The Ghost Bike Fellowship is a four-month paid creative residency for Brooklyn-based cyclists, pedestrians, and drivers to process the crisis of traffic violence in our borough. Fellows participate in workshops with local leaders in transportation justice, help maintain existing Ghost Bike memorials, and collaborate on an interactive public event that envisions a joyful future of safe streets in NYC. We welcomed six participants in this year's Fellowship.
Join us at JACK on October 26, 2025 for the culminating event!
Join us to celebrate this year's Community Fellowship process and experience the Fellows original designs for activating ghost bike memorials before they are installed around the city. Offer your own street stories to audio archives in collaboration with AskMo, an online advocacy tool and message board for navigating urban travel. Explore the Road Sharing Lounge designed to foster conversations for building solidarity by addressing the vulnerabilities and possibilities between drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians on an urban soft-scape. Share food, be in community, and learn more about the movement for Safe Streets.
This is a FREE community event with food provided, hosted by Future River (formerly Superhero Clubhouse).
RSVP to the October 26 Activation Event
2025 Fellows: Jules Dowling, Tracey Hinder, Ashera, Lateshia Peters, Brynne O’Rourke, and Caroline Wood
Fellowship Director: Jackie Rivera
Design Management: Lizzie Hurst
Activation Event Director: Nana Dakin
Activation Event Stage Manager: Juni Li
Event Producers: Natalie Desrosiers and Jem Pickard
Special Thanks:
Beam Center; Steve Scofield, Kevin Daloia and Leah Todd - NYC Street Memorials; Courtney Williams - The Brown Bike Girl; Recycle-A-Bicycle; Caitlin Toner at NYC DOT; Bobby Preti at Families for Safe Streets; Claudia Corcino with Ciclistas Latinoamericanos; Anne Krassner - Citi Bike; askMO; Ángela Azzolino, Get Women Cycling. Thank you to our Event helpers Mel Zago and Abha Deshmukh. And a big thank you to John-Phillip Faienza and JACK!
Ghost Bikes are white painted bicycles memorializing neighbors who have died while cycling. These memorials exist to warn drivers and cyclists of a dangerous intersection, and to honor the deceased person as a herald of safe streets advocacy. More than a cautionary tale, a Ghost Bike is a monument to the joy of biking, the right to free movement, self-determination, and the vision of safe streets for all.
The Ghost Bike Fellowship aims to:
- Bring together different stakeholders around the topic of transportation justice in Brooklyn.
- Create space for grief, joy, and discourse.
- Increase public awareness of the Ghost Bike memorials and activate them through art.
- Offer popular education on Safe Streets infrastructure and invite collective envisioning.
- Support existing advocacy groups and community leaders by amplifying their work.
FELLOWS BIOS
Julia Dowling is an urban geographer, holding a bachelor's in Geography and master's in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) from Clark University. Born and raised in the Bronx, Julia is passionate about open space accessibility and grassroots organizing towards better working and living conditions. She has organized with the Clark U Graduate Workers United organizing committee, District Council 37, and the Crown Heights Tenant Union. She loves reading, biking, spending time in the sun, painting, and cooking.
Tracey Hinder Originally from Canada, Tracey has been very involved on the NYC bike scene for the past 4 years. She leads social rides, is a member of all.ways women’s cycling club, does ultra-endurance randonneuring, races alleycats, and works as a bike messenger. In the future, Tracey would like to design and advocate for better, safer streets that work for everyone.
Brynne O’Rourke (they/them) is a Transfemme director, writer, and multidisciplinary artist dedicated to imagining a more just world. As an artist, Brynne commits themself to TRANS liberation. As someone who struggled (still struggles) to see their worth, they dedicate their artistry to radical self-love and worth for themself and the communities they inhabit. Inspired by sonya renee taylor, adrienne marie brown and many others, Brynne knows with each action we take we invite the world we want to live in, and hopefully, encourage others to join in its creation.
Lateshia (she/they) is an aspiring experiential science educator from Long Island, New York. With over 7 years of scientific research experience and a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and Philosophy, they found themselves falling in love with working outdoors as a microhauler with BK ROT and quickly developed an unwavering commitment to supporting environmental and climate justice initiatives in NYC. She’s passionate about food justice, urban green spaces, and community organizing. They’re excited to expand their environmental advocacy to transportation justice and further materialize safer and sustainable futures across NYC.
Ashera (she/her) is a lifelong Brooklynite dedicated to the healing and liberation of Lenapehoking by any means necessary. She is a musician/sound artist, cyclist, composter, gardener, close-observer, and lover. Ashera has a BA in Urban Ecology from CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies. Ashera's recent work has used sound to explore sites of militarization, industrialization, and ecological resilience in NYC and WA, transform bicycles into machines for collective sonic play, and move bodies.
Caroline Wood (she/her) is an arts administrator, educator, and artist. She currently lives in Brooklyn and works in Continuing Education for adult learners. Caroline is passionate about advocating for LGBTQIA+ rights, creating community-oriented and inclusive programming that enables all individuals to thrive, fighting for safe streets for bicyclists and pedestrians and de-centering cars from our communities, and expanding access to arts education. Outside of work, Caroline can be found on a bike or in a park, often at the same time.
The 2020-2022 LES Coastal Community Fellowship was a three-year paid creative residency for a group of neighbors and stakeholders in the Lower East Side of Manhattan to reflect on the decade since Hurricane Sandy, build upon existing community resilience to climate impacts, and envision a thriving future for the neighborhood through performance-making. Ten participants, selected from an open application process and follow-up interviews, met (virtually) in October 2020, presenting original work on Zoom, and in person in October 2021, presenting the next phase of work on Avenue B as part of Fourth Arts Block's Open Art Outside event. The LES Fellowship culminated in October 2022 at the ten-year anniversary of Sandy with a public performance event.
The 2020 & 2022 iterations of the LES Fellowship were co-produced and facilitated with Arts & Climate Initiative.
The 2020 Lower East Side Coastal Community Fellowship was made possible in part with public funds from Creative Learning, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of former Governor Andrew Cuomo and administered by LMCC. LMCC serves, connects, and makes space for artists and community.
October 22, 2022, 6pm
Flamboyan Theater in the Clemente Soto Vélez Center
107 Suffolk St., Manhattan
FREE
A performance event ten years after Superstorm Sandy weaving together video time capsules, historic love letters, multimedia explorations of a local supermarket’s legacy and short plays to tell stories of the neighborhood’s past and future climate resilience. Free food and drinks!
Created and performed by Keno Burckhardt, Jennifer Chiao, Antígona González, Amy Lee, Jonathan Martinez, Joshua Martinez, and Tatyanna Santana
Directed by Megan Paradis Hanley
Additional performances by Miranda Hall Jiménez and Jackie Rivera
Sound Design by Alyssa Jackson
Technical Support by Tavish Miller
Past LES Fellows included Felicia Gordon, Sandra Santana, and Minna Periniva
Watch Echoes of Liberation: A People’s Calling, the short film created by Donnay and Diana (with Raghav Ravi, Cyán Williams, and Nkoula Badila and her mom) and included as part of the June 20, 2020 Fellowship culminating Zoom event. In addition to sharing the film, Donnay and Diana led attendees in guided meditation, free writing, and collective song-making in the legacy of Freedom Songs. Congratulations to Donnay and Diana on their six-month collaboration!
2020 DUET FINALISTS
Cecilia Lim, Anita Raman, Cata Romo, Y?
2020 Fellowship Producer
Noelle Viñas is a Uruguayan-American playwright, educator, and theater-maker from Springfield, Virginia and Montevideo, Uruguay. She is a resident playwright at Playwrights Foundation and a 2019 Djerassi Resident Artist. Her play Derecho won the 2019 John Gassner Playwriting Award, was an Honorable Mention for the 2019 Jane Chambers Award, a 2019 Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship semifinalist and a 2019 Bay Area Playwrights Festival Finalist. Her play La Profesora was produced by TheatreFirst and is in development for a podcast called Abuelito with We Rise Production. Other past favorite jobs include being HowlRound’s first staff assistant at Emerson College, running Annandale High School’s theater program alongside Theater Without Borders in Virginia, and producing her play Apocalypse, Please in San Francisco with Kevin Vincenti. She is currently attending Brooklyn College for her MFA in Playwriting under Erin Courtney.
Thank you to our wonderful 2020 selection committee: Josh Browne (Ph.D., Columbia University Earth & Environmental Engineering, Founder Rho AI & Superhero Clubhouse Officer – New York, NY), Houston Cypress (Director, Love the Everglades Movement -Miccosukee Otter Clan), Shy Richardson (2019 Superhero Clubhouse Fellow and Program Director, El Puente Bushwick Leadership Center – New York, NY), Meena Malik (Program Manager, Theater, New England Foundation for the Arts – Los Angeles, CA), Claire Moodey (multidisciplinary theater artist & Superhero Clubhouse Ambassador- Brooklyn, NY), and Mauricio Pita (Community Programs Manager, Arena Stage & Superhero Clubhouse Ambassador- DC).
2018-2019 Fellows
Shy Richardson is a writer, performer, teaching artist, from New York City. She has performed internationally, in NYC, and has worked with youth from the barris of Barcelona, to the borough of Brooklyn. She believes wholly in the transformative nature of the arts, and their value in social justice and reform. She hopes to see the world using her art as a tour guide, as well as continue to use poetry and hip hop to inspire and develop youth at home, and beyond its borders.
Karina Yager leads interdisciplinary research on the human dimensions of climate change. Her current NASA research integrates satellite image analysis with ethnographic studies to understand climatic and social drivers of South American land use change. She works with indigenous pastoralists & local stakeholders to identify adaptive strategies for sustainable management of mountain ecosystems impacted by climate change. She is Assistant Professor in Sustainability Studies, School of Marine & Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, New York.
Shy and Karina collaborated for the first time in our 2018-2019 Fellowship to explore the displacement of Puerto Ricans following Hurricane Maria. Their piece, Trés Marias, is a new performance work that explores climate justice, Puerto Rican identity, and hope after hurricanes. Weaving personal stories of loss and resilience that bridge New York, Puerto Rico, and the glacial Andes, Trés Marias is a love poem to the communities that emerge from the wreckage of displacement.
2018-2019 Associate Fellows
In 2018-2019, performer/healer Aya Lane and photographer/filmmaker Imani Dennison created a work-in-progress performance, Drexciya Study II. Drexciya is an underwater mythical resistance story honoring the black diaspora’s complicated relationship to water. It seeks to question what can be done to help heal our relationship to water so that we don’t lose it. Click on their photos for full bios.
2018-2019 Fellowship Presentation
Originally called the Science and Stage Collaborative Fellowship, our residency program was piloted in the fall of 2016 in NYC with a mixed ensemble of theater and environmental professionals.
Our original Fellows were Anthony Dvarskas, Nadia Foskolou, James Kennedy, Jame McCray, Stephanie Pearl, Skye Van Rensselaer. The Fellowship was managed by Alexandra Tsubota. The Fellowship was originally conceived and developed by Sergio Botero, Josh Browne, Jonathan Camuzeaux, Lanxing Fu, Nada Petrovic, and Jem Pickard.
It was originally called the Science and Stage Collaborative Fellowship, an initiative uniting environmental professionals and theater artists in a semester-long residency to tackle pressing questions about humanity’s relationship to climate change.
The Fellowship was an opportunity to work collaboratively with professionals in other disciplines to address critical issues. Fellows actively practiced creating devised theater based on rigorous research, and learned new ways of communicating their work to a public audience.
From September-December 2016, the ensemble studied climate change topics and approaches to theater-making through a series of workshops, excursions, and rehearsals. The Fellowship culminated in the performance of a new work made by the ensemble, which took place on December 18, 2016 as the centerpiece of Superhero Clubhouse’s annual Solstice Celebration.