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In emergencies like hurricanes and tsunamis, response centers provide essential services such as temporary shelter, food and water, first aid, and information. Located in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, the Design Studio for Social Intervention (DS4SI) created Social Emergency Response Centers (SERCs) to address pressing social emergencies. Drawing on the metaphor of traditional emergency services, SERCs are intergenerational spaces that support collective healing, making, cooking, and strategizing. Cocreated with activists, artists, and community members, these temporary, pop-up spaces help transform rage and despair into collective action.
Since the first SERC in 2017, this public infrastructure has appeared in homes, community centers, campuses, churches, and conferences across the US. SERCs serve as both artistic gestures and practical solutions, aiming to balance the two while addressing critical questions such as: How will we feed people—and their hunger for justice? How will we create shelters—safe spaces where everyone can bring their full selves? What will the reconstruction of civil society look like?
Today, SERCs are bringing people together to uncover connections between US-funded genocide in Gaza, state-sanctioned violence against Black communities, the targeting of queer individuals, gentrification and displacement, privatization, and environmental devastation. When we heard our collaborators at Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) were implementing a SERC after October 7, it made sense. Students, in collaboration with faculty and the Center for Art and Community Partnerships (CACP), have cocreated SERCs since 2017. We are deeply moved that SERC remains a meaningful tool in crisis response for the MassArt community.
—Cofounders of DS4SI
There is a genocide happening in Gaza, and Palestinians are living under apartheid. The SERC we created at MassArt provided a safe space for us to process together. Looking back, the SERC structure also changed my approach to design—it’s no longer just a tool for making money; it’s about communication, engagement, and designing care.
Coming from Southwest Florida, with its somewhat homogeneous white population, it has been meaningful to learn from my Arab friends at MassArt. For the first time, I see how Americans often detach from ongoing tragedies in the Middle East, but these friendships have helped me engage with a region I am connected to as a taxpaying American citizen.
As a disabled individual with type 1 diabetes, I rely on federal funding to help pay for my education. This brings me face-to-face with the failings of the US healthcare system, which feels like one arm of the same machine as the war apparatus. The taxpayer money funding genocide in Gaza could be better spent on US healthcare. We’re not being cared for as Americans while our money supports military actions that terrorize communities, including those I now feel personally connected to.
I know the importance of others standing up for my rights, and I feel a responsibility to do the same for those whose rights are being violated. This sense guided my actions last April. When student development proposed a protest policy with vague language that raised concerns about over-policing, the student government rejected it. I helped to facilitate an open letter and meeting with the administration attended by about 150 students. This led to follow up meetings between students and the administration about the protest policy and other pressing issues, emphasizing solidarity with Palestine and highlighting the idea that anti-Zionism does not equate to hate speech.
—Industrial Design Student
Tangy fragrances filled my office-turned-kitchen at MassArt, infused with special spices: sumac, za’atar, seven spice, and ground chili I brought back from Nablus. Heading toward the central atrium of the college, where our pop-up SERC was set up, I wheeled out a 20-quart pot of stew to a line of protesting scyborgs, art students, staff, and faculty. My colleague put up our sign, “Soup for Ceasefire, while Radio Alhara reverberated through the echoing space.
Many on campus were in shock as we began witnessing Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, while also coming to terms with Hamas’s October 7 attack within the broader context of military occupation, siege, condemnation, contrition, and censorship. Building on the work of socially engaged artists like Michael Rakowitz and Rirkrit Tiravanija, I volunteered to lead the soup-making efforts for our SERC during the Fall ’23 and Spring ’24 semesters. Meanwhile, new pathways emerged to resist systems of power that uphold hierarchy and exclusion.
We organized lectures featuring Palestinian children’s book author Rifk Ebeid, Jennifer Lynn Kelly on her book Invited to Witness: Solidarity Tourism Across Occupied Palestine, and historian Atwa Jaber on Dispersed Memories of a Fading Past: The Israeli Occupation of the Jordan Valley Remembered through Oral History, followed by an insightful discussion with Rabea Eghbariah. We attended workshops on Palestine for K–12 educators organized through The Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies and Abolitionist Teaching Network. We hosted a screening for the Boston Palestine Film Festival with artist Khaled Jarrar, conducted workshops on Jewish kriah (tearing) grief rituals with coco rosenberg, and collaborated with Birzeit University art students and The Right to Education Campaign. While making zines and designing images for printing, we engaged in difficult conversations about the privilege of protest—conversations that faculty and staff affirmed in their open letter of support to the students. Throughout these activities, we cooked “Soup for Ceasefire”—a key ingredient of our crisis response. The scent from our “third university” SERC defies borders, permeates the college, and lingers today as, at the time of writing this, the genocide in Gaza continues.
—Associate Professor of Art Education and Contemporary Art Practice
I grew up in Qatar surrounded by Palestinians, and I’ve always felt the impact of their genocide and displacement. When I moved to the US, it was a shock to realize how few people knew about Israel’s occupation of Palestine—so different from the environment I grew up in, where it was something everyone felt strongly about. After October 7, I found a way to channel those feelings and fight for Palestine alongside like-minded people. Our SERC filled me with hope. Seeing not only students but also faculty and staff standing with us was powerful, especially because this issue felt so censored and I hadn’t known how to address it alone.
It reminded me how important it is to document and share Palestinian art and culture during ongoing ethnic cleansing, alongside attending protests and demonstrations. In this spirit, a small team of us from the SERC organized a series of film screenings on campus focused on Palestine, featuring Kings and Extras: Digging for a Palestinian Image (2004) and Tale of the Three Jewels (1995).
—Fine Arts 3D Student
Ten years ago, I joined a national forum for early-career scholars called Critical Educators for Social Justice. We received support and guidance from senior academics who, like us, balanced the activism and dissenting perspectives within privileged institutions. My key takeaway from that experience was to live your truth while considering vulnerabilities as junior, untenured faculty to ensure lasting impact.
After October 7, I found healing and purpose collaborating with faculty, staff, and students to bring our learning-activist space to life. What mattered most for me was participating as a tenured faculty member alongside junior colleagues I deeply respect, who energize me, and who were navigating what is likely the most challenging academic minefield of our generation. These younger, untenured faculty approached me for strategic advice through public conversations, private phone calls, and spontaneous campus encounters. I was meeting many of these colleagues for the first time.
I had the privilege of sharing hard-to-find classroom resources, coaching colleagues on managing delicate relationships with senior faculty, and discussing self-care and boundary setting for emotional longevity. Together, we explored ways to draw on our collective resources to ensure students felt supported, represented, and safeguarded in their calls for peace. When I reflect on our work with the SERC, it is the candor and bravery of these junior faculty members that resonates most deeply. I am proud to be part of a global community of educators who recognize our responsibility to respond boldly in times of crisis and take a collective stance against oppression in resistance to the growing trends of censorship and curriculum erasure.
—Professor of Art Education
After October 7, I appreciated the knowledge sharing and discussions about solidarity through mutual aid. When I heard that a group of undergraduates was organizing an art sale fundraiser for Gaza, I shared my firsthand experience with the Prints for Palestine fundraiser by Binch Press in Providence, which raised over $42,000, offering insights into how artists can raise support funds from selling artwork.
At the SERC, our solidarity with Palestine and other struggles was rooted in community education, guided by the belief that we can achieve far more collectively than individually. This perspective informs my teaching, where I draw parallels between the challenges faced by Palestine and those experienced by marginalized communities in the US. In particular, I’ve found that art can help young people engage with difficult topics. A particularly powerful teaching tool is the Birds of Gaza project, where children craft paper birds to honor and represent each child lost in Gaza. While I acknowledge the risks of using animals as symbols for humans, the project humanizes those affected, showing how art can help process emotions and build shared understanding.
—Art Education Graduate Student
My grandparents survived Japanese colonialism and imperialism in Korea, and the country remains divided to this day. Given that history, I often ask myself: As a Korean, how could I not support Palestinians? How could I stay silent while people endure the same forces of colonialism and imperialism? I reflected on these questions with like-minded colleagues as we cooked soup for the SERC.
This commitment to solidarity across time and space also shapes how I approach the classroom. I see teaching as a form of protest, creating an environment for students to engage with challenging topics involving white supremacy. Similarly, as an artist, I encourage people to see the world differently through my abstract collage. While my art and teaching may not directly heal the wounded or change policy, they cultivate critical thinking and open pathways for organizing against injustice. I hold onto the belief that one meaningful moment of teaching or a single experience of art can deepen understanding for Palestine and for all those who are oppressed.
—Visiting Assistant Professor of Foundations
The SERC events encouraged people to participate in whatever way felt right. From this supportive environment, small group activities emerged. One such group organized a Passover-like event called Grief & Liberation: practices for imagining otherwise, which, by chance, coincided with the dismantling of the Emerson encampment—a protest many of us were involved in. The Seder was led by Meital Yaniv, a former IDF soldier-turned-writer and solidarity activist. One moment from that Seder stayed with me: Meital shared how their solidarity work evolved from being driven by guilt to becoming an opportunity to show up for themselves. Someone shared how they initially weren’t sure what they could contribute to the movement but realized it was already within them. That understanding—that we already have what we need to organize and be in solidarity—has been powerful for me. It’s why I keep showing up. I need to show up, just to manage the cognitive dissonance of working in institutions where our labor, tuition, and pension funds contribute to the very violence we’re protesting.
Our work continues. We formed a group called MassArtists for Palestine. It’s technically a student group, but I’ve been helping connect them to the labor organizers and activists I know. We’re currently working on a BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) campaign, as well as hosting artmaking events and organizing political education activities. I’ve also been working with a group in the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) focused on divesting our pension funds.
—Studio Manager, Fine Arts 3D
After October 7, the SERC filled the building with the smell of cumin and warmth and drew in people who might have otherwise passed by, inviting them to engage at their own pace. Many came just for the soup but stayed longer or brought friends. One of the most powerful aspects of the SERC was that it helped to validate our feelings, along with the new initiatives it sparked on campus and beyond.
—Art Education Student
A group of us went to the SERC, got soup, and gathered in a circle, chatting as more people joined. It was the largest gathering I’d seen on campus. Unlike the rallies and protests I’d attended before, this was a space filled with familiar faces. Through the SERC, we mapped shared concerns about the traumatic events unfolding and felt stronger facing them together rather than alone. We created group chats to coordinate attending rallies and protests.
From those early gatherings, a small group of Jewish MassArt students wrote an open letter to the administration, clarifying solidarity between Jewish and Palestinian communities, challenging the common narrative that Jewish identity automatically aligns with unwavering support for Israel. This led to the formation of the student group MassArt for Palestine. One of our biggest initiatives so far has been working with MassArt’s administration to end their exchange program with Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in occupied Jerusalem. Since then, we’ve connected with art and design students both nationally and internationally, including those from the Royal Academy of Art in the Netherlands (KABK), the University of the Arts London (UAL), Tokyo University of the Arts, and others. Together, we formed a collective of international students and alumni committed to creating meaningful change within our institutions. Currently, MassArt and KABK have ended their exchange programs with Bezalel, while other schools are advocating for similar actions. Our international group now holds regular virtual meetings and is preparing a collective statement urging all art and design universities to end their exchange programs with Bezalel Academy. Our aim is to harness the power of art to resist, remember, and liberate, standing united across institutions to amplify our collective voices in the pursuit of justice and solidarity for a free Palestine.
—Industrial Design Student
Seeing the mainstream media coverage after October 7, I was struck by the lack of context surrounding the occupation and the erasure of the Palestinian perspective. This created a deep sense of dissonance and a tension with going about business as usual. I kept thinking: This is happening, our students are witnessing it—what systems do we have or can we create as a school community to address this moment?
When discussing ways to respond as a MassArt community after October 7, the SERC framework felt in alignment with our goals and allowed students to take on leadership roles. They organized a successful student walkout, hosted educational workshops like Palestine 101, and initiated many artmaking workshops that used the resources of our art college.
Artists do more than imagine new worlds, they help us embody and rehearse them. Everyone has a role in these movements, and this aligns with Grace Lee Boggs’s theory of change: “Critical connection over critical mass.” By focusing on meaningful connections within our own communities, we create fractals of change that, when replicated, lead to systemic transformation. 
