Art in the Garden: Climate Cafe + Resourcing Ourselves for Natural Disaster

It’s hurricane season. Are you and your loved ones prepared? Join Climate Cafe NYC and receive materials from the NYC Department of Emergency Management to process climate emotions and learn how to keep you and your community safe in severe weather and natural disasters. We’ll start with a brief grounding through meditation, surrounded by plant allies from the garden, have an intimate discussion on climate emotions and our experiences with natural disasters, then receive materials to become more prepared and resilient. All ages welcome!

Your Facilitator: Gianna Lum

Gianna Lum is the co-founder of Climate Cafe NYC — a climate action community that hosts workshops on eco-anxiety, connects people to impactful local activism, and keeps everyone motivated through camaraderie, creativity, and fun. She earned a master’s in Climate and Society from Columbia University and has a background in climate science, communications, and policy. She has served in the nonprofit sector as a lead climate education facilitator and worked on climate models at NASA GISS. In her free time, Gianna enjoys figure skating, rollerblading, and experimenting with new sustainable baked goods recipes.

Grounded in the garden, join us to critically and creatively engage in a diversity of artmaking techniques that open us up to deeper dialogue on place, our relationships to our lived environments, ecological concerns, and contemporary culture. Learn meditative and mindful drawing, printmaking and sculptural techniques, scientific observation with plant portraiture, nature-inspired intuitive artmaking and mixed media exploration, and other various practices from botanical and ecologically-focused contemporary artists to create works of art to nurture your relationship to the garden.

Immerse yourself in the learning garden, greenhouse, and across Riverbank State Park’s green roof overlooking the Hudson River to create artwork that is rooted in place and in partnership with plants.

Workshops are rain or shine.

When inside the greenhouse and kitchen we will open our double-doors and windows to vent the space and encourage masking and social distancing when in more closed-in spaces.

Accessibility: Our kitchen/classroom space is wheelchair accessible. With prior planning, we can add a few small mats onto the pebbled ground of greenhouse to make a small wheel-chair accessible path. Our learning garden has grass paths, and the entrance is through a gate with a small, raised entrance. Our tables can be lowered/raised, and we have several backless benches or stools. Our kitchen is in regular use, and while we try to cook without peanuts, much of our cookware is shared and we cannot guarantee a nut-free environment. We have a first aid kit, and the closest AED is in another building several yards away. Drinking water is made available in refillable pitchers.

Our closest bathrooms are a building away, about a one-minute walk. A gender neutral bathroom is also available, and this is accessible by key which you can request from staff. We are not a scent-free zone, and because herbalism classes take place here, cannot guarantee that the site will be clear of any essential oil smells. If you have needs not addressed here, please reach out to Mallory Craig at mcraig@thehort.org.