Site visit with the Center for Justice Innovation and teens participating in Making Space for Youth
WhyWOW Studio is the creative consulting practice of C Meranda Flachs-Surmanek (Queens), Diksha Pilania (Dallas, TX), and Steven T. Licardi (Queens). Through original performances, creative strategy, public space interventions, and workshops and trainings, we work with everyday leaders to reclaim the collective sensory experiences that tell the stories of their communities, and shape just futures.
We are active in the grassroots movement to safeguard public housing in NYC. We are supporting artists and activists across Appalachian Virginia to create new forms of culture that uphold democracy at the local level, democratize history, and rehabilitate culture and lifeways nearly lost policies of genocide and erasure. Across NYC, we develop living history projects to counter social isolation through creative means. In Nagpur, India, we work with residents in informal settlements to redesign the interiors of their homes.
The groups we work with show their communities and our country that people have always resisted targeted depravation with hope and strategy.