Lillian Lee (MFAD ’11) is the most recent MFA Design recipient of the Sappi “Ideas That Matter” grant for her thesis, “The Grand Assembly,” a curated online community that showcases a generation of 60 year and older creatives and their work to a wider audience.

Through video portraits of individual creatives and a commerce-enabled platform, they are empowered to become entrepreneurs by selling their work, being commissioned or teaching. The Grand Assembly hopes to provide a platform that encourages a passive younger generation to interact and access the knowledge repository of older creatives. If dialogue is created across the ages, then there is hope to change the perception of aging in our society, all while creating a platform that facilitates economic sustainability for older generations as well as for future ones.

As part of the Sappi Grant, The Grand Assembly is partnering with The Carter Burden Center for the Aging (CBCA) over the next six months. CBCA is a non-profit organization who runs a number of direct social services and volunteer programs to promote the well-being of seniors in New York City since 1971. One program is Making Art Work/gallery 307, which operates out of a Chelsea gallery space designed to give older artists a voice with the opportunity to show their work. CBCA is interested in using video as a medium to document its own community. A number of the current artists who are members of gallery 307 will be filmed. They will also be invited to join the online community of The Grand Assembly. A collaboration with gallery 307 would culminate into a pop-up store or gallery exhibition, which means members of The Grand Assembly and gallery 307 will have an opportunity to show their work in both physical and virtual spaces. The public might also be able screen the narratives filmed of each featured creative on a larger screen, interact with them in person, and view their work in this community space. This is an opportunity for a highly impactful launch of The Grand Assembly with broader exposure given to the work and life stories of this creative generation.

See more here.

Visit her website.