zones, elected officials, schools, and other information you can use to advocate for park improvements, in Oasis.

Our Prove It programs are supported by the Levitt Foundation, and by individual volunteers.

AfroPunk OpenRoad 2011

AfroPunk Free School at Commodore Barry Park


View NYC skate/bike park map in a larger map

At AfroPunk in August 2011 we'll have a week long free school at Commodore Barry Park led by pros in BMX skate + photography/art. Free. Ages 13-18. email us at openroadpark@gmail.com for more info.Kids will produce professional level photographs and art work and compete in skate and BMX comps during the Afro-Punk festival. Click here to view the curriculum framework for the school. Click here for our photo/art curriculum. Click here for our skateboarding curriculum.

Check out Tracy Landon, 18yrs old when he made this as part of our AfroPunk arts program.

Open Road Park

Above photo, far left: Paula and Tim from Open Road with volunteers in 1993, placing the landfill liner to remediate the contaminated soil at Open Road Park. For more pictures of kids and Open Road turning this place from a contaminated vacant lot into a park, go to this link

Click the timeline below to see how we got rid of an infamous 90's era drug spot in the Lower East Side, and replaced it with a park open to skateboarding, gardening, basketball, volleyball and teen programs. Click here to support these free programs.

Click this link for a New York Times article about our skateboarding classes with East Side Community High School, where girls and boys learn in Open Road Park.

See the Sports Illustrated Teen cover story on Open Road Park here

Click this link for a New School Press article, and here for an ABC News story about our fun positive programs for girls and boys on the Lower East Side.

Click the pic for directions to Squibb Park

Thomas Greene Park

Thomas Greene Park review from Quartersnacks...

"The people at Open Road, California Skateparks, Friends of Douglass Greene Park, and the Tony Hawk Foundation were smart enough to figure out that the best thing for New York, a place predominantly filled with ledge skaters, a place where twenty people would line up to skate a concrete island into traffic in the back of Union Square, would be to put three ledge-like obstacles in a basketball court, as opposed to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a wedge ramp to a ledge with a Euro gap three feet after it. Now at Douglass Greene Park on 3rd Avenue and Degraw Street ...they have a bench with one curved side and another straight side, a low manual pad, and an up-and-down sort of triangle ledge, all on familiar basketball court ground. Take the D, N or R to Union Street, skate north for two blocks, and make a left on Degraw"...

Sat May 7th Thomas Jefferson Park, Harlem

Billy Rohan presents Element Make it Count and King of Spring at Street Games in Harlem on Saturday May 7th 11am to 3pm. Open Road and New York City Parks invite you to join our hosts Billy, Alex Corporan, Rodney Torres, and Donny Barley. Contest runs 11am to 4pm with a course designed by Billy using Element Drop Spot obstacles. A dozen skaters will lead free skate clinics for the kids. Parks Dept is open to more skate spots cause we're telling them the numbers of skaters justify it, so come out May 7th and prove it.