National Endowment for the Arts Awards $150,000 Grant to Northeastern Law’s NuLawLab
01.08.23 – Rarely does the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) look to a law school when fulfilling its mission to fund the arts and education in communities nationwide, but with an unprecedented $150,000 grant to Northeastern University School of Law’s NuLawLab, law is on center stage with the arts. NuLawLab, a leader in the global legal design movement, will join with partners at Northeastern and in East Boston to launch the East Boston Spatial Justice Lab, a project that will work to understand and measure how the arts, advocacy and cultural organizing for housing justice can strengthen residents’ social/emotional wellbeing and community’s relationship to belonging, healing, and revitalization. The project is also supported by a $200,000 grant to Maverick Landing Community Services from The Kresge Foundation’s Arts & Culture program.
“This research opportunity continues our deep engagement with our community partners in East Boston, through which our coalition of artists, cultural organizers, community members and legal advocates believe that art and design can play a decisive role in building social cohesion and belonging,” said the NuLawLab’s executive and creative directors Dan Jackson and Jules Rochielle Sievert. “This application of radical imagination seeks to transform the harm created by long standing marginalization, oppression and unequal access to justice.”
The grant is one of four new Research Labs the NEA is supporting that fund transdisciplinary research teams grounded in the social and behavioral sciences, yielding empirical insights about the arts for the benefit of arts and non-arts sectors alike. “The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support this Research Lab from Northeastern University, part of the NEA’s investment in exploring the value and impact of the arts,” said Director of Research and Analysis Sunil Iyengar. “The NEA’s Research Labs are an important component of our agency’s goal of understanding the factors, conditions and characteristics of our country’s arts ecosystem and the many ways the arts can impact other areas of American life.”
The East Boston Spatial Justice Lab will work with Maverick Landing Community Services and local artists Gabriela Cartagena, communications co-director at City Life Vida Urbana, and Anthony Romero, professor of the practice at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. In addition to the School of Law’s NuLawLab, the Northeastern University project leadership includes co-principal investigators Dr. Tiana Yom of Northeastern’s Public Evaluation Lab (NU-PEL) and Dr. Miso Kim of Northeastern’s College of Arts, Media and Design.
For more information on other projects included in the NEA’s grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news. Visit arts.gov/impact/research to explore more of the NEA’s work in research and analysis, including the agency’s five-year research agenda; in-depth reports and analyses of research topics in the arts; collections of statistics, graphics, and summary results from data-mining about the arts; and more.
About NuLawLab
NuLawLab is the interdisciplinary innovation laboratory at Northeastern University School of Law. Our programs, projects, teaching and research support cross-disciplinary teams and community-based partnerships focused on transforming legal education, the legal profession and the delivery of legal services. We do this work at the nation’s leading public interest law school in order to provide our students with the knowledge and skills to be the legal inventors of the future. NuLawLab works to create dialogue that will allow us to find mechanisms to advance social equity and dismantle systemic racial and economic oppression by committing to advancing intersectional transformation.
About Northeastern University School of Law
The nation’s leader in experiential legal education since 1968, Northeastern University School of Law offers the longest-running, most extensive experience-based legal education program in the country. Northeastern guarantees its students unparalleled practical legal work experiences through its signature Cooperative Legal Education Program. More than 1,000 employers worldwide in a wide range of legal, government, nonprofit and business organizations participate in the program. With a focus on social justice and innovation, Northeastern University School of Law blends theory and practice, providing students with a unique set of skills and experiences to successfully practice law.
For more information, contact d.feldman@northeastern.edu.