Summer Youth Employment 2022

Summer Youth Employees at Emil G. Hirsch Metropolitan High School are working with Bryan Saner, Bluestem Co-op, Derek Curtis, and Ji Yang on a collaborative garden project. Students are learning woodworking skills to create structures for the garden, first buildling bird houses as an introduction to woodworking, then picnic tables so people may gather in this public space. Addressing the soil, students collected plant samples to establish a baseline of soil composition at the site. This will lead to a multi-year engagement with artist mentors to study the soil around the school, and remediating the ground with new plantings of native species. 

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.