How to Make Kensington Culture

As part of NOCD-NY’s Cultivating Neighborhood Networks project, writer Roohi Choudhry, cultural organizer Emily Ahn Levy, the Kensington Cultural Council, and fellow community members engaged in conversations, conducted interviews, attended events, and organized gatherings with community partners and neighbors, culminating in a publication entitled How to Make Kensington Culture. Research catalyzed in-depth discussions and was embedded in festivals and cultural programming, including the Kensington Community Iftar, a zine making workshop with youth, a Kensington Musicians Lunch and jam session, and a Celebrate Kensington event that highlighted the cultural community and project. The booklet is a love letter to Kensington, and the many people who have patched the neighborhood’s vibrant culture together with creativity and care.

We witness with honor and admiration as Kensington’s people harness culture to root themselves in this place while also upholding and remixing the cultural traditions they have brought from other places.
- Roohi Choudhry & Emily Ahn Levy

Excerpts are featured below:

Aunty-Uncle Organizing

Kensington was built by a network of aunties (and uncles), the secret sauce that binds the neighborhood. The term is used with deep respect and love for the labor of devoted folks who bring the best of their nurturing abilities to build a whole community of care.

When we met, we just sparked, and our ideas started gelling with all these collaborations.
- Jill Reinier, The Singing Winds

Kensington Community Iftar

Presented by Arts & Democracy, The Kensington Community Iftar at Avenue C Plaza has been bringing people together every year since 2017. It has grown over time and has become an anticipated staple of interfaith community gathering.

Boishakh Bengali New Year

The Singing Winds and Bangladesh Institute of Performing Arts (BIPA) collaborate on several events together, bringing together their varied talents and audiences. The Boishakh Bengali New Year celebration includes cultural performances and a parade through local plazas, streets, and a playgrounds.

..In Dhaka, they do a New Year parade with mask motif. And we both got crazy dreaming and said, let’s do it together. That’s how I found a friend in Kensington…that’s where I see that a community builds like that.
- Annie Ferdous, PIBA

Día de los Muertos

Casa Cultural’s annual event at Avenue C Plaza presents and preserves Mexican folk arts traditions for neighbors. The celebration grows larger every year, uniquely bringing multilingual communities together, which was especially important in years of heightened community loss during the pandemic.

For that brief moment, not only are we celebrating those who passed away, but we are interacting with one another, sharing those moments, hearing those stories.
- Cynthia Fortozo, Casa Cultural

Summer at Avenue C Plaza

Every Summer, ArtBuilt Mobile Studio co-hosts programming on Avenue C Plaza. In collaboration with Kensington Cultural Council members such as Casa Cultural, BIPA, Arts & Democracy, The Singing Winds, NOCD-NY and community partners, June is activated with arts and crafts workshops, language lessons, performances, celebrations, games and more.

I take so much pride, especially in the culture in Kensington. Because it’s not just like a monolith, obviously – you have little Bangladesh, you have Little Pakistan. But then you also have the Latinx community, you have the Sudanese community. And it definitely shows in the type of plaza programming that we put on for each other.
- Aamnah Khan, resident and leader

Rooted in this Place

Avenue C Plaza is a hub for cultural life in Kensington. Converted from a former parking lot, the plaza is an illustration of how the people built this neighborhood’s vibrant culture out of the resources they had available.

It is probably one of the only places that encourages this immersion of the different communities that live in a neighborhood. It’s the only place where at Día de Los Muertos you see Bangladeshis attend.
- Shahana Hanif, NYC Council Member

Care Through Crisis

The people of Kensington have a long history of pulling together and forging bonds in their hardest times. From surveillance and deportations in the wake of 9/11 to the devastation wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic, community members responded with mutual aid, spiritual care, and above all, kindness.

Women and Femmes Taking Up (Public) Space

Many young women who grew up in the neighborhood struggled with the scarcity of public space where they could simply be themselves. That’s changing – and the plaza is an important part of this evolution – but it is still limited. Women and girls in the neighborhood need more public spaces where they are comfortable and can cultivate the relationships that are vital to their well-being.

I really believe Muslim women are at the heart and center of so much movement building, building space, especially in this country.
- Hasiba Haq, Arts & Democracy

Celebrate Kensington! Culture + Community + Care

Celebrate Kensington! was a culminating event held in June at Avenue C Plaza to showcase community culture and share the project’s research and printed booklet. It celebrated the neighborhood’s food, music, textiles, and the close-knit network of people who make them happen.

photos and video: Celebrate Kensington! activities with community partners and Music jam session with BIPA, Yoshie Fruchter, Ilya Shneyveys, Rich Sein, and other local musicians. Video: Caron Atlas; photos: Shiva Muthiah and Angela Co.