BELONGING
Belonging is a collaboration between Chicago Park District’s Young Cultural Stewards and Englewood-based artist and activist Tonika Johnson. Building on Johnson’s Folded Map Project. Belonging explores Chicago’s hyper-segregated neighborhoods through the eyes of young people. Youth ages 5-25 share experiences of feeling welcome, safe, and included as well as criminalized, neglected, and locked out of their own city. Using art making and digital storytelling, youth reimagine a city where everyone belongs.
Belonging brought together four Chicago Park District programs engaging over 6,000 youth throughout the summer of 2019. ArtSeed engaged youth ages 5-10 in 55 parks and playgrounds through storytelling and art making in an exploration of what makes their communities feel like home. Inferno Mobile Recording visited an additional 50 parks and engaged youth ages 9-16 as well as adults with special needs, who played a game of digital telephone game - exchanging audio postcards and beat-making across the parks. Young Cultural Steward Fellows operated three summer camps in Rogers Park, Little Village, and Chatham. YCS teens (ages 12-15) participated in weekly field trips exploring each other’s neighborhoods and creating art about what it means to “belong” in nature, through the four elements: earth, air, water, and fire. TRACE (Teens Re-Imagine Art, Community, and Environment) activated parks in Englewood and Austin working with 25 youth ages 14-25. These young people traveled to all 15 of the Chicago Park District’s Cultural Centers where they conducted interviews, collected oral histories, took documentary photography and video, and curated an exhibition exploring their findings.
All four programs collaborated on a culminating exhibition and block party at the Englewood Line. The Belonging Block Party was co-hosted by community partners Grow Greater Englewood and The Floating Museum, and featured youth generated audio, video, and visual art, as well as real time interviews facilitated by Tonika Johnson.
Photos courtesy of Jamie Nesbitt Golden and Irina Zadov.