Projects
I am a founding member of ArtWorks, a free community art studio that has been in existence since 2007.
The mission of ArtWorks is to cultivate inclusive communities through the arts and cultural exchange. Our aim is to foster the development of understanding and compassion between people, despite social and cultural differences. ArtWorks programs are based on these beliefs: that the arts belong to everyone, and that collective art making practices promote respect for difference and inspire positive social change. Studio participants work together to establish and maintain a welcoming and supportive environment where people can learn or share a skill, get to know one another, experience a sense of belonging, and participate in community building through the arts.
The initial studio was created in response to NIMBYism (not in my back yard-ism) in a gentrifying neighborhood in Chicago that had long been the home of numerous social service organizations. Some people new to the neighborhood were opposed to being neighbors with people who had serious mental illness, or were homeless, or had problems with substance use. The studio was started on the basis of research showing that stigma is most effectively reduced when people have the chance to get to know each other within the context of a non-contrived situation.
I am a founding member of the L is for Liberation Collective, a small, grassroots group responsible for the creation of the Radicalphabet poster. The Radicalphabet is an alternative alphabet poster intended to teach little ones big ideas about building a better world.
The language, images, and concepts we use to teach our children provide not only the building blocks for literacy, but also communicate ideas about what is note-worthy and powerful in the world around them. We worked to create an accessible, reproducible alphabet poster that parents, educators, childcare providers, and other grown ups can use as a springboard for conversations with the little ones in their lives about ideas of community, resistance, power, and difference. While the acts of parenting, caring for, and teaching little ones are often undervalued and depoliticized, we believe they are practices rich with opportunities for orienting young people toward social justice. We imagine the radicalphabet poster as a supportive tool in the struggle to position parenting and care work as central to movement building.
