Free! Event at capacity, RSVP to join the waitlist: fiona@projecteats.org
How can an urban farm become a living classroom for poetry and music? In collaboration with Department of Transformation and Project EATS, interdisciplinary conceptual artist Ekene Ijeoma presents Black Forest School, a gathering centering African and Black American relationships with nature. Convened within a temporary architecture of customized milk crates, Black Forest School will be complemented by a collectively-prepared community meal courtesy of Carry, Zacarias González and Chong Gu’s modular sculpture and mobile kitchen.
Black Forest is Ijeoma’s nationwide project of planting trees for Black ancestors and distributing multimedia on Black Nature as a living monument and archive for Black lives. Black Forest School is a series of programs and network of spaces focused on archiving and presenting Black perspectives on nature across various forms of expression and modes of knowledge. At the Project EATS Rooftop Farm at Essex Crossing, Black Forest School will feature a large-scale participatory poetry relay set to live jazz performance, sampling from Ijeoma’s collection of 400+ poems that will make up Black Forest’s eco-poetry hotline.
Printed on dining tray liners, the poems featured in Black Forest School will intersect with Carry—a system of reconfigurable modular structures that transform into a mobile kitchen—conceived by transdisciplinary artists Zacarias González and Chong Gu. Carry will activate Project EATS’ capacity for shared nourishment through a plant-based community meal, and as platforms for gathering, both Black Forest School and Carry model the power of informal social architectures to catalyze and document conversation and connection in the context of Project EATS’ urban farms.
Third Wednesdays: Project EATS x DOT
Launching Summer 2026, this free monthly program of artist-led gatherings invites community members to experience Project EATS, the living citywide installation of urban farms created by artist and activist Linda Goode Bryant, as a site of discovery, inspiration, and connection.
Third Wednesdays celebrates living legacies of urban ecologies and artistic land stewardship, drawing on experimental creative practices to activate Project EATS’ urban farms as sites of collective learning and healing. Across a variety of participatory modes, the LES-based, artist-organized group Department of Transformation (DOT) and a roster of invited guest artists, activists, and farmers will honor the histories and envision the futures of transformative movements for community food sovereignty and cultivating the urban commons.
Black Forest School is organized by Sam Rauch for Department of Transformation. DOT is supported by The Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center.
