GROW Brooklyn Festival for family gardening fun, St. John's Center, June 25

Family fun, food and gardening education coming up June 25 at St. John’s Center in Crown Heights. 

Details on a Facebook event page, as well as on this website: GrowBrooklynFestival.org.

Further details from the Facebook page:

Earlier this year, the Friends of Garden Kitchen Lab & Oxfam America decided they wanted to share the philosophy and activities of the Garden Kitchen Lab program with the broader community, so we set about to create a summer festival. 

The Garden Kitchen Lab is backyard-to-table educational/blogging program that teaches children to create, develop and sustain food producing gardens with a culinary and technology component. 

To be held outside NYC Parks St. John’s Center on Saturday, June 25th from 11am to 4pm, the event will showcase organizations who come together to bring greater awareness to the importance of locally grown food, appreciation of healthy cuisine, as well as encourage children to explore technology, sustainability and environmental issues.

Crown Heights North Historic District placed on national registry

Imperial Apartments, Pacific St. and Bedford Ave

The Brooklyn Eagle reports:

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and U.S. Rep. Yvette D. Clarke announced Wednesday [May 18] that the Crown Heights North Historic District was officially added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Details on the National Parks Service website, Wikipedia and the Crown Heights North Association.

Artist Rusty Zimmerman's Crown Heights portraits now on exhibit at Brooklyn Children's Museum

Photo by Eillie Anzilotti via CityLab

Local  artist, Rusty Zimmerman, is profiled in Brooklyn Reader, CityLab and DNAinfo recently for his portraits project of Crown Heights residents. "I’m just trying to bring Hasids and Haitians and hipsters together to talk some smack about the neighborhood and tell their stories from their unique perspective,” Zimmerman quipped to BKReader.

The results are on exhibit at the Brooklyn Children's Museum through September.

Photo by Eillie Anzilotti via CityLab

PS 316, Elijah Stroud, makes great strides recent years with new leadership

Principal Olga Maluf. Photo by DNAinfo/Rachel Holliday Smith

DNAinfo features a nice profile of PS 316, the Elijah Stroud grade school at Classon Ave. and Sterling Place, describing music lessons (classical and steel drums), Shakespeare performances, coding classes and more. The story tells how school made a significant turnaround academically under a new principal, moving from the bottom 25% percentile a few years back: "Currently, the school has an “A” grade and is ranked in the top 20th percentile for math and English, according to the most recent Department of Education data."

Crown Heights now a destination spot, per Travel & Leisure magazine

Eastern Parkway. Photo by Tukka Koski, Travel & Leisure

Further evidence that Crown Heights has gone mainstream, it's now featured (with Bed Stuy) in a travel advice article in Travel & Leisure magazine.

Crown Heights Lubavitch building has replicas around the world

Photo by Andrea Robbins and Max Becher, Brownstoner

Here's an interesting article about a building in Crown Heights that has inspired replicas all around the world. The article describes how 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, "headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement — one of the world’s largest ultra-orthodox Jewish groups — the building has become a powerful symbol of adherents’ faith and connection to the community."

The article traces "at least 11 replicas of 770’s ornamented brick facade have been built in locales as diverse as Milan, Italy and Sao Paulo, Brazil."

near Montreal, Canada

Milan, Italy

Jerusalem, Israel

Brower Park ceremony on June 8 to dedicate new Shirley Chisolm Commemoration

This coming Wednesday, American politician, educator and writer Shirley Chisolm (the first African-American woman elected to Congress) will be honored in a dedication ceremony at Brower Park. It's not entirely clear from the promotional material what for of dedication is in store -- the NYC Park Department already references that Park Place by Brower Park is already known also as "Shirley Chisolm Place" and that a section of park is already dubbed Shirley Chisolm Circle -- but she was a great American and long-time neighborhood resident and advocate, so she deserves all the dedications she can get.

That last link details Chisolm's long relationship with the neighborhood, including frequent trips to Brower Park where she held class for students she taught.

Festivities begin at 11am. The Friends of Brower Park advise this:

Students from the George V. Brower School PS 289, have planned a special opening and closing performance for the dedication. The Brooklyn Public Library and the Brooklyn Children’s Museum will have books and activities for the younger set. If you would like to volunteer on the day of the dedication let us know: contactus@friendsofbrowerpark.org

UPDATE: here is some coverage of the event after the fact.

Photo: Rachel Holliday Smith via DNAinfo

This Sunday, Brower Park seeking volunteers for paint scraping

This Sunday, The Friends of Brower Park community group is organizing to scrape paint from and repaint the entrances to Brower Park. In an advisory in the group's Facebook Page, they advise:

With enough volunteers we can paint the retaining wall on Kingston Avenue. Park staff will be there to scrape and paint and provide advice. Gloves, paint, scrapers, and clothes will be provided by the Parks Department. There will be bottled water and freshly popped popcorn to keep us smiling.