Installation: The Hope Tree, by Shell Avenant & MASClab
Kasser Family Exhibition Space, First Floor
What makes you feel hopeful about our collective future?
Please come and write down your own examples of hope-sparking media usage, and hang them on The Hope Tree! We are providing colored paper, markers, prompts, and a small writing table for you to come and engage.
The Hope Tree is a product of the Media and Social Change Lab at Teachers College, and a monument to collective hope. In the Spring semester of 2025, lab members crafted a multimodal journal submission titled Digital Ecologies of Hope: An Anthology of Illustrated Examples of Digital Media Usage that inspired lab members’ hope for the future. This practice of attending to hope in the current political climate became the focus of the lab’s end-of-year showcase, MediaFest 2025. The Hope Tree was assembled from fallen tree branches, gathered days before MediaFest when a gas leak near campus fortuitously pushed the Masclab’s weekly meeting out into a local greenspace.
Designed by: Shell Avenant & MASClab
This installation is co-hosted by MASClab, DFI, and the Gottesman Libraries.
Where: Kasser Family Exhibition Space, First Floor
When: December 5th - February 13th
