During my time at the Climate Imaginarium, I worked as a representative and liaison between community partners, organizations, and artist collectives. I also helped curate art shows, program events and climate art workshops, and jumpstarted their social media presence. I assembled art events on and offsite at the Climate Imaginarium and also prepared for "Climate Week NYC" in September. Like most things, there were a lot of moving parts, especially as the Climate Imaginarium is a consortium of various artist collectives, organizations, and entities.

As the community organizer for the space, it was a challenge to fulfill everyone’s needs. Despite our limitations as a startup, we were able to come up with resourceful solutions for all the programming we wanted to put on — whether that meant building a stage out of recycled materials, or open calls for donated materials. The beauty of it all was witnessing the power of community and helping it all come together, which is essential to the Climate Imaginarium’s mission: building a sense of community to problem solve some of the most pressing issues of our time, like climate change.

I think the most pertinent class that was able to translate into this line of work was the elective Global Environmental Ethics with Professor Adela Gondek. The knowledge I learned from this class about being culturally sensitive, especially when there are many actors and stakeholders from multiple backgrounds, was truly illuminating. What made it so useful was speaking about resource management, and as a startup, our resources were certainly limited. Although the class focused on global resource management, I was able to apply my insight, skills, and strategies on the ground on a smaller scale. I also really liked that we were able to combine certain events in order to be more time and resource efficient. This was useful because it brought people together to brainstorm and also adapt to different circumstances and audiences. Overall, these skills were a benefit while working at the Imaginarium.

During my time at the Climate Imaginarium, it was challenging to organize an entire consortium of community members under one roof. As a startup that had its grand opening in May, alongside all other organizations on Governors Island, it at first felt like a frenzy. There were so many moving parts, and decisions needed to be made on the fly. Despite this, it was an opportune time for me to put my communication skills and new resource management skills to the test. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to organize such big movements of equipment and furniture, while also supporting weekly meetings. There were a few bumps in the road, as weekly meetings came to a standstill after the move, and community members were a little burnt out after such a laborious process of moving materials, furniture, and equipment into the space. Before organizing everyone again, we made time for a week of self reflection and rest, and with the consultation of the director and our advisors, I helped coordinate meetings to congratulate us all for our efforts and receive feedback on what could be improved. There were also a few challenges pertaining to the structure of assigned roles. As with many startups, I often found myself wearing multiple hats, and although eager to learn how to do many things, I had to place personal boundaries and slow down in order to complete one task at a time. This was an important learning experience I will take with me in the future.

A key takeaway of my time with the Climate Imaginarium was all the amazing connections I made. I met some of the most amazing and inspiring people that taught me so many useful skills. I learned how to build a lamp out of recycled paper, how to mend and reuse garments, how to write climate fiction, and also got to share and collaborate on events and workshops where I learned about so many different perspectives about the climate crisis. Overall, I am very grateful for this experience and how it has taught me that solutions don't always have to be a grand technological innovation, but can also be something as simple as mending a worn sock or garment. It also taught me about the power of community. When people come together, so many things are able to get done in a short of amount of time. It’s my goal one day to move and inspire people with my research, and this experience taught me that no action is too small to inspire others.