Project Team and Jury

About CUP

CUP makes educational projects about places and how they change. Our projects bring together art and design professionals—artists, graphic designers, architects, urban planners—with community-based advocates and researchers-organizers, government officials, academics, service-providers and policymakers. These partners work with CUP staff to create projects ranging from high school curricula to educational exhibitions.

Our work grows from a belief that the power of imagination is central to the practice of democracy, and that the work of governing must engage the dreams and visions of citizens. CUP believes in the legibility of the world around us. What can we learn by investigation? By learning how to investigate, we train ourselves to change what we see.

Jury

Omar Freilla, Green Worker Cooperatives
Sarah Ludwig, Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project
Charles Blow, The New York Times
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Yale University School of Art

To see last year's jury click here.

Press Information

For press inquiries, please contact Valeria by phone at 718-596-7721

Project Team

John Mangin, project manager
Christine Gaspar, executive director
Rosten Woo, advisor
Valeria Mogilevich, advisor
Damon Rich, CUP founder & chairman, advisor
Linked by Air, designers
Megan Woo, coder

Program conceived by Rosten Woo, with Valeria Mogilevich
and Damon Rich

Omar Freilla

Omar Freilla has been named one of “The New School of Activists Most Likely to change New York City” by City Limits magazine (2000). Raised in the South Bronx, where he continues to live, he has gained international recognition as an outspoken environmental justice activist who has dedicated himself to seeking solutions to the disproportionate environmental impacts faced by low-income communities of color. He is the founder and director of Green Worker Cooperatives (GWC), an organization dedicated to the creation of worker-owned and environmentally friendly businesses in the South Bronx. Through GWC, he is working to develop ReBuilders Source, the first worker-cooperative reuse center for building materials that will help create a new generation of “green collar” jobs and help reduce the generation and export of waste. His writing on community opposition to transportation racism in New York City was published in 2004 by South End Press in the book “Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity” edited by Robert Bullard. Omar has received numerous awards for his work including the Open Society Institute’s New York City Community Fellowship, the Union Square Award for grassroots activists, the Environmental Leadership Program fellowship, and the Jane Jacobs Medal for New Ideas and Activism. He has also been featured in the 2007 environmental documentary “The 11th Hour” produced by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Sarah Ludwig

Sarah Ludwig is the Co-Director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, a leading advocate on community equity and financial justice issues. Since founding NEDAP in 1995, she has worked with hundreds of grassroots groups to develop local organizing and advocacy strategies to address redlining and lending discrimination. Sarah co-leads New Yorkers for Responsible Lending, a state-wide coalition of more than 140 community and consumer groups and community financial institutions dedicated to combating predatory lending practices. Sarah was a 2000 fellow in the Rockefeller Foundation's Next Generation Leadership Program, and in 2002 received the Union Square Award. In 2004, she was selected as a Ford Foundation Leadership for a Changing World awardee. Sarah recently completed a 3-year term on the Federal Reserve Board's Consumer Advisory Council, and serves on the boards of directors of the Consumer Federation of America and North Star Fund. In December 2008, she received New York Lawyers for the Public Interest's Felix A. Fishman Award, for "her exceptional service on behalf of low income communities."

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Graphic Design at Yale University School of Art, received a BA in art history from Barnard College, Columbia University and a MFA in the graphic design area of study at Yale University School of Art, as well as honorary doctorates from California College of the Arts and Moore College of Art. She is on the first list of 40 honored as the most influential people in design by I-D, and in 2004 Sheila was awarded the American Institute of Graphic Arts gold medal awarded since 1920 to individuals who have set standards of excellence over a lifetime of work. Her award winning print graphics are in the special collections of museums and libraries here and abroad as are her site-specific public artworks. Whether in print or permanent materials, Sheila specializes in the inclusion of local populations and multiple perspectives in her work.

Charles Blow

Charles M. Blow is The New York Times's visual Op-Ed columnist. Mr. Blow joined The New York Times in 1994 as a graphics editor and quickly became the paper's graphics director, a position he held for nine years. In that role, he led The Times to a best-in-show award from the Society of News Design for the Times's information graphics coverage of 9/11, the first time the award had been given for graphics coverage. He also led the paper to its first two best-in-show awards from the Malofiej International Infographics Summit for work that included coverage of the Iraq war. Mr. Blow went on to become the paper's Design Director for News before leaving in 2006 to become the Art Director of National Geographic Magazine.