T!C Projects

Chinatown Block Party 夏日傾情 is a neighborhood block party for the whole family at the historic newsstand at Mott & Mosco Streets. Pulling from the ever-growing archive of the Chinatown Records projects, YiuYiu 瑶瑶 shares some of her favorite Chinatown records inherited from her family and neighbors.

Chinatown Night Market is a monthly summer series of art, music, and food at the iconic gateway of the Manhattan Bridge at Forsyth Plaza and Forsyth Street. Featuring an incredible lineup of Chinatown local and AAPI food, artisan, and cultural goods vendors, the Night Market is a place for our community to come together, celebrate, and claim safe space in our public realm.

For diasporic cultures, food is where we share, learn, and remember. At Chinatown!Studio, we foster an intergenerational space where Chinatown aunties (and uncles!) of different regionalities can teach culture through food.

Celebrate the prosperous Lunar New Year the Chinatown way! From folk art demonstrations like calligraphy and papercutting to mahjong parties to a pop-up teahouse, there’s always something for everyone.

The Art of Storytelling series brings us into the everyday lives of people who have long called Chinatown home. Bringing together our neighbors and Asian American artists, this series challenges us to re-imagine how we collectively remember and honor the histories of our Chinatown community members. 

Chinatown Arts Festival celebrates the cultural richness of Manhattan’s Chinatown. By presenting grassroots Chinatown artists and emerging Asian American artists in context and dialogue with each other, we hope to bring multiple generations together and connect with a wider arts audience.

Chinatown Storytelling Festival is a celebration of Think!Chinatown’s newly produced storytelling projects, as well as a deep dive across archives of short films about Chinatown. Chinatown Storytelling Festival aims to foster the creation and viewership of projects featuring our under-told stories.

The Everyday Chinatown series is an exploration of the collective memory through everyday artifacts and multi-lingual storytelling recorded in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English.

As part of T!C’s Lunar New Year festivities, we commission artists to interpret the concept of the lantern as part of our annual Lantern Artist-In-Residency to celebrate the Lantern Festival and the new year.

The Shopping in Chinatown series celebrates the diversity of the Chinese diaspora found in Manhattan’s Chinatown through the lens of everyday kitchen ingredients. Each video features a Chinatown aunty or uncle who take us along on their typical grocery shopping experience in the neighborhood.

Past T!C Projects

  • ArtsHop

    Discover the many layers of Chinatown through self-guided walking tours of historic architecture & new neighborhood murals, a tai chi and qi gong class in Columbus Park, a block party of Chinese vinyl classics, and food and music pop-ups in our outdoor Assembly for Chinatown build-outs.

    ArtsHop was produced in collaboration with Association for a Better New York (ABNY) and community partners Abacus Bank, Chinatown Core Block Association, and Welcome To Chinatown as part of “Meet Us In Chinatown" in 2021.

  • Assembly for Chinatown

    Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Dept of Transportation (DoT) allowed for outdoor dining on the streets through their “Open Restaurants” program. In response, Assembly for Chinatown provided outdoor dining support to help offset the technical, linguistic and cultural barriers for small businesses and small cultural groups in the Chinatown community. In total, T!C built 10 outdoor dining structures for restaurants in Chinatown.

    Assembly for Chinatown was produced in collaboration with A+A+A Studio, Chaos Built, and various artists from our community from 2020-2023.

  • Chinese American Genealogy Conference

    Learn how to find and preserve your family’s history! Whether you’re just getting started or are a pro, get tools and methodologies to discover your family roots and journey. This two-day series of in-depth workshops, presentations, case studies and one-on-one consultations with expert practitioners of Chinese genealogy in America will inspire and teach you how to find out “where you’re really from?"

    The Chinese American Genealogy Conference was hosted in collaboration with AAARI-CUNY in 2019.

  • Grand Rising

    A fashion story about Domingo Anthony, one of the first Black landowners in New Netherland circa July 13th, 1643, who lived in the south eastern corner of present day Chinatown.

    Grand Rising was a duet between Kamau Ware, founder of Black Gotham Experience (BGX), and Charles Johnson, a model/stylist & visual artist who plays Domingo in the BGX Universe. The film premiered at Chinatown Arts Week 2020.

  • HowToChinatown.NYC

    HowToChinatown.NYC was a narrative map-based platform highlighting Chinatown businesses and cultural organizations. Instead of promoting “best-of” lists, this website empowered interested visitors to learn “how to” explore this vibrant and dense neighborhood with cultural context.

    The HowToChinatown.NYC project launched in 2018.

  • Our Tribute to Corky Lee

    Our Tribute to Corky Lee remembers our dear friend and community member. Through a selection of photographs, video footage, and testimonials, we used art to pay tribute to the force that was Corky, otherwise known as the “Unofficial Undisputed Asian American Photographer Laureate”.

  • 384 Broadway

    384 Broadway was a temporary art space presented by Think!Chinatown and Chashama. With the mission to increase representation of Asian American artists and themes of concern to our community, this project seeked to test new ways art spaces in Chinatown can better engage the neighborhood with cross-cultural and inter-generational practices.

    Between 2017 and 2018, Think!Chinatown curated 8 exhibitions at 384 Broadway.