Summer Youth Employment 2019

Summer Youth Employees Amber, Ari, Kaniela, Keearin, and Rowan worked with Blok by Blok, Summer Coleman, Ronen Goldstein, and Mashaun Hendricks. Together, they produced a video about Justice Hotel featuring Amanda Williams, recorded a Land Acknowledgement reading with Heather Miller at the American Indian Center, and created a Justice-focused podcast interviewing neighbors, which was shared at Walk in our Shoes: Youth in Urban Design at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Each summer, 6018North hires Chicagoland High School students to learn skills and collaborate with artists to realize various projects including aspects of Soil and Soul, Justice Hotel, In Wood We Trust, Its Elemental, and yearly projects for EXPO Chicago. Students learned woodworking, video editing, audio recording, and podcasting. Most importantly, students learn cooperation: to work with each other, mentors, and artists, along with stick-to-itiveness. The program rethinks the potential of immersive body-based education. The high degree of the students' work and their esprit de corps confirms the value of treating education as a dynamic space: emphasizing bodily skills, repetition, and technique and an appreciation of older, often forgotten systems of production and bodily movement. While the woodworking honors craftsmanship, the video and audio production allows for a highly experimental approach.

This program has been partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit arts.gov.