New World Haven
New World Haven
An Interactive Digital Narrative Project
The creative, cultural and technological renaissance taking place in New Haven is of critical value to a world shifting towards the centering of creative economies.
The New World Haven narrative project is documenting this renaissance in a way that engages New Havenites across generations, cultures, neighborhoods and histories.
Through community-led Strategic Storytelling, New World Haven is cementing New Haven as the Silicon Valley for the Arts.
New World Haven is funded in part by the Mellon Foundation through the New Haven Arts Council.
A Communal Dreaming Project
Without community there is no Liberation.
How to Engage
Events, Installations and Digital Conversations
Through tablet installations at strategic locations, community members will have the opportunity to explore and contribute to the story as it’s told.
Through digital and in-person community conversations, we are expressing our dreams for the future of New Haven–in spoken word poetry, visual art and more–and capturing these dreams in the New World Haven archive.
Tablet installations can now be seen at Possible Futures Bookstore and Strange Ways! The next event will take place at Stetson Branch Library on February 19, 2025
Praxis
A Public Experiment in Worldmaking
Stories make our reality. Whether the stories we’re told about the place of our birth, the stories of our families, or the stories of our future, we internalize the pathways in these stories as possibilities. These possibilities shape our expectations. These expectations influence our actions. These actions create our reality.
And now, we get to choose…
By telling stories that align with the world we seek to create, we are participating in the art of worldmaking.
Practice
Decolonize Your Imagination
“we must stop imagining destruction + extraction + deforestation + cages + torture + displacement + surveillance + genocide! we must stop predicting apocalypses + fascist governments + capitalist hierarchies! we must pursue + predict + imagine routes towards liberation!”
New World Haven will help us choose what stories to tell, and thus what realities we desire to experience. In so doing, the narrative will help to give us a collective imaginary from which to create the most equitable, most thriving New Haven possible for our futures.
A Community Storytelling Project
By capturing the dreams of the community, and weaving them into a collective narrative, NWHV will help us to collectively visualize an equitable, just, beautiful NHV for all.
About the project
What is New World Haven?
New World Haven is an interactive public narrative telling the story of how New Haven became the Silicon Valley for the Arts, a bubbling, equitable smart city where cultural production and cultural producers thrive. New World Haven seeks to answer the question: what would New Haven become if Black and Brown folks had the power to determine that?
The project will include an anime style comic strip published in installments on select digital screens across the city. The screens will allow residents to interact with the narrative, sharing their feedback and which stories they wish to see told.
The New World Haven narrative is an experiment in worldmaking, the act of creating new worlds through a combination of intentional, strategic storytelling and thoughtful, intentional partnerships and collaborations.
Why New World Haven?
This project was seeded through a series of conversations with local ecosystem builders, artists, technologists, activists and other visionaries. It is born from a deep connection with the city held by the project’s initiator, Artist Olori Lolade Siyonbola.
“I have an attachment to this city, always feeling drawn back whenever I travel away. I’ve made this place one of my long term homes because the combination of creative culture, activism and visionary innovation makes me feel right at home.” – Olori Lolade Siyonbola
The NWHV Archive
Alongside the futuristic anime comic, the NWHV project will build an archive of resources, information and data about the city’s rich cultural and activist past.
Articles
Much has been written prior to and throughout this project thus far. From the rich reference material found in our research, to the thoughts produced from this research, the NWHV Archive is already rich with history and creativity.
See some of this work below:
Add Your Voice!
Join us in amplifying the narrative of New Haven’s equitable, innovative, prosperous future. If you’re an organization, business, government office or public figure with a commitment to co-creating New Haven’s culturally equitable future, become a New World Haven partner!
The best first step is to document your dreams for New Haven with us. Use the digiza below to dream on [digital] paper!