Change & Gentrification in Bronzeville and Humboldt Park

Students created a storyboard masterpiece on our chalkboard wall to illustrate change and gentrification in two neighborhoods:  Bronzeville and Humboldt Park.  They did a great job.  We have some very creative and artistic students!

Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s

CP students visited two interesting exhibits at the Museum of Contemporary Art this semester.  “This will have been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s”    touches on major developments of the period, including the politicization of the AIDS crisis and the increased visibility of women and gay artists and artists of color. 

“The Language of Less (Then and Now)” is inspired by the MCA’s holdings from the 1960s and 70s  of Minimal art – art that a) rejects imagery, b) reveals little, if any, evidence of the artist’s hand, and c) embraces industrial materials.    Minimalist art creates a presence, and elicits a response more so than representative art.  

In addition to the work of traditional minimalists such as Carl Andre, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and Richard Serra, the “Then” exhibit includes work of artists such as Martin Puryear, an African American artist who was not accepted as a minimalist of the time.    The “Now” exhibit of contemporary artists has pieces by Leonor Antunes, Carol Bove, Jason Dodge, Gedi Sibony, and Oscar Tuazon.

Tricycle races... at work?

Where would you find a climbing wall and a huge indoor treehouse, complete with slide?  A children’s museum, you might say.  Guess again!  This is the working office of Red Frog Events, an event production company based in Chicago.  CP students were treated to a tour of the space, designed by Torchia, the same designers who worked on Google's Chicago office. You have to see this place to believe it!  There’s a tree in the center of the office, conference table made of legos, foosball and pool tables, tricycles (for tricycle races) and a wall of hands, just waiting for your high five!   My favorite is the conference room with swings instead of chairs!

Owner Joe Reynolds wanted to create the type of work environment that would attract lots of employment interest. In an interview with EntrepreneursUnplugged.com, Reynolds explained how he has always been "incredibly focused on having a company that's the best place to work in the world. When you have a great place to work, great people want to work there."  And it seems to be working!  Every employee I met was smiling, enthusiastic, and their eyes glowed whenever they talked about the company.  

Red Frog  won the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Dream Big Small Business of the Year Award in 2011 and was also a Chicago Innovation Awards 2011 winner.  In 2010, Red Frog was voted one of the top workplaces by Chicago Tribune.  

Redfroggers explained to CP students how Reynolds started the company, Great Urban Race, with a competitive scavenger race in Chicago in 2007.  By 2008, Great Urban Race expanded to 20 cities nationwide.  Great Urban Race became Red Frog Events in 2009, when they added Warrior Dash, a 5K obstacle running race.  They have also added Beach Palooza, a beach themed 5K obstacle course, and Red Frog Bar Crawls.

In response to CP students questions about how a project comes together from ascertaining the market to marketing, securing permits, etc., Redfroggers and  “tadpoles” (interns) were happy to respond.  If there is sponsor/participant/city interest in a race, Red Frog sends a marketing team out to ascertain the market, local media, find location, meet with city government to secure permits, etc.  They work with 65 venues across the country, and have traveling obstacle courses they bring and construct on site.   They use digital, print, broadcast, and social media and are huge on Pandora.  They have 800,000 facebook followers.   They also value participant feedback, and so send out a survey to all participants after the event with questions about area, course, obstacles, food, camping.

Internships here are very competitive; they’re paid and you can learn so much!  Departments are referred to as teams, and interns are assigned to five teams, and can join others.  It’s hard work, but they have the world’s best benefits package.  Deadline for summer 2012 internship:  April 6.

 

Housing Issues in Hyde Park

David Hays, Assistant Director of the Community Service Center at the University of Chicago welcomed Chicago Program students and gave us a tour of the campus.  The Community Service Center connects University students as they work with community organizations through internships and volunteerism.  Two thousand of the University’s 13,000 students are involved with community organizations.

Notable buildings on the tour included Rockefeller Memorial Chapel; the Robie House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Albert Pick Hall for International Studies.  A sculpture outside of Pick Hall reportedly casts a shadow of a hammer and sickle (the symbol of communism) on Pick Hall’s east wall on May 1, International Workers Day. 

Robie House

Throughout the tour, David adds notes about community activities happening on campus, and opportunities for us to volunteer and become involved. We walk along Midway Plaisance, a park where the 1893 world’s fair was held.  Only one building remains from the fair, the Museum of Science and Industry.  David tells a story of when his father lived in an apartment building facing the park.  It was at the time of Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968.  From his window, Mr. Hays watched as the Blackstone Rangers, a large and well organized street gang in the neighborhood, gathered to decide if they would riot or not.  Although riots broke out in other parts of the city, the Blackstone Rangers decided not to riot, saving their neighborhood from being ravaged. 

After the tour, we sat down with David for a discussion about the housing issues in the Hyde Park area.  From 1916 until 1948, racially restrictive covenants were used to keep Chicago's neighborhoods white.  These were legally binding covenants attached to parcels of land that prohibited African Americans from moving into certain areas.  Of course blacks contested the borders of their segregated community, particularly since the population was ever increasing and they had no where to go.  But, unfortunately, they were up against political leaders and financial institutions which funded the legal defense of restrictive covenants.  In 1948, the Supreme Court in Shelley v. Kraemer declared the enforcement of racial restrictive covenants unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Even with restrictive covenants gone, however, urban renewal programs capitalized on the expansive eminent domain powers, whereby the government can take private property for a public purpose through condemnation and payment of fair value.  So the powers that be could buy out owners who may not want to sell, and use the space for their own needs.  In the 1950s and 1960s, the "Fight Against Blight," one of the largest urban renewal plans in the nation, resulted in the demolition and redevelopment of entire blocks of decayed buildings with the goal of creating an "interracial community of high standards."  The plan forced the relocation of 20,000 residents, mostly low-income blacks and whites.  
As a result, Hyde Park's average income soared by 70 percent, but its Black population fell by 40 percent, since the substandard housing primarily occupied by low income minorities had been purchased, torn down, and replaced, with the residents not being able to afford to remain in the newly rehabilitated areas.

When residents of the Woodlawn neighborhood felt under threat from an expansion plan, they organized the Woodlawn Organization (TWO).  The Woodlawn Organization’s founding president was the Reverend Arthur Brazier of the Pentecostal Apostolic Church of God, whom community organizer Saul Alinsky helped to train to head the organization. Today, the Woodlawn Organization and University of Chicago work together on neighborhood issues. 

The idea for the Woodlawn Children's Promise Community originated in 2008. The late Bishop Brazier had heard about the Harlem Children’s Promise Zone, which provides free services for youth living in a 97-block area of that community.  The goal is to remove barriers to learning so all kids can go to college.  During his election campaign, President Obama pledged to fund similar efforts around the country, and Brazier approached the University of Chicago with the idea of launching one in Woodlawn.  Woodlawn expects to be one of several Chicago communities competing this year for a federal Promise Neighborhoods grant.   

In response to a question about asset based development in the community, Hays talked about the work of Public Allies Chicago (PAC), established by founding Executive Director Michelle Obama in 1993.  Public Allies’ trains young people from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds to emerge as community leaders.  Michelle Obama’s emphasis on indigenous leadership and her belief that all people have potential to lead became a core value of PAC’s  leadership philosophy.  The first lady was one of the original faculty members of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute at Northwestern University, led by John McKnight and Jody Kretzmann.  Jody Kretzmann is one of the founders of the ACM Urban Studies Program, and continues to speak to students each semester about asset-mapping.

CEO shares lessons learned in launching a business successfully

Students met with the CEO of InContext Solutions, an internet-based market research company named “One of America’s Most Promising Companies” by Forbes.com in 2009.  InContext Solutions is the first company to offer the technology of a 3D virtual store experience to provide an analysis of shopper attitudes, behaviors and actions to products.   

CEO Bob Gillespie shared some of the lessons he has learned about launching and growing a business successfully.  He emphasized that it is critical for his business to not compete on price and offer a value-added service that the competitors can't match.  Bob shared how important it is for students to begin thinking about building their personal network now and demonstrated how he tapped into these relationships to make InContext Solutions successful.  InContext Solutions won the “Up-and-Comer Award” at the 2010 Chicago Innovation Awards, and has been featured on CNBC, Fox Business News, and the Today Show. 

Artists examine social effects--positive and negative--of mega events

Chicago Program students visited Gallery 400 for two of its exhibits: Global Cities/Model Worlds  and “Pocket Guide to Hell.”  In the Global Cities/Model Worlds exhibit, artists Ryan Griffis, Lize Mogel and Sarah Ross examine the architectural and social effects—positive and negative—of so-called mega events such as the Olympics and World’s Fairs.  It’s amazing to see how many cities actually end up getting hurt by hosting these large events.  The overall cost to the city; the impact on the communities that are displaced is usually not worth the light the event shines on the city.  Promises for low income housing being built are made, and what’s built ends up being one-third of the housing the event displaced.  Where do these people who have been displaced go? 

The “Pocket Guide to Hell” exhibit focused on the work of Steele MacKaye.  The works highlighted his vision for the city and his dream of building the world’s largest theater—the Spectatorium—for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition that never got realized.