Our Story

Our guildhall is home to a diverse ecology of wonder: communities, organizations, people, creatures, plants, technologies, fungi, and other systems all interconnected in a web of care, learning, and generative action. From first time guests to longtime members, people who endeavor to visit can discover the rush of creative epiphany, the awe of a fresh perspective, and the respite of a friendly face.

On any given day, you will find 20 - 40 people here honing their practice as they learn from and alongside native pollinator plants, justice-involved youth, software engineers, interdisciplinary artists, grey dove oyster mushrooms, singer-songwriters, promising chunks of wood, dancers, unexpected books, a kind of grouchy sulcata tortoise, design thinkers, mischievous little kids from the neighborhood, neighborhood elders, blue death-feigning beetles, dirt, and every other colorful facet of our ecosystem. Spending time here is a testament to how much there is to learn from each other and from the living things around us (even if only a reminder to slow down, to breathe). The most reliable inspiration, though, comes from the members who devote themselves to cultivating their own capacity, intentionally learning, improving on the craft of intentionally serving their communities.

Together, we are exploring how we might share space and deepen our intentional service practice. We know we must balance the day to day quest for solutions with the deeper practice of asking better questions.

The basement is home to four things: our extensive Resource Library, Workshop, Art space, and Hanunah’s Habitat (Ok there’s other stuff down there too but we’re just going to talk about these ones because no one cares about our boiler room).

The Resource Library is an extensive collection of mostly salvaged supplies for all manner of art-making, fabrication, and zany design-build projects. It is also a case study in how a community can meaningfully reduce waste, share resources, and connect to larger systems (waste streams, donations, useful objects, other nonprofits / community groups, etc.) This resource is an essential resource for many of our member’s practices, whether they need a very specific cut of 1” marine ply, a pile of zippers for their FIGMENT art installation, or a thing to hold up another thing in a certain way that’s kind of hard to explain but you’ll know it when you see it.

The basement also houses our facilities workshop, which allows our members to use (and learn to use) heavy duty tools like the drill press, chop saw, portable table saw, and many other power tools.

Next to these 2 zones is the Art Space, an open artmaking zone with easels, fine art supplies, various storage options for different practices, and 2 large stainless steel rolling tables to accommodate different size mediums.

On the far end of the basement is a large landing that houses a planted desert habitat for our community’s 40lb rescue sulcata tortoise, Hanunah. He is a community member who reminds us to take it slow and to consider the long impacts of our time (he may live another 130 years under our community’s care!) The creatives and makers using this space can enjoy this majestic creature’s charismatic company any time they are taking a breather.

The basement is a popular destination, whether to tour the Resource Library for goodies, see what our inventive creatives are making, or to feed Hanunah a tasty frond of escarole.

We call our street level main event space our “Living Room” – it’s where a lot of lively life happens. This open ~1,500 sqft area shelters all variety of home-cooked community meals, quirky crafting sessions, television/film shoots, dazzlingly produced performances, smartly organized corporate workshops, earnest poetry readings, offbeat weddings, adorable children’s programs, groovy jam sessions, and we always have something novel queued up on the calendar. We are still just as excited to host a cutting edge symposium as we are to host a birthday party for a sweet kid from our neighborhood.

One highly sought after feature of our event space is the immersive project mapping infrastructure that allows the entire room to be digitally re-skinned using an array of finely tuned projectors. This system allows for our clients and members to easily create incredible experiences for their own audiences and it has propelled the personal practices of our in-house video and projection artists, led by the system’s architect, Carlos. As an events production space, we’re known both for our traditional jerk chicken and our ability to make real life holograms. Nonetheless, our calendar has more and more public-facing programs that have been produced completely in-house, with our prime-mates working together across disciplines to create innovative programs, performances, and experiences for our communities (from Yuko’s innovative one-woman shows to our immersive Halloween extravaganzas). Our events are well-known for the quality of the output as well as for the collaborative, participatory soil from which they develop.

Cafe 424 opened in Fall of 2022 and Chef Mom and her team provide a true neighborhood sanctuary for anyone looking for delicious nourishment, a Jamaican pick me up (whether caffeine-based or vibes-based), or some good old-fashioned real talk. The Cafe 424 team is a beloved part of our community and we constantly are partnering to develop new events and better serve our clients/guests. Cafe 424 also runs its own thriving event series in the Living Room, from movie nights to stand up comedy to cooking demonstrations. A retail kiosk within Cafe 424 offers a rotating selection of merchandise from our community’s social good programs, from the nostalgic gaming goods of RetroKingdom to fresh herb satchels from KBM (grown on our roof!) to artwork from our cooperative artists.

The 2nd floor of our guildhall is for being productive, together. Our “Collaboratory” is where members always have a place to connect, learn, and hunker down to put in the actual labor of intentional service. The gorgeous space is full of light, plants, and many cute critters (turtles and beetles, for now) keep us grounded in between our video calls and spreadsheets.

Our shared open-seating coworking space has a variety of welcoming seated/standing work stations and the personal storage cubbies are completely adorned with the handwritten names of our members and lots of random in-joke stuff taped and magnetized all over it. One any given day you might find Cassie typing away on a project for one of her Position Dev clients or Laiquan holding court with his Emergent Works youth. Our small and large conference room, each with its own full magnetic whiteboard wall, are constantly booked for our client meetings, zany brainstorming sessions, and tabletop roleplaying campaigns. We actively share our ‘digital design rig’ – a suped up computer workstation for folks who work with motion graphics, projection mapping, video editing, and other computer-based practices requiring a high powered GPU. Lastly, our ~475sqft Library / Classroom / Meditation Space offers a place of peace – between the various team gatherings and workshop bookings, our members can sit below the skylight to take a moment in meditation, have a heart to heart, or snag a book and delve into fascinating esoterica with the surrounding Cybernetics Library (a curated collection of several hundred books spanning every facet of the relationship between society and technology).

Fresh Produce Studios was initiated by unanimous member vote on Dec 21, 2021 as a conversion of our once-beloved 3rd floor member flex space and nap room. It has since flourished into a new creative center of the building, where Eli and the T.RAP team are always recording rap songs with NYC youth, instrumental music, podcasts, and livestreams. We have outfitted the space with plug-and-play functionality as well as soundproofing to ensure that we get great sound quality without bothering any neighbors. Musical instruments adorn the walls, ready for use, and there is a small library of music and sound related texts. The recording booth is also an invaluable option for video conferencing (especially where the soundproofing is an essential requirement).

Our 3rd floor also includes a roof garden workstation managed by Seeds to Soil, complete with a gardening library. This is the team, led by Renee, that cultivates our Skylight Farming Lab, an urban farming collective that experiments with scalable agricultural techniques on our ~1500 sqft exterior roof garden. They are actively testing different ways to grow plants as well as sustainably growing urban agriculture projects, and innovation abounds with partnerships within our cooperative, Cafe 424, and external businesses. They grow mushrooms, herbs, and native pollinator plants among many useful and delicious crops. Whether you’re looking to develop a new composting technique or just want to grow some flowers for your mom in one of our Tinyplots, this is a place where our members can get guidance on how to strengthen their green thumbs. This is also an outdoor place of peace and quiet for members who want to take a call out under the sun or sit under the shade structure or watch the rain.

Our members have developed such a clear shared responsibility for our placemaking practice that we trust one another with our personal spaces. From booking Jerone and his apartment for a 10 person dinner party to signing up for a 3 month sabbatical at Max’s house in rural Yasugi, our cooperative members are revolutionizing what it means to have “access” to space by way of practicing stewardship, trust, and sharing.

As an extension of our work with the guildhall, we have found partners and investors interested in working together to create short term and long term residences for our community in NYC. This would allow us to further support prime producers who are devoted to intentional service with a living space as well as the working space that our guildhall provides.

We have an active global network of alumni, supporters, and collaborators who engage our NYC-based work from afar through our messaging platforms and newsletters. We produce a special zine for our extended community full of creative expressions, updates on our programs, and ways to contribute from afar.

From cooperative governance to scheduling trash pickups, we are always striving to sustainably share power, responsibility, and labor. From long-time cooperative vets like Tony and Cassie to folks who are hearing cooperative language for the first time, this is a place not only to learn but to practice as a membership cooperative. We maintain an active dialogue (in both formal and informal discussions) about what’s working, what’s not working, and help each other remain clear eyed in balancing ideals with the realities of our lives.

We maintain the space and our practices in keeping with our Cultural Constitution and Community Agreements.

We have finally managed to (somewhat) evenly distribute duties among membership. Our shared practice of maintaining and operating the guildhall is always a team effort, with folks only doing something alone if they have elected to do so. Working together to steward our space is a cherished part of being a part of the cooperative, and we have fun together cleaning up, reorganizing, and planning the next evolution of our home. It is always clear what you can do to help maintain the space (whether you have 10 minutes or 2 hrs) and what the expectations are from each member.

This is a community that intentionally supports members’ professional development through programmatic opportunities as well as through peer mentorship/apprenticeship. There are many different focuses represented in our membership, from social justice to environmental justice to education to performing arts to many combinations of these and other issues. Through our disparate practices, we are all apprentices to one another as we share and learn together. Whether by joining GROW Externships on their next month-long field expedition in Hawai’i, asking Dave to teach you how to use the jigsaw without chopping off your fingers, or jumping into Kelsey’s Tuesday night communication workshop (with improv games), our cooperative membership offers a plethora of ways to develop mutually beneficial partnerships, build a resume, or introduce an unexpected approach to an existing area of expertise. Prime Produce Limited, a grassroots nonprofit incubator, is housed in the guildhall and it provides corporate infrastructure via fiscal sponsorship to eligible service projects from within the community. Jerone is available to provide guidance and consultations to folks interested in starting their own organization.

We have finally organized a central hub for members’ individual needs and offers, where folks are able to get support writing a grant proposal or offer their professional services to new networks. Groups within our cooperative also work together to provide clients services as PPAC Professional Services, both packaged as event production services and as an agency-style services provider. This can provide meaningful income and offsets monthly dues for participating members.

We apprentice to one another because we believe there’s always something we can learn from each other, especially if we differ in age and experience. As such, it has always been an essential part of our practice to engage intergenerationally and we have only strengthened this over time. Our young people and elders are an essential piece of our ecosystem and we cherish the opportunity to learn from and alongside them.

Our youth programming has deepened within existing programs like Doodle Force, Bars over Bullets, Student Diplomacy Corps, and Earthlings.NYC. This has in turn blossomed into regular partnerships with afterschool programs and summer camps. We also know the kids from the neighborhood, who stop in to pay respects to Chef Mom or ask to visit the turtles. It’s not uncommon to hear excited voices of young people in the afternoons or hear one of our members reminding some kid to be careful. We have proactive clear rules about kids on site and ensure that children are never left unaccompanied in any area of the building that may pose potential risks to health or safety.

We have also escalated our relationships with our existing senior care program partner, Duet Care at Home, which has been a monthly event partnership since the summer of 2022. Our cooperative is always excited to share our gifts and spend time with our city’s seniors. In addition to formal programming, our parents, elderly friends and neighbors continue to be a fixture of our community events. We also invite elders to be a part of important community discussions so that we may learn as a community.

We have solidified ongoing partnerships with local schools, health centers, and other community-oriented organizations to create a constellation of supportive community spaces and programs in Hell’s Kitchen. Through strategic partnerships within our immediate vicinity, we have become a nourishing part of the local fabric. Our guildhall is always a welcoming place for individuals and families to visit, whether a routine drop-in to see Chef Mom in Cafe 424 or making noodles together at our Neighborhood Noodle Night community meal.

We have intentionally sought to blur the lines of “professional” and “personal,” with the hope that a more relational style of sharing space and professional support is the way to create deeper meaning in our lives. This poses a great variety of challenges, as it adds a layer of social and emotional complexity to operational and business decisions. At the same time, we see and feel the value of this approach every day as we deepen our relationships with one another. As cooperative members, many of us have taken on leadership or organizer roles within our broader collective, Prime Produce NYC, an ecosystem where friends, family, and neighbors deepen their relationships through collaborating on community service projects.

We know we are succeeding because the material and labor investments of our cooperative membership are dwarfed both by the value we receive from the physical infrastructure and especially the personal meaning and professional growth we derive from being a part of this outfit. Even though the price of monthly dues is set (by member vote), our time with the cooperative is priceless. Most of all, we deeply appreciate that we can be part of a diverse team of people dedicated to serving communities, people who believe the means are just as important as the ends, and people who believe that, working cooperatively, we are more than the sum of our parts.