Summer Youth Employment 2021

Summer Youth Employees Cortez, Dontrell, Donzell, James, Jaylen worked with Bryan Saner, Bluestem Co-op, and Ronen Goldstein on a collaborative project with to build an open-air pavilion/gazebo in a community garden at the corner of 75th Street.

For this work, 6018North Justice Hotel curators are partnering with the Greater Chatham Initiative (GCI), and Ameena Matthews in the Pause for Peace garden, as a part of the GCI Restorative Justice Practices and Programs. Reused wood for this work provided courtesy of Chicago Park District and Michael Dimitroff. The platform constructed this summer will host Youth and Community dialogues during the fall as a partner program for the The Available City of the Chicago Architecture Biennial.

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.