Overview
Fourth Arts Block (FABnyc) and Urban Design Forum seek creative lighting designers to join Illuminations, a multi-year public art and lighting initiative to support safety, cultural visibility, and connection in Manhattan’s Sara D. Roosevelt Park. We seek a lighting designer to partner on an installation launching in Spring 2027. This is the first Illuminations project, with more opportunities forthcoming.
The lighting designer will partner with artist Dennis RedMoon Darkeem on an illuminated public art installation honoring the Black and African histories of Sara D. Roosevelt Park. The selected designer will work closely with RedMoon Darkeem to design, fabricate, and install light-based artworks in Spring 2027 that help the park feel safer and more welcoming after dark, and that deepen neighbors’ sense of belonging by honoring the layered histories of the Lower East Side. Responses are due by November 13th.
Sara D. Roosevelt Park
Sara D. Roosevelt Park is a 7.83-acre green space running six blocks from Houston Street to Canal Street, between Chrystie and Forsyth Streets. It is a vital shared resource for Chinatown and the Lower East Side, where more than 50,000 people live within walking distance — immigrant families, public housing residents, seniors, students, and small business owners. Two-thirds of neighbors are people of color, and Community Board 3 has the highest income gap of any district in New York City.
Decades of disinvestment have left the park underused and poorly lit, especially after dark. Capital improvements to the park are planned, including better circulation, ADA compliance, and expanded seating and gathering areas. However, with those improvements still years away, there is an urgent need to activate the park in the short term and throughout the construction period to create safer, more welcoming spaces for the community.
Illuminations
Developed by FABnyc, Urban Design Forum, and Think!Chinatown, Illuminations is a multi-year public art and lighting initiative to support safety, cultural visibility, and connection in Sara D. Roosevelt Park. Developed with neighborhood residents, artists, and design professionals, it brings site-specific lighting installations and evening programming to a long-neglected park, honoring the layered histories of the Lower East Side and Chinatown.
Work to Date
Illuminations builds on years of partnership among FABnyc, Urban Design Forum, and Think!Chinatown in and around Sara D. Roosevelt park. In 2021, FABnyc and the Forum worked with residents to activate underused public spaces in the Lower East Side, and FABnyc published FAB 20/20: a vision plan with neighborhood-driven ideas for the park’s future. The same year, Think!Chinatown and the Forum launched the Chinatown Night Market in Forsyth Plaza at the park’s southern end, a seasonal festival of performance, food, and music that now draws thousands each season.
In October 2024, FABnyc unveiled HALO, a light-based installation by artist Immanuel Oni honoring the unmarked African Burial Ground at M’Finda Kalunga Garden. The piece received a 2025 LUMEN Citation from the New York City Section of the Illuminating Engineering Society.
In February 2025, FABnyc launched Illuminations: The Lantern Project, in partnership with Think!Chinatown and Buro Happold, featuring 16 lanterns by three artists that celebrate the cultural histories of Chinatown and the Lower East Side. Supported by the NYC Small Business Services Public Realm Grant, this was the first installation that activated multiple sites in the park, including previously dark passageways for pedestrians.
The Project
For this next installation, we seek a creative lighting designer to work with artist Dennis RedMoon Darkeem to realize a multi-site lighting and art installation in Spring 2027. The project is being imagined as a three-part installation building off of LES Black & Red, a 2021 work [in M’finda Kalunga Garden] created by the artist that celebrated individuals, groups, and sites important to Black histories in the Lower East Side. Additional images from the exhibit and event are available here.
The first piece of this project will build on LAND, which tells the story of the “Land of the Blacks.” In 1644, Africans enslaved by the Dutch negotiated their freedom and land grants, and the Black community came to farm nearly 300 acres along the Bowery and into part of today’s Chinatown, which became known as the “Land of the Blacks.” When the British took control of the colony nearly 60 years later, they stripped Black residents of these property rights, and in 1707 outlawed property ownership by people of African descent. The Land of the Blacks represents the earliest legally recognized community of free and semi-free Black landowners in New York and one of the first in North America.
The second piece in this installation will build on BURIAL GROUND, which honors the Chrystie Street Burial Ground (also known as the Second African Burial Ground). From 1795 to 1843, this site on Chrystie Street between Stanton and Rivington Streets was one of the only cemeteries for Black New Yorkers, with an estimated 5,000 people buried there. Secured by the African Society in 1795, the Chrystie Street Burial Ground is one of the earliest instances of Black New Yorkers successfully claiming public space to care for their dead with dignity. When the site was sold in 1852, only 458 reinterments were recorded, and buildings were erected on the former cemetery. The burial ground is now acknowledged in the name of M’Finda Kalunga Garden (“Garden at the Edge of the Other Side of the World”), a small marker at its gate, and the garden’s annual Juneteenth celebration honoring the ancestors buried there.
Lastly, RedMoon Darkeem and the lighting designer will work together to create a new, original piece honoring M’Finda Kalunga Community Garden’s history and its founders (including Bob Humber, a longtime community leader). Learn more about the Garden here, and learn more about Humber’s contributions to Sara D. Roosevelt Park here. We hope to support a productive collaboration in which both artist and designer will bring their strengths to create original and responsive pieces that illuminate the park and its histories in new ways.
About the artist
Dennis RedMoon Darkeem is a Bronx-born interdisciplinary artist and educator of Yamassee Creek-Seminole Native American and African American descent. Working in mixed media, sculpture, photography, and installation, he draws on Afro-Indigenous diasporic traditions to explore cultural identity, environmental transformation, and collective storytelling.
RedMoon Darkeem has been an artist in residence at Wave Hill, the Laundromat Project, The Point, Bronx Children’s Museum, and Jamaica Arts Center. His work has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Brooklyn Museum, MoMA, and Bronx Art Space. Learn more at dennisredmoondarkeem.com.
The designer’s role
The lighting designer will work alongside the artist from early concepts through opening, with regular project team meetings from January through May 2027.
The designer will:
- Collaborate with RedMoon Darkeem to develop a creative lighting installation inspired by the artist’s previous work in the park
- Recommend fixtures, materials, and a power strategy suited to outdoor public space
- Prepare lighting specifications and drawings for fabrication and installation
- Support fabrication and installation in April and May 2027
FABnyc and Urban Design Forum will:
- Coordinate the project team, budget, meetings, and schedule
- Secure all necessary permits
- Cover materials, fabrication, installation, and maintenance through the separate project budget
- Contract a third-party maintenance partner for the installation’s run
The installation will remain in the park for one year, in line with NYC Parks guidelines for temporary art.
Who we’re looking for
We welcome individual lighting designers and small teams who are:
- Collaborative: interested in partnering with a visual artist to bring light into a public artwork
- Experienced in the public realm: have some background working alongside artists and in New York City public space, with awareness of outdoor constraints like power, weather, and installation
- Creative and ambitious: eager to explore what creative new approaches to integrating light and cultural storytelling to improve community safety
- Committed to neighborhood-driven practice: ready to work in solidarity with partners in neighborhoods that have been historically underinvested in and excluded from design and planning, and dedicated to continued learning and active listening
Compensation and timeline
The selected designer will receive a $10,000 fee. Materials, fabrication, installation, and maintenance are covered separately through the project budget.
October 16, 2026: Call opens
November 13, 2026: Applications due at 11:59pm ET
November 2026: Interviews with project team
December 2026: Finalist notification and project onboarding
January–March 2027: Project development
April 2027: Fabrication and installation
May 2027: Project launch
May 2027–May 2028: Project display period
How to apply
Submit your application through this Google Form by Friday, November 13, 2026, at 11:59pm ET. The form asks for:
- Your résumé or CV [PDF]
- Two to three work samples [PDF, no larger than 25 MB]
- Short answers to two questions:
- Tell us about your experience or interest in working with artists or neighborhood partners on lighting in the public realm. What have you learned? [max 250 words]
- Based on the background materials on the park and its history, please share some initial ideas you’d like to explore with the artist for how creative lighting could shape the project. No drawings or renderings are expected. [max 250 words]
Selection process
FABnyc and Urban Design Forum will review submissions. Top submissions will be invited to interview over Zoom with the artist and the project team. Reviewers will consider:
- Experience collaborating with artists and working in public space
- Understanding of outdoor lighting, power, and durability
- Thoughtfulness of initial ideas in response to the artist’s work and the site’s histories
- Commitment to collaborative, neighborhood-responsive practice
Future opportunities
We are excited to welcome more participation in Illuminations soon, which will continue through 2028, with opportunities for artists and designers to collaborate in 2027 and beyond. To stay in the loop for future opportunities, please fill out this Interest Form.
About the partners
Fourth Arts Block (FABnyc) is a team of artists and organizers working to preserve, strengthen, and grow the cultural vibrancy of the Lower East Side. FAB was founded in 2001 by artists on East 4th Street threatened with displacement, who secured eight properties from the City for $1 each and established the East 4th Street Cultural District. Today FAB works across the Lower East Side, from 14th Street to Canal Street and from the Bowery to the East River.
FAB brings artists and arts strategies to fight physical and cultural displacement, build collective power, increase access to cultural resources and public space, and support local resilience and health. Recent projects in Sara D. Roosevelt Park include commissions by Immanuel Oni; Ling Tang, Rose Wong, and Yuzhen Wu (with Think!Chinatown); Dennis RedMoon Darkeem; and the Illuminator, along with annual Juneteenth celebrations at M’Finda Kalunga Garden and weekly multilingual arts programs for children through the ROAR Festivals. FAB has a membership of 40+ local cultural organizations, offers artist fellowships and affordable workspace, organizes Lower East Side History Month, now in its 12th year, and maintains the People’s LES web archive of neighborhood stories.
Urban Design Forum connects and inspires New Yorkers to design, build, and care for a better city. We are a member-powered organization of 1,000+ civic leaders committed to a more just future for our city, blending a think tank, project incubator, and professional network. Through our community design work, we equip neighborhood organizations with technical assistance and connections to City government to shape public spaces. Since 2020, we have mobilized 300+ New Yorkers to transform open spaces with public art, markets, and cultural programming in 16 neighborhoods across every borough. In 2023, we launched the Local Center with the Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development to advance this work.
Think!Chinatown is an intergenerational non-profit based in Manhattan’s Chinatown, working at the intersection of storytelling, arts & neighborhood engagement. We believe the process of listening, reflecting & celebrating develops the community cohesion and trust necessary to take on larger neighborhood issues. Our aim is to overcome barriers of community organizing where socio-economic factors, language, and cultural barriers create challenges for immigrant communities’ autonomy to make decisions in their own neighborhood. We’ve built Think!Chinatown to push from within our neighborhood to shape better policies and programs that define our public spaces, to celebrate our cultural heritage, and to innovate how our collective memories are represented.
Questions
Please send all questions to Martha Snow, Director of Community Design at Urban Design Forum, at martha@urbandesignforum.org.
About the Local Center
The Local Center is a partnership between the Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development (ANHD) and Urban Design Forum that connect neighborhood leaders, designers, and government agencies to transform public space across New York City. Learn more about the Local Center here.
Image Credits:
1. Sara D. Roosevelt Park, 1937
2. Elyse Mertz
3. Courtesy of Dennis RedMoon Darkeem
4. Whitney Browne
5. Cindy Trinh