Whereas Hoops, Phase 1

Collaboration with Noah Cohan
2021-2024

Whereas Hoops is an interdisciplinary, community-based  work combining research, writing, creative practice, and activism to  address the anti-Black racism underlying the longtime absence of basketball courts in Forest Park, the largest urban park in St. Louis, Missouri. 

Over the course of three years, we posted archival research on Instagram, connected with parks administrators and elected representatives, launched a podcast, conducted media interviews, and spoke with park visitors about the absence of basketball courts in the park. The project also featured advocacy in the form of two custom-built, mobile basketball hoops that were brought to the park reguarly between 2021-2022, as well as an artist’s book distributed to local parks officials and civic leaders.  The book tells the story of basketball’s rich history in St. Louis, illustrates how the dynamics of race, class, and gender led to basketball’s absence from Forest Park, and calls for the construction of basketball courts in the park.

Due in part to these efforts, Forest Park opened the Nicholas J. Booker Basketball Courts--the first basketball courts in the park’s nearly 150-year history--on July 9th, 2024.

(Aerial view of the basketball courts © STL From Above)