Students at the Secondary School for Research shared their work in a final exhibit at their school in January 2011. Students and their families, teachers and administrators, and other members of the school community came to celebrate the culminating student work that represents the sixth year of partnership between the school and the Urban Memory […]
Tag Archives | Secondary School for Research
Park Slope
Students at the Secondary School for Research took to the streets of the rapidly changing Park Slope, their school’s “backyard,” to document evidence of gentrification in the neighborhood. Their photos include evidence of rising rents and taller buildings, images of new construction and fading store fronts, inspiring the question: what does a community risk losing […]
Coney Island and Gowanus
Coney Island and Gowanus, while each unique and distinct, both represent neighborhoods in flux. As part of their Urban Memory Project, students at the Secondary School for Research and their teacher, Michael Salak, explored the evolving character of these areas by documenting snippets of a struggle to preserve the past as we face the economic […]
Our Brooklyn Neighborhoods
Secondary School for Research students, after examining their school’s and local communities, focused their attention on changes they see in their own Brooklyn neighborhoods, documenting shifts in the urban landscapes of Prospect Heights, Flatbush, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Sunset Park, and Crown Heights, among others.
Students at Secondary School for Research Document A Changing Brooklyn
Seniors at the Secondary School for Research and their teacher, Michael Salak, collaborated with Urban Memory Project in the Fall semester of the 2010/11 school year to consider changes both subtle and sudden occurring in the Brooklyn landscape. Students studied a variety of issues facing the borough, including new development projects in Coney Island and […]

Students on panel about Gentrification
Five students from the Secondary School for Research, Nicol Medina, Kia Yard, Kittrell Breland, Ramshah Kanwal and Jake Lehman, were on a panel discussion about gentrification as part of the public programming for the exhibition The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks, at the Museum for Contemporary African Diaspora Arts in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. […]
Student photographs on New York Times blog
Fabian McGriff, Kayla Brown and Keith Brown, students from Urban Memory Projects at the Secondary School for Research (2009) and the Brooklyn School for Global Studies (2007), each documented the Gowanus Canal during their study of the issues facing that area of Brooklyn. Their photographs, along with approximately 200 others, have been posted as part […]
Students show off their work
UMP students proudly show off their hard work at the Secondary School for Research Performance Night — an opportunity for the school community of parents, teachers, administrative staff and community residents to gather and and gain information from the students’ semester-long research and documentation of Brooklyn. History teacher, Michael Salak, led the class with the […]
UMP students in exhibition –Gentrification in Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks
Some Secondary School for Research students who just finished a UMP will have their work displayed alongside professional artists grappling with gentrification in Brooklyn in the exhibition Gentrification in Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks.The exhibition will be held at the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts in Fort Greene. See the link to the museum’s […]
Students Photographs 2009
In the fall of 2009 UMP students at the Secondary School for Research closely examined the neighborhoods of Park Slope and Gowanus, both of which continue to be impacted by the trends of migration, development, and gentrification. The students took photo walks, read articles, researched the neighborhoods’ histories and argued their opinions in seminars and […]