Author Archives: Leonard Santos

Outreach Plan – Carousels of New York

The Carousels of New York’s outreach plan can be organized into three phases based on temporality and target communities.

Phase 1: Research Assistance

Phase 1 takes place while we’re completing our research. Our plan is to find specific contacts and email/call them we develop our work to get more expertise on our research. The target demographic for this phase will be professionals and academics who can provide guidance and assistance for this project. In general, this will include researchers in programs for Urban Planning, Architecture, History, Anthropology, Art History, Digital Humanities, Data Analysis and Visualization, and Urban Education. We may also potentially present this project at future academic conferences.

This phase does not require us to complete any of our public-facing materials as we’re using this phase to continue building the project.

Phase 2: Carousel Patrons

After we’ve finished a full draft of the project and published it, we want to make sure that actual patrons of the carousels see it as soon as we can! This includes tourists, families, carousel enthusiasts, and fans of whimsy. This is highly intertwined with our social media plan, but outside of that we plan to connect with NYC online groups/forums and contact organizations to spread the word.

Additionally, we want to make sure that we contact the carousels themselves. When we go to them, we hope to leave them with flyers to hang up and retrieve contact information for carousel representatives and employees who may be able to help us. This way, our work visiting each of the carousels in-person can help us collect more data and spread the word about our project!

This phase requires us to have already completed preliminary research on all carousel locations and a completed version of the website.

Phase 3: Outreach for Change

After our project has had some time to settle and we’ve had time to analyze the data, we want to try to reach out to whoever we can so that we can advocate for areas that have no carousels. Our overarching goal is to either bring carousels to the new area or make the existing carousels more financially accessible. This would include reaching out to city developers and organizations. This would include NY Carousel, non-profits like the Prospect Park Alliance and Central Park Conservancy, or other carousel related organizations. 

This phase requires us to have a social media presence and a more finalized version of our research.

Leonard Santos Bio and Contribution Statement

Leonard Santos (he/him) is a current M.S. student in the Data Analysis and Visualization program with an Advanced Certificate in Interactive Technology and Pedagogy at the CUNY Graduate Center. Outside of CUNY, Leonard is the Media Lab Administrator and an Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Department of Media, Culture, and Communication. He focuses on digital media, technology, and practice-based critical making in his work along with queer studies and suicide prevention. In the Carousels of NY project, Leonard in charge of outreach, photography, and web editing. Outside of work, Leonard can be found playing Dungeons & Dragons, producing theatrical works in NYC, and spending time with his cat, Willow.

Skillset – Leonard Santos

Hello everyone! My name is Leonard Santos (he/him) and I am a second-year M.S. student in the Data Analysis and Visualization program. I completed my undergraduate and first master’s degree at NYU in Media, Culture, and Communication with a focus on practice-based digital media, technology, and queer advocacy. Outside of that, I have a lot of administrative, making, and production experience through my work at NYU’s MCC MediaLab where I help lead efforts to increase digital literacy and critical making in our department. Additionally, I work as a theatre producer in New York City!

Project management: I have a lot of experience with project management and I tend to gravitate towards these roles a lot. This includes managing the overarching logistics of my teams both in my job at NYU and theatre casts and crews, creating schedules and reminding people of deadlines, and assisting people whenever problems arise since I try to be familiar with everything that happens. 

Development: I have some experience with development, particularly with JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and Tableau. I tend to be a quick study and usually can help provide assistance to this area!

Design/UX: I’m fairly proficient with design, although I would not consider this my top strength. I’m very familiar with how to use design software such as Adobe Illustrator and InDesign, along with how to utilize other Adobe products (Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere Pro, Audition).

Outreach/social media: I do this a lot for my theatre work and would really not prefer to have this role for this class.

Documentation: Happy to do it! I tend to document a lot of how things work, mostly due to my experience with project management.

Research: I’m somewhat confident here, although I wouldn’t consider myself PhD level. 

Tech Skills: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Audition, Premiere Pro, Media Encoder, Lightroom, Illustrator, InDesign), Tableau, Theatre Producing

Overall, I consider myself all-rounder and I can support a team in any way that’s needed.