Glenn Cantave, Idris Brewster, Micah Milner
Movers & Shakers NYC is a nonprofit that uses augmented reality to highlight underrepresented narratives in schools, public spaces, and cultural institutions.
Project: The Monuments Project
The Monuments Project is a catalog of augmented reality monuments of women, people of color, and the LGBTQIA+ icons. Our goal is to merge these icons with culturally responsive pedagogy so that students of color can see themselves in their history. To that end, we have partnered with Langston League, a multi-constant curriculum firm that specializes in teaching educators how to create culturally-responsive and sustaining instructional material, for all students.
This initiative is a new iteration of our previous efforts to advocate for the removal of problematic statues and push for more equitable representation in school curricula. We learned that large institutions are averse to systemic change due to myriad political dynamics and the cost of creating new educational materials. This challenged us to reimagine what it would take to highlight underrepresented narratives in a way that circumvents traditional barriers for change.
Our solution is augmented reality. While cities are looking to create site-specific monuments with limited accessibility, we are aiming to empower anyone with a smartphone to be able to see digital monuments of black and brown icons in their homes.
Moreover, there are millions of students who are not seeing their history in their classes. It would take several years to adjust traditional curricular materials i.e. textbooks, workbooks, etc. We are developing culturally responsive curricula to complement our AR monuments.
The Monuments Project App will launch on Black History Month 2021. It will be available for middle school students in-classroom and remote learning.