BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange's EmergeNYC 2025 Applications to Open This Winter

EmergeNYC at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange is an incubator and affinity network for socially engaged artists to develop their creative voice, explore the intersections of art and activism, and connect to a thriving community of BIPOC, migrant, and LGBTQIA+ practitioners.

The programs—designed for artists who are either beginning their careers or feeling a sense of urgency to move into new territory—provide an opportunity to spend an intensive period of training, exchange, mentorship, and challenging conversations with a specific focus on racial justice and cultural transformation. Rather than training in one specific craft, participants immerse themselves in a challenging, supportive environment, engaging with multiple lineages and approaches to art-making. They delve into issues of personal significance as they engage in the work, and with one another, as their whole selves. Participants leave the programs having deeply researched questions that become the heart of their artistic and activist work.

There are two EmergeNYC programs this year: the Flagship Program at the BAX Annex led by george emilio sánchez and The Virtual Program, Analog Bodies and Virtual Activations, led by Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful and Marlène Ramírez-Cancio via Zoom. Applications open Monday, December 2 and will be due Thursday, January 23.  

An information session for both programs will be held on Thursday, December 12 at 5:30 PM Eastern Time via Zoom. Please register using this link.

The Flagship Program, in person at the BAX Annex, is comprised of weekly workshops facilitated by george, as well as workshops by guest artists who are leaders in the field of performance and politics. With a decolonial lens, participants will explore the intersection of art and activism through creative writing, autobiographical narratives, group work, and other multi-disciplinary adventures—all while creating and re-creating a space in which artists build community with one another, actively listen with their bodies, and build intentional trust to lay a foundation where compassion and risk-taking guide the work. 

The Flagship Program will run every Sunday (10:00 AM – 2:00 PM Eastern Time) from March 16 to June 15 at 80 Hanson Place, 1st Floor, Brooklyn. Final works-in-progress will be presented live at the BAX Building (421 5th Ave, Brooklyn) on Saturday, June 21. Financial aid will be available to cover part of the tuition on a need basis.

For The Virtual Program, Analog Bodies and Virtual Activations, participants are encouraged to investigate genders, sexualities, class, race, politics, and spiritualities from the interstitial space between the analog and the digital.

The virtual iteration of Emerge, which takes place via Zoom every Saturday from March 15 to June 14 (11:00 AM – 3:00 PM Eastern Time). Final works-in-progress will be presented online at the end of the program on Sunday, June 15. Financial aid will be available to cover part of the tuition on a need basis.