Summer Youth Employment 2024

Summer Youth Employees Amal, Aslan, Ayan, and Aziz worked with Vedgewater garden leaders are teaching our young students to create accessible, organic growing spaces, and they are building pavilions and seating to create a social space for community gardeners. 6018North team up with the Ismaili Center Chicago and Edgewater Environmental Coalition to bring our Youth Employment program to Vedgewater Community Garden in Edgewater.  This includes a re-purposing of Sarzurzuma by Studio Chahar, from the 2023 Chicago Architecture Biennial, into a shaded gathering space for gardeners.

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.