Futures Open Call

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CALL FOR PROPOSALS
 
The Benjamin Menschel Civic Projects Lab (CPL) recognizes that education is broader than the confines of academia. Our goal is to integrate The Cooper Union community with public life beyond the classroom. With transdisciplinary pathways to reach local and global communities, we aim to act collaboratively and respond to current issues to affect the greatest social change. This is complementary to both the historic and contemporary values of The Cooper Union. 
 
To that end, we are activating the CPL through a call for proposals that engage a combination of The Cooper Union’s disciplines – architecture, art, engineering, and the humanities and social sciences – to generate new ideas, solutions, or innovations for our shared civic life.   
 
We take as our starting point the phrase experimenta par discipliman, “experimenting beyond the discipline.” An experiment is intellectual work that is both speculative and hypothetically driven

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Applicants may propose a wide range of experiments that are performed to gain and expand knowledge. These might take the form of new initiatives, workshops, research, lectures, symposia, publications, installations or exhibitions, or public grant partnerships. 

Selected projects will have access to the full Civic Projects Lab, which includes flexible exhibition, classroom, programming, and gathering space.

Applications may be submitted at any time and will be evaluated on a rolling basis.

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2024–2025 Theme: FUTURES 
 
We currently welcome applications that respond to the 2024-25 curatorial framework, FUTURES. See an Executive Summary of the Curatorial Statement here.
 
 

One cannot imagine our futures without questioning what it means to be human through the myths, arts, science, and tenets of our time. What constitutes being? What does planetary stewardship entail? What is local and what is global? FUTURES is an invitation to redefine social constructs as sites of experimentation between the social, artistic, and scientific spheres of being. It is not a denunciation of the past, but rather a positioning of the imagination as an act of creating “future pasts” or plausible speculations of society as we know it. We look for projects that suggest an intermingling of indigenous and scientific traditions, or of the academic and speculative, of canon and the unknown, to reveal fertile pathways to solutions to multiple crises.

Goals and Application Requirements 

The CPL welcomes well considered submissions in alignment with the FUTURES theme. All are welcome to apply from within The Cooper Union community and from organizations, entities, and individuals beyond The Cooper Union.

We seek applications that:
·      are transdisciplinary and civic in impact and involvement
·      are speculative and exploratory in nature
·      engage the broad Cooper Union community
·      engage multiple disciplines within and outside of The Cooper Union
·      propose tangible impact while engaging multiple disciplines within and outside of The Cooper Union

We also strongly encourage applicants to present their submissions visually. (See Postcard Competition.)

Relevant subjects include but are not limited to housing, cultural heritage and preservation, climate change and environmental degradation, public health, xenophobia and discrimination, labor market integration, and social mobility. For more on these topics and other information, refer to the Curatorial Statement.

LINK TO THE FUTURES APPLICATION FORM
LINK TO THE FACILITIES FORM (REQUIRED)

Click here for the full curatorial statement: FUTURES
 

 

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.