2024
Participants
Team O1
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The Street Vendors Association of Chicago (SVAC) fights for an inclusive economy by organizing street vendors to build political and economic power without fear of police harassment, excessive fines, and discrimination. Subsequently, SVAC led the campaign to push Chicago’s City Council to legalize street vending in 2015. SVAC played a crucial role in the passing of the Limited Worker Cooperative Association Act, which enables worker-owned cooperatives to register as business organizations in Illinois. SVAC provides a sustainable model and structures for an equitable economy and development in communities experiencing racial wealth divides and active disinvestment.
Cooperation Racine (CR) is a Licensed Worker Cooperative in West Englewood, Chicago. Founded by practicing Black & Brown artists committed to reimagining the arts ecosystem using anti-Black racism and anti-capitalism frameworks towards what CR conceives of as “cooperative creative economies”. The cooperative model at the heart of Cooperation Racine centers particularly marginalized communities, including queer Black women and femmes, non-binary folx, and disabled individuals and families. Cooperation Racine believes that anchoring the arts ecosystem in the solidarity economy through cooperative economics is one of many ways to rewrite a history of redlining, divestment, and violence that has left communities of color lacking of opportunity and prosperity. CR further believes that joy should be at the core of our work, internally and externally, and in that, prioritize care, expression, and liberatory practices.
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Team O2
Community Collaborators:
Chicago Public Library - Douglass Branch, SAIC at Homan Square
Design Contributors:
Andrea Jablonski, Martha Bayne, and Sheila Sachs
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Chicago Public Library - Douglass Branch.
SAIC at Homan Square is a community of dedicated North Lawndale residents and artists in the historic Chicago neighborhood of Homan Square. Along with artists and scholars from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, we engage audiences and communities in collaborative processes through three areas of focus: public programs, degree courses for SAIC students, and an Artist-in-Residence Program.
Andrea Jablonski is a Polish born, multidisciplinary artist, painter, and fabricator based in Chicago. Her work includes site-specific installations, wall pieces, sculptures, and murals. Her use of diverse materials to bring ideas from concept to creation, as well as her hands-on approach, have helped her secure a wide variety of clients and projects. She has earned many grants and merits, including being named one of the Chicago Reader’s People of the Year (2011) and being a featured artist for Chicago Artists’ Month (2014). In 2023, Jablonski contributed an installation that was featured in the Chicago History Museum’s exhibition on the Polish community in Chicago. Jablonski works with many community arts organizations, including Elastic Arts, Arts of Life, Opera-Matic, and After School Matters. She hosts an Eastern European music program on Lumpen Community Radio once a month.
Martha Bayne is a writer, editor, and community builder based in Chicago. She has edited three nonfiction anthologies of writing about Chicago and the Midwest, and her reported work and essays have appeared in many local and national outlets. Currently an acquisitions editor at the University of Illinois Press and a member of Theater Oobleck’s artistic ensemble, she is also the founder of the long-running community meal project Soup & Bread and the author of Soup & Bread Cookbook: Building Community One Pot at a Time. With Andrea Jablonski and Theater Oobleck she was the recipient of an NEA grant for the production of A Memory Palace of Fear, an immersive haunted house about housing insecurity staged in West Humboldt Park in 2017. As an editor with South Side Weekly she received a Lisagor Award in 2021 for her coverage of the 2020 George Floyd protests in downtown Chicago.
Sheila Sachs is a graphic designer by trade and a do-gooder by nature. Along with Martha Bayne she organizes the long-running community meal project Soup & Bread and designed the narrative cookbook Soup & Bread Cookbook: Building Community One Pot at a Time. She has designed several other books and hundreds of record albums for bands and labels of local and international acclaim. She’s been part of Pravda Records since its inception 40 years ago. Just out of college, Sheila joined the staff of the Chicago Reader and worked there for 22 years, half of those as the award-winning alt-weekly’s art director.
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Team O3
Community Collaborator:
Homan Grown
Design Contributor:
Office of Dillon Pranger
Artist Contributor:
Nailah Golden
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Homan Grown is a wholesale perennial plant nursery and social enterprise located on the West side of Chicago in the North Lawndale Neighborhood. They train and employ people in growing urban durable perennial plants, and provide training and education in designing, installing, and stewarding regenerative, ecological and edible landscapes based on permaculture principles. Homan Grown collaborates and serves as a source for plant material and is an educational resource to all sectors of the community.
Dillon Pranger is an architect, designer, and fabricator whose work lies in sustainable building materials and construction techniques. He is an Assistant Professor in the College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology. Pranger is co-editor of The Architecture Waste: Design for a Circular Economy (Routledge 2021), a publication that questions the traditional role of the architect and challenges the discipline to address urgent material issues within the larger design process. He is the founder and principal of ODP (Office of Dillon Pranger), an award-winning architecture and design practice whose work focuses on small-scale project types that respond to their local context by considering material, labor, and energy lifecycles as an integral part of the design process.
Nailah Golden is a digital media artist, lover of cyberspace, and the mind behind Trapfuturism™. Nailah’s creative practice focuses on creating, holding, and amplifying space for underrepresented communities within the digital-virtual world and beyond.
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Team O4
Community Collaborators:
Open Books and Chicago Children’s Museum
Design Contributors:
Palmyra Geraki and Alt Space
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Open Books is a nonprofit that provides literacy experiences for tens of thousands of readers each year through inspiring programs and the sale of new and used donated books. In 2021, Open Books Launched North Lawndale Reads, an ongoing multi-strategy campaign designed to increase the literacy of all residents in North Lawndale.
Chicago Children’s Museum’s mission is to improve children’s lives by creating a community where play and learning connect.
Palmyra Geraki is an interdisciplinary architect, educator, writer, and editor. She is the founding principal of PALMYRA, a design practice working across disciplines, scales, and typologies, and an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. She is a co-author of the book The Organizer’s Guide to Architecture Education (forthcoming from Routledge). A Board Trustee of the AIA Chicago Foundation since 2023, Palmyra is also slated to join the Board of Directors of The Architecture Lobby (T-A-L), an international labor advocacy organization for the AEC industry. Palmyra received her B.A. in 'Architecture' and 'Ethics, Politics & Economics' from Yale University and her M.Arch. from the Yale School of Architecture. She grew up in Thessaloniki, Greece, and has since lived and/or worked in New Haven, New York, Oakland, San Francisco, Milwaukee, and Chicago.
Jordan Campbell is the driving force behind the creative energy that pulses through Alt Space Chicago. With a passion for innovation and an eye for design, Jordan has transformed Alt Space into a thriving hub for artists, entrepreneurs, and visionaries alike. Although Jordan wasn’t born or raised in the Windy City, Jordan's passion for Chicago's vibrant culture and history has greatly influenced Alt Space's mission. He believes in harnessing the city's rich artistic heritage while pushing boundaries to explore the frontiers of creativity through art, faith and community.
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Team O5
Community Collaborator:
Sinai Chicago
Design Contributors:
Lindsey Krug, Andres Camacho, and Brad Silling
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Sinai Chicago is a nonprofit system of hospitals, clinics, researchers, and social service providers dedicated to advancing health equity on Chicago’s west and southwest sides. Based in North Lawndale, their hospitals, clinics, and community institutes provide healthcare and essential social services to over 100,000 individuals and families each year.
Lindsey Krug is a designer in Chicago and an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning. Krug has previously practiced at WOJR, SITU Research, ODA, and Studio Gang.
Andres Camacho is a designer in Chicago and an Adjunct Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning and held positions at SOM and Johnston Marklee, among others.
Bradley Silling is a designer in New York City. He has held positions in architecture and design firms including Bestor Architecture, MKCA, and Johnston Marklee, and has taught architectural design studios at Syracuse University.
Andres, Brad, and Lindsey met as students and connected over their shared interest in design that celebrates the overlooked qualities of everyday spaces. Working both together and independently, their areas of exploration have focused on the body in relation to domesticity, democratic institutions, and infrastructure. They each received their Masters of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
