Priya Anand
Community organizer and food entrepreneur based in University Heights. Priya writes about Newark's creative economy, emerging small businesses, and the gap between what gets covered and what actually matters. She also makes a very good roti that she refuses to sell.
How Five Newark Artists Decided to Share a Studio and Build Something Together
The Heights Makers Collective started with a storage problem. Tonya Alcott had more prints than she had wall space. Rafael Guerrero was binding books on a kitchen table that was also the dining table. Three other makers had similar situations. They found a studio space near NJIT and split the rent five ways. That was two years ago. Now the collective has a joint storefront, a shared website, and a reputation in Newark's maker community for work that is serious and priced honestly. I asked Tonya what made it work. She said: we all showed up on the same day and we kept showing up. That's it. That's the whole thing. The Heights Mural Print series — Tonya's documentation of University Heights' public art — is the kind of project that only gets made when someone has a studio and time and people around her who care about the same things she does.