Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative is a decentralized network of 30 artists committed to social, environmental, and political engagement.With members working from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, Justseeds operates both as a unified collaboration of similarly minded printmakers and as a loose collection of creative individuals with unique viewpoints and working methods. We believe in the transformative power of personal expression in concert with collective action. To this end, we produce collective portfolios, contribute graphics to grassroots struggles for justice, work collaboratively both in- and outside the co-op, build large sculptural installations in galleries, and wheatpaste on the streets—all while offering each other daily support as allies and friends.

The Chicago ACT Collective builds political artistic collaboration and dialogue across multiple communities. We aim to generate work that both reflects and responds to current local needs identified by those most directly impacted. The Collective enacts self and community care through art-making.

The Mobilize Creative Collaborative is a new collective led by four artists who utilize bicycle-based maker spaces to provide free creative workshops for youth and adults in public spaces: William Estrada’s Mobile Street Art Cart, Aquil Charlton’s Mobile Music Box, and Andrés Lemus-Spont and Marya Spont-Lemus’s FrankenToyMobile.

In summer 2019, the Mobilize Creative Collaborative invites you to join us—and each other!—for interdisciplinary creative collaboration, critical conversations about what you care about, and mobile mobilizing, as part of our community workshop series.

For more information on the colalborative please visit us at http://www.animatestudio.org/mobilizecreative

THE CHICAGO NEIGHBORHOOD FAMILY PORTRAITS PROJECT is an ongoing project that asks people in their neighborhood what affect race, class, and gentrification has on their lives. Families receive a free photograph and are encouraged to share how they arrived to their neighborhood – the process of photographing and talking about who represents neighborhoods serves as a tool to tell stories that represent communities in a positive way. The stories also serve as documentation of Chicago neighborhoods and how race, class, and gentrification affects people in them.

This project aims to accomplish the following:

1. Provide families that wouldn’t necessarily have access to family portraits an opportunity to have a portrait for free.
2. Allow for community members, if they choose to, to share how they came to live in the neighborhood in order to document personal stories.
3. Provide an opportunity for me as an educator and artists to talk to people about their stories and the importance of documenting personal histories/her stories in their neighborhoods.
4. Produce photographs and possibly record stories that will allow for the creation of an online community archive for the various people to access neighborhood stories.

EL CHICAGO NEIGHBORHOOD FAMILY PORTRAIT es un proyecto en curso que pregunta a las personas de su vecindario qué efecto tienen en su vida la raza, la clase y la gentrificación. Las familias reciben una fotografía gratuita y se les anima a compartir cómo llegaron a su vecindario. El proceso de fotografiar y hablar sobre quién representa a los vecindarios sirve como una herramienta para contar historias que representan a las comunidades de manera positiva. Las historias también sirven como documentación de los vecindarios de Chicago y cómo la raza, la clase y la gentrificación afectan a las personas en ellos.

Este proyecto tiene como objetivo lograr lo siguiente:
1. Brindar a las familias que no necesariamente tendrían acceso a los retratos familiares la oportunidad de tener retrato de forma gratuita.
2. Permitir que los miembros de la comunidad, si lo desean, compartan cómo llegaron a vivir en el vecindario para documentar historias personales.
3. Brindar una oportunidad para mí como educador y artista para hablar con la gente sobre sus historias y la importancia de documentar historias personales / sus historias en sus vecindarios.
4. Produzca fotografías y posiblemente registre historias que permitan la creación de un archivo de la comunidad en línea para que las distintas personas puedan acceder a las historias del vecindario.

Para obtener más información sobre este proyecto y cuándo vamos a fotografiar en la comunidad, síganos en facebook.com/werdmvmnt o Instagram.com/werdmvmnt.

#familyportraitproject #werdmvmnt

Chicago-based artist William Estrada will share his screen printing work and discuss how to design a poster that engages people in their neighborhood. In this workshop, we will develop an individual poster together, step-by-step that asks us to be empathetic to historically marginalized groups of people.

We encourage you to have the following supplies ready to work virtually alongside the artist: pencil, pencil sharpener, eraser
8.5"x11" paper or larger

This program was previously recorded on Wednesday, December 15 2020

Portraits of Resolution was a mobile photo studio stationed in front of the Cook County Courthouse for a period of one month in the Fall of 2014. Artist/Educators invited participants to think critically about the role and impact of the Cook County Jail through documenting the communities that interact with the jail on a daily basis. There were over 100 portraits collected and over 2,000 pictures taken of passerby. By artists: William Estrada, Anthony Rea, and Erica Brooks, in collaboration with 96 Acres.
96 Acres is a series of community-engaged, site-responsive art projects that involve community stakeholders’ ideas about social and restorative justice issues, and that examine the impact of incarceration at the Cook County Jail on Chicago’s West Side. 96 Acres uses multi-disciplinary practices to explore the social and political implications of incarceration on communities of color. Through creative processes and coalition building, 96 Acres aims to generate alternative narratives reflecting on power and responsibility by presenting insightful and informed collective responses for the transformation of a space that occupies 96 acres, but has a much larger reaching outcome.
For more information: 96acres.org or contact Maria Gaspar at 96acresproject@gmail.com.

Justice Matters works to build and support a national racial justice movement working towards transformative education for students of color – and to develop and advocate for a racial justice policy agenda in local schools and on a national level.

Telpochcalli is a small community school dedicated to integrating the arts and Mexican culture into an innovative academic and social experience and to the development of fully bilingual/biliterate students in English and Spanish. The school is comprised of students, teachers, parents and artists working with socially‐conscious students who understand, appreciate and contribute positively to the self, family, community and world.

CAPE works toward a future in which young people are empowered, through education and the arts, to fully realize their academic, creative and personal potential.

The Chicago chapter has been funding awesomeness in the Windy City since the summer of 2011. We've funded everything from little free libraries and puppet shows to electron microscopes and a temporary mini golf course on Milwaukee Avenue. The Chicago trustees generally meet on the second Tuesday of every month to review proposals.

96 Acres is a series of community-engaged, site-responsive art projects that address the impact of the Cook County Jail on Chicago’s West Side. We aim to generate alternative narratives reflecting on power, and to present creative projects that reflect the community’s vision of transformation.

3Arts works to sustain and promote Chicago artists. Our focus on women artists, artists of color, and artists with disabilities stems from the need for a diversity of voices and visions to be supported if our city is to prosper and inspire.

Our programs are designed to support artists in multiple and tiered ways—through validation, promotion, residencies, project support, and unrestricted cash grants that let them know their risk-taking and determination are deeply valued.