Right to Flight: Preservation, Ritual, and Multispecies Care

Right to Flight is an interdisciplinary public-engagement project exploring how historic preservation, textiles design and creative practice can respond to the ecological realities of urban life. Each year hundreds of thousands of migratory birds die in New York City due to collisions with buildings. This project invites students, artists, and community participants to reflect on this often unseen loss through collective making, ritual, and public encounter.

In two workshops on Friday, March 27 and Sunday, March 29 at Pratt Institute and a culminating rooftop event at NOoSphere in Greenpoint, participants will work on bird-safe nesting boxes inspired by historic New York buildings; collaboratively weave a human-scale “grief nest” embedding messages to the birds into the nest using reclaimed materials; and create cast bird forms that memorialize birds lost to the built environment. These works will form part of a multi-faceted installation at NOosphere Arts’ rooftop in Greenpoint, supported by a Kingsland Wildflower Public Arts Residency Award where the project will culminate in a public sunset opening and participatory performance on May 30, 2026, launching Noosphere’s We Are Nature: Transformation Stories summer program.

Blending architectural fabrication, historic preservation, craft, and performance, Right to Flight reframes preservation as a practice of care—expanding concern for historic environments to include the multispecies lives that move through and are affected by them. Led by Professor Harriet Harriss in collaboration with artists, fashion and textile designers, and musicians Leslie Ruckman, Brooke Garner (Rest, Repair, Repeat), and Celine Du Tertre with MS Historic Preservation and Fashion and Textiles student co-creators.

This event is open to the public.