Take a Tour of Pilsen - by Video or Phone

We've written here before about how neighborhoods are using multimedia tools to promote their work and their neighborhoods, but couldn't have imagined, even six months ago, how far the groups would come, and how fast.

• Audio slideshows are now available for 10 neighborhoods as part of the Chicago Community Showcase project, funded by the 2016 Fund for Chicago Neighborhoods and Boeing Company. The photos, maps and background info provide vivid introductions to neighborhoods that usually don't make it onto tourists' agendas.
• A virtual walking tour of Pilsen by TuMultimedia (below) captures many of the colors, sounds and flavors that make that neighborhood so interesting and vibrant.
• New mobile-device tours of five neighborhoods provide photos and audio narration via smart phones. If you've got your phone handy, just go to tours.lisc-chicago.org.

It's great stuff. Kudos to all the neighborhood people who put the tours together; Sally Duros and Amadi Jordan-Walker, who managed the program and saw to thousands of tiny details; and Sarahmaria Gomez and Alex Fledderjohn for their video tours.

What's a Portal? Pilsen Shows the Way

Mayor Daley was in Pilsen yesterday promoting "digital excellence," but what does that mean? The hope is that in the four demonstration communities of Pilsen, Englewood, Chicago Lawn and Auburn Gresham, use of digital tools and the internet will become commonplace for residents young and old, well-off and poor. It won't be easy because so many residents lack broadband access and don't have experience with on-line tools, but that's all included in the digital excellence plans that the communities are beginning to implement.

One thing is certain. A community will use the web more if there is relevant local content that is of value to residents, businesses and other stakeholders, and that's where the Pilsen Portal comes in.

Launched last week and still in beta form, the portal is intended to be a place where many, many local people contribute content, find content, and comment about what others are putting up. Already about 20 beta users have signed on as contributors and they're starting to fill up the calendar and the directory (check out the listing for Studio One Tattoos). Jaime Guzmán, on organizer for the project, is putting his videography skills to work profiling local businesses (Kristoffer's Cafe) and even the churches are getting involved putting up the schedules of masses and kermeses (summer festivals).

A dynamic community-created web portal won't bring digital excellence all by itself. But my hunch is that if the portal can engage scores of local people in the telling of the Pilsen story, circa 2009, that will be an important step on the road. And once Pilsen does it, others will follow.

Running for the Health of It--19th Annual Alivio Y Salud Run for Health in Pilsen

“We’ve been training for months to run the 5K,” said Armando Rodriguez, an eighth grader at Orozco Community Academy in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. “Today our training is getting put to the test.”

On Saturday, no less than 1,000 athletes and spectators of all ages shrugged off the drizzly weather to participate in the 19th Annual Alivio Y Salud Run for Health in Pilsen. The 5K Run, 5K Kids Run and the 2 Mile Walk and Kids Dash drew a healthy crowd, most were family members of area-school children there to compete.


Robert Reznar, coach of Orzoco’s Running Club, began training 75 kids for this race in February. The club meets after school two times a week.

“I think for a lot of kids it’s a social thing, so there’s no tryout for the kids, said Reznar. “They can just come on out and have a good time with their friends and get a good workout.”

Reznar, who is also the health and fitness teacher at Orozco, says sports activities like the running club are essential to students well being. The school has a high incidence of student obesity, a problem he partially attributes to gang problems in the area. “The neighborhood is a little dangerous, so parents are reluctant to let their kids outside during the day to play," said Reznar. “We’re trying to use our programming to teach them how important it is to take care of their health at an early age.”

The months of training paid off, as five of Reznar’s students placed in the top 10 in their age divisions. Rodriguez won 10th place in his division.

“My favorite part about running is the challenge, [our coaches] challenge us a lot,” he said. “They make us sprint and run for 30 minutes, which I thought I couldn’t do. It was a great challenge for me and I overcame it.”

Sold-Out Neighborhood Tours Deliver the Goods

It seemed like a good idea, that neighborhood groups should get involved in the Burnham Centennial's Bold Plans Big Dreams program and put on tours of their often-unseen communities.

And it was. On Saturday, May 16, six neighborhoods led sold-out bus and walking tours in South Chicago, Bronzeville, Pilsen, Albany Park, Auburn Gresham and West Ridge. Reports are flowing in and it appears that both participants and tour guides had a ball. Here's some of the commentary:

Indian snacks -- Dorothie Shah reports that the West Ridge tour spent more than an hour in small groups, walking into shops along Devon Avenue and chatting with the owners or sales clerks. They sampled jalebis and other snacks at Royal Sweets, met the owner of the Sahil Sari shop and talked with Mafat Patel, founder of the Patel retail and wholesale food empire.

Pilsen culture – Tour leader Alex Morales focused on the neighborhood's history of activism and organizing but also pointed out the local attractions, and considered it a sign of success that people wished there had been time to get inside the National Museum of Mexican Art and spend some time shopping and eating on 18th Street. He wants them coming back (and spending money when they do).

Bronzeville development – This tour attracted guests from Canada, the south suburbs, the University of Chicago and the Field Museum, and "all were amazed by the amount and quality of development" in the area, says Bernita Johnson Gabriel of Quad Communities Development Corp. Even better, "all said they would recommend the tour to others."

South Chicago discoveries – The way Jackie Samuel tells it, visitors to the former steel mill district were absolutely charmed by the tour guides and the unexpected sites along the way, including the spectacular view from St. Michael's Church, the local gardens and the big ore walls at the former U.S. Steel site.

It wasn't obvious to Samuel and others, when the training and hard work of developing these tours got started a few months ago, just what the benefits might be, especially since most of these neighborhoods have a lot of rough edges and unfinished business.

The first training session, in fact, was on a day when three youth were gunned downed in broad daylight in South Chicago. "I left the meeting so happy and then this senseless act of violence just hit our hearts so deeply," Samuel recounts. "I questioned if we were doing the right thing by showcasing the community. (But) I realized that so much hard work has been put in place over the past 10 years that I could not let a group of thugs steal our communities' thunder. When we started doing the research it clearly pointed out that we have a story to tell, with all of our lumps and bumps."

Download brochures and maps for each tour here.

Photos are of the Pilsen and West Ridge practice tours, by Vince Michael.

Mmmmm....Mole de Mayo!

I spent a couple of hours in Pilsen this afternoon sampling the tasty treats at Mole de Mayo, where some of Chicago's finest Mexican restaurants vied for the titles of "Best Mole" and "People's Choice." Above, Hector Marcial, executive chef of Mundial Cocina Mestiza, located about half a block east of Paulina on 18th Street, was dishing up a sample of three kinds of mole: the classic mole poblano from Puebla in central Mexico, mole amarillo/yellow mole, and a mole sauce with pork the name of which I tried to catch twice and failed miserably--sorry! But they all tasted mighty good.

You can see them here: beef in mole poblano to the left, pork in the mystery mole at center, chicken in yellow mole on the right.


Other restaurants competing included other neighborhood favorites like Nuevo Leon and Fogata Village, plus the Maxwell Street branch of the Lalo's empire, North Side contender Riques Regional and the upscale Zocalo. With the gorgeous weather, great publicity, celebrity chefs and master sommelier Alpana Singh on hand, hundreds of people turned out over the afternoon. Who won, you ask? I left before the winners were announced, but check in at the New Communities web site next week to find out.

Note: I stand corrected. Riques never made it to the event, and I neglected to mention FIG Catering, whose pulled pork torta and mint limeade were big hits.

See more photos and descriptions of the event through links in the comments below.

Bridging the School-Community Gap

On the surface, it seems like schools and communities ought to be natural partners. Neighborhood schools are filled with kids who walk just a few blocks every day, often escorted by their parents. They are big public spaces, often next to parks that are filled with locals at night and on the weekends. Yet schools constantly say they don't see their parents enough, and neighborhood folks say schools are often aloof from the local goings-on.

I've recently come across a couple of different strategies for trying to bridge the divide. The photo above was taken in February at Reavis Elementary's Family Art Night. This school year Reavis has been hosting family events every couple of months or so, inviting parents to join their children in activities or letting parents get a taste of their children's after-school activities through a "showcase." It's been a big hit--administrators say they've never seen so many parents show up for a school-related event. In December, about 200 of them showed up in a blizzard to see their kids perform in the end-of-semester showcase. This is one of many new things happening at Reavis since it became part of Elev8 Chicago.

Another tack is being taken in Pilsen. Last week, about 40 principals, parent and community leaders and university representatives headed out to Itasca for an overnight planning retreat. They began the process of drawing up a five-year plan for education in Pilsen, which should help ease the transitions from one stage of education to another (like pre-K to K-12 and K-12 to college), reduce the high school dropout rate and improve adult education and job training. This group, known as the Pilsen Education Task Force, grew out of a Principals' Table that brought local school leaders together to discuss common issues.

The Reavis strategy has successfully brought formerly absent parents through the school doors, but have yet to engage them in deeper levels of partnership; in Pilsen, they've brought stakeholders together from a variety of levels, but acknowledge that parents are still under-represented.

What are other neighborhoods and schools are doing to build bridges? How's it going? Now that Reavis is getting parents inside the building, what's the next step? Should more neighborhoods be creating task forces like the one in Pilsen, or are there other ways to go here?

Tours: Daniel Burnham Would Be Pleased

Six real-life neighborhoods will be on display May 16 during the Great Chicago Places and Spaces Festival, which is branching out this year to feature more than the usual tours of central-city architecture and hotspots. As part of the Burnham Plan Centennial, tour buses will be heading to Bronzeville, South Chicago, Auburn Gresham, Pilsen, Albany Park and the Indian shopping strip on Devon Avenue in West Ridge.

Mr. Burnham would be pleased, because the changes in these places reflect a less-quoted section of that "make no little plans" statement that we hear so often.

"Make big plans," he continued, "aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency."

I've seen that ever-growing insistency in most of the New Communities Program neighborhoods, where the noble, logical diagrams laid out in their quality-of-life plans keep rising up in the conversations. Insistently. As in "if we want to be great, or just survive, we've got to do this and that." And think big, too, which is another Burnham dictum.

Six neighborhood groups have been preparing the tours with help from the Burnham Centennial team and professional tour consultants, and the stories are shaping up nicely. The Bold Plans Big Dreams Community Showcase Tours will start from downtown, with details to come at Explore Chicago. Here's the lineup:

Albany Park: Chicago's Gateway to the World, will highlight that neighborhood's rich multi-ethnic base, its bungalow belts and retail assets, and its culture, nature and movement. Hosted by the North River Commission.

Bronzeville: Civil War to Civil Rights and Beyond, will trace back to the beginnings of Chicago's African-American experience, show off many historic sites, and preview the "second urban renaissance in the capitol of Black America." Hosted by Quad Communities Development Corporation

Pilsen: A Healthy, Vibrant and Well-Organized Community will focus on that neighborhood's long history in labor activism and organizing, with a focus on the work done by Mexican-American community organizations since the 1980s. Hosted by The Resurrection Project.

South Chicago: From Pollution to Solution will show how the formerly gritty steel town is transforming itself into a "green" community of affordable energy, efficient houses, organic gardens and talented artists. Hosted by Claretian Associates.

Auburn Gresham: A Classic Chicago Community will show off the bungalows and two-flats and 79th Street commercial district that have attracted and supported generations of families. Hosted by Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation.

West Ridge: Gateway to India in Chicago will feature walking tours of the Devon Avenue retail strip, complete with visits to sari shops, video stores and snack shops that attract Indian and Pakistani visitors from across the Midwest (and plenty of locals, too). Hosted by the Indo-American Heritage Museum.

The tours will be repeated during the summer, so check with the host organizations if you can't make the May 16 event.

South Chicago photo above by Eric Young Smith for Chicago Neighborhood News Bureau.

Neighborhood Tourism: Pilsen Main Street Tour

Attracting tourists is one of the oldest money-making schemes in the world, but urban neighborhoods haven't often invested the resources to attract visitors and then roll out the red carpet when they arrive. But that's changing.

"The time has come for us to toot our own horn, to tell people that we have a lot to offer," said The Resurrection Project's Álvaro Obregón at a panel discussion yesterday following a bus tour of his Pilsen neighborhood. He and about 20 participants from the tour had just finished a fine lunch at Fogata Village restaurant, 1820 S. Ashland. Obregón thinks there is plenty more opportunity for visitors to spend money at restaurants, bakeries and other stores while they are visiting Pilsen, where he has lived since he was one year old.

The tour was part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Main Street Conference in Chicago. It was hosted by Eighteenth Street Development Corporation, which is promoting the tax benefits of rehabilitating residential and commercial structures within the 4,000-building Pilsen historic district. Eighteenth Street's Kristy Menas and Hector Saldaña did a nice job, during the tour, of interweaving historic information about 120-year-old houses and vaulted sidewalks with more-current stories about new businesses going in (an Italian restaurant at Thalia Hall) and planned promotions like the Mole de Mayo cookoff on May 2, 2009.

More tours are on the way. Six Chicago neighborhoods including Pilsen are participating in the Burnham Plan Centennial's upcoming Bold Plans, Big Dreams Community Showcase. Community leaders are working with tour and history experts to prepare bus and walking tours that will kick off on May 16 and continue through the summer. The tours will cover South Chicago, Quad Communities (Bronzeville), Pilsen, Albany Park, Auburn Gresham and the Indian business strip in West Ridge. Stay tuned for details.

Power of Five Challenge Bonus: Colby Luckenbill @ Colby Gallery

I'm going to give Colby Luckenbill of Colby Gallery the last word on Pilsen, art and community. In addition to running a gallery of international stature, Colby serves as a community rep on the Cooper Elementary Local School Council. She's been living in Pilsen for five years now.

Of her space, she said, "It's more of a salon-style gallery. It encourages civic activity and brainstorming, networking and inspiration." That was true. I engaged in more conversations with strangers about the art there than anywhere else. And I met a Little Village artist, Carolina I. Reyes, who was showing her own work in the Little Village Art Fest the next day.

Colby has been involved with Pilsen Open Studios since its inception. Although her gallery has shown works from many Latin American and especially Mexican artists, in 2005 she hosted a major retrospective of a German artist. "He was in his 80s and flew over for the show. It's a cultural exchange, showing local artists and artists from around the world. Art helps to connect the heart and the head. We need that in all aspects of life."

Like many of the artists I spoke with, she thought the open studios was a refreshing contrast to the more formalized and highly structured arts scene in East Pilsen, which is dominated by real estate mogul John Podmajersky, who made a conscious decision to rent his buildings to artists years ago in an effort to revitalize the area. While his plan has succeeded, some find the East Pilsen arts scene too controlled and too organized from the top down. "Here on the west side we think of it as one place. It's all Pilsen. It's open. It's artist-run. This has a certain kind of soul."

Power of Five Challenge #5: A Public Private Place

Much as Placemaking Chicago likes to stress accessibility being important to making a place, I think lots of us who like to ramble around Chicago want to know the cool hideaways, the spots somewhat off the beaten track.

The photo above is from one such hideaway. The Art House Studio in Pilsen is closer to the historic Heart of Italy strip at 24th and Oakley than it is to the bustling gallery scene along 18th east and west of Ashland. Outside it looks like just another pretty Chicago two-flat, but then you look in the garden apartment and see colors everywhere, like this:



The Art House is a space shared by Brazilian women artists living and working in Pilsen. Artist Patricia Peixoto says in addition to being part of events like Pilsen Open Studios, they have had their neighbors over for informal parties in the summertime. In this way, the Art House becomes both a hub for the immediate area and a bridge in and out of the neighborhood.

In October, Peixoto and longtime friend and colleague Magda Dejose showed off The White Garden, a set of peephole installations exploring femininity, and a set of paintings commemorating the 100th anniversary of Japanese immigration to Brazil. Like Colibri Gallery, the Art House hosts an event every fourth Saturday of the month. Theirs is an afternoon opening from 1 to 4 p.m. If you wanted to make a day of it, you could stitch a visit to their gallery together with a couple more great places, like stops at Tianguis and Golden Age, followed by a break at Cafe Mestizo and a leisurely dinner at Mundial Cocina Mestiza to keep you occupied until the fandango.

And that, my friends, is placemaking at its finest.

P.S. Since I cheated and gave you the same place twice earlier, I'm going to add a 5b with another space so you do get to see five cool Pilsen locales in this series. Stay tuned.

Power of Five Challenge #4: Golden Age Gallery

Pilsen's Golden Age Gallery, co-owned by Marco Kane Braunschweiler and Martine Syms, showcases experimental music and limited-edition art books. The photo above shows the pair (center and right) with a customer (left) during Pilsen Open Studios. Earlier in the weekend, an entire busload of Northern Illinois University students stopped in on a tour.

Golden Age has been open a little more than a year now and was featured in the Chicago Reader in September. Artists themselves, Braunshweiler and Syms wanted to create a space featuring interesting yet affordable imports and hard-to-get items.

Their unusual blend of inexpensive retail items and high-end artworks gives artists wider exposure than they might receive in a traditional gallery setting. "As a retail store, we have really high volume compared to a gallery. We have 500 items. A gallery might only have 10 items," said Braunsweiler. "When we started last year it was really well received, and it's only getting better. The greater mission of this store is to develop an emerging artists' network."

Braunschweiler and Syms flexed their networking muscles from the get-go by consulting with Tianguis' Irasema Salinas on potential storefronts before settling on their current West 18th Street location. In addition to running Golden Age in Pilsen, they also live in the neighborhood.

"West Pilsen is a really nice place, especially right now. So many new things are happening and so many young people are coming, and yet it's such an established art center, with all the murals and the museum. West Pilsen is evolving in a really natural and beautiful way."

I asked Braunschweiler to comment on the relationship between the presence of artists in a neighborhood and the likelihood that neighborhood would be gentrified sooner or later. In response, he made the point that most artists are not wealthy, and steep rises in rents and property taxes force them to move, too. "That's the big ruse: artists benefit from gentrification," he noted.

"I think neighborhoods change. It's inevitable Pilsen will not be in 10 years what it is now," Braunschweiler added. The real problem is institutionalized racism. Gentrification is an aspect of that. The most important thing now is to open a dialogue. That's why we're trying to be a part of the Pilsen art world."

For more about Golden Age and its owners, see this interview.

Power challenge: What's your number?

Okay, Maureen Kelleher, if your intent with those Power of Five posts about Pilsen artists was to get us to wonder what you're talking about, it worked.

But I'm confused.

When I went to placemakingchicago.com, I found out what the idea meant, except that they call it the Power of 10. Twice as good as your version?

Whatever the number, it's a terrific concept: that a "place" has to be more than one popular attraction or person or landmark, but a whole collection of things that make people want to be there. I've started tallying it up for my home community of Rogers Park and we've got Power of 100 up here -- No, Power of 1,000! – but come to think of it so do most neighborhoods.

I like it. And I wonder if the NCP neighborhoods might start creating attractive Google or Yahoo maps with photos and locations, showing their powers to the world.

Power of Five Challenge #2: Montserrat Alsina @ Colibri Gallery

(Photo: Visitors at Colibri Gallery during Pilsen Open Studios. The woman on the left holds this year's "passport.")

Printmaker, dancer, performance artist and community-builder Montserrat Alsina was instrumental in organizing this year's Pilsen Open Studios. One of her bright ideas was to create a "passport" -- a small booklet which visitors could take with them and have the artists sign or stamp. Visitors were encouraged to tear out the last page of the passport with their comments and put it in a raffle to win free art classes, a t-shirt or a print.

Though the idea was to use this as a carrot to draw young people--the passports were distributed at three local schools before the weekend event--older folks used it, too. "When I was going on the bus, I saw the grownups were getting really into it! They were going up to the artists and getting their signatures," she said.

The studio/gallery space she shares with her husband, Roberto Ferreyra, was the starting point for this year's tour. The gallery features not only their own prints and drawings but also work from Mexican artists with whom they have arranged an exchange program.

As the weekend wound down, Alsina observed they had met the goal of drawing more local residents. "I'm seeing more people from the community." Though often artists' communities are associated with a rise in property taxes and changing neighborhoods, she and other West Pilsen artists see their role as based in the existing community. "We want to keep people here and the children here and the taxes down. There's a lot of things that can be done in the community."

It's tough to raise Pilsen's profile in a positive way without accelerating gentrification, but it can be done by building community from the inside out. "You take the risk that more people will want to move this way and it will change us. If we stay together as artists and communicate more with the Latino community, I think we can encourage people to stay here."

For more information about Alsina, check out this post from art pilsen.

Power of Five Challenge #1: Giselle Mercier @ Tianguis

It took a little longer than I intended, but here's a snippet from artist Giselle Mercier, whose studio is upstairs from Tianguis, a fabulous cafe featuring fine teas and contemporary Latina/o literature you won't always find elsewhere. The store is also a cosponsor of the amazing bilingual spoken word showcase, Proyecto Latina, which will celebrate the start of its fourth year on January 19. Tianguis is very convenient, located right across the street from the entrance to the Pink Line's Damen Avenue stop.

Mercier is both a teaching and a working artist. A graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, she now teaches there and at Columbia College. Mercier's own artistic work is grounded in her experience coming to the United States from Panama in the early 1980s. She often reuses the same objects in piece after piece. Thus, while each of her altarpieces or installations may not be permanent,the objects that make them up live on in her work over time. "I do a lot of work that has to do with rebuilding memory," she said. "If you become displaced, objects can give you back roots."

Mercier had a great time showing her work at Tianguis during Pilsen Open Studios. While we chatted over cups of tea, Tianguis' owner Irasema Salinas introduced Mercier to new friends. An old friend of Mercier's also stopped by, halting our interview for a long, welcoming hug. "It's been really great," said Mercier. "People have been asking lots of questions, being very open about their compliments."

Tianguis got its start as two foldout tables at an Open Studios location in 2005 and has supported the event ever since. But this year, the double whammy of Pilsen Open Studios and the Little Village Arts Fest in the same weekend was too much. "Having Little Village and Pilsen in the same weekend is tough. You can't do both," said Salinas. And she wanted to, since she's lived in Little Village all her life.

Giselle Mercier and Tianguis are the first installment in the Power of Five Placemaking Challenge, inspired by Placemaking Chicago.

Party on 18th Street

As Chicago Artists Month draws to a close, I wanted to share some great stories from Saturday night of Pilsen Open Studios, held the weekend of October 17-19. The sixth annual artist-organized event kept 18th Street hopping well into the night, thanks to some unofficial piggyback events as well as official gallery openings on the tour. The vintage thrift store Knee Deep cracked me up--they had about five pieces of art on the wall and a few dozen young hipsters out back drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Hey, any excuse for a party, right?

The Casa de la Cultura Carlos Cortez had food, a live singer and a guy passing out cans of Miller from a garbage bag while visitors admired the works on the walls. "If everybody has a number, we're zero," joked Victor Montañez, pictured above with one of his paintings. However, their convenient location next door to Number 23, the APO Community Center, kept the foot traffic coming.

Victor wasn't too concerned about making it in the gallery scene. "To hell with galleries. My art doesn't belong in galleries. They say don't touch. They mean people wear black. They whisper," he said, as two women got up to dance to a cumbia blaring from the speakers. Others joined them, and the singer called for a friend next door to come dance with one of the women. The couple tore up the floor to applause and cheers.

After a ten year break from painting, Victor returned to it recently with his signature rebel spirit. He now paints panels that can be shifted around to reveal different images. "I think the 21st century is all about alternatives and options," he said, noting that while other art forms have opened up ways for the viewer to manipulate the work, painting has largely remained static. "It's the last stronghold of tyrants. I am trying to shake up the establishment by saying there's a new way to paint. I wanted to put some authority in the hands of the spectator."

Victor put down his Tecate to show how his panels work. Here's the same set of panels grouped two different ways:





Though Victor's career has taken turns into politics and education, "the one thing I've always been is an artist," he told me. "I'm not gonna let people dictate I'm not an artist because I'm not in galleries. What makes you an artist is whether you follow an artistic vision."

"Like you," he pointed out. "Some people might say to you, 'It's not real because it's not a paper.' It's a whole new world out there. Cybernews is where it's at. Paper, you wrap it up and throw it out."

Outside, a number of artists were showing in the Del Sol Realty offices across the street, and a group of young people had collected on the front steps. I stopped to talk with Erica Sanchez, a young woman from Little Village who was getting inspired by all the creative activity around her. She's a guitarist who's played in the Little Village punk scene, but lately she's "kinda slacked off." Now, she says, "Maybe I'll grow some balls and start doing something. It makes me kinda wanna get out there."

Art shows indicate neighborhood strengths

From the evidence at archaeological sites and art museums around the world, one might conclude that arts and culture are outgrowths of strong and healthy societies: that it takes a thriving and culturally advanced community to foster a high level of creative output among its residents.

If that is true, some Chicago neighborhoods might be stronger than traditional economic and social measures suggest. The arts are thriving across the South and West Sides, and this weekend the evidence will be on display in South Chicago, East Garfield Park, Little Village and Pilsen.

It's all part of the citywide Chicago Artists Month, but what impresses me is how individuals and organizations in neighborhoods have very consciously cultivated and promoted and participated in the creation of art by local residents -- and in public gatherings that honor that creative work.

So my hat is off to the organizers of these events:

Garfield Park: Alpha Bruton alerted me to this exhibition, part of the Phantom Gallery series.

EXAMINING THE STATE OF OUR ENVIRONMENT
INSTALLATION ARTISTS EXPLORE BY BUILDING SITE SPECIFIC INSTALLATIONS:
Fred Owens, Helen Jones Myers, Vivian Vissar, Jamin Jadda, Gabriel Patti, Kat Silverstein, Nancy Zook, Students from Chicago Christian Academy, Loveitta Simpkins, Dewitt Quayim

Garfield Park Market Place (just north of the Garfield Park Conservatory on Central Park Avenue)
Friday, Oct. 17, 2008, noon to 8 p.m. Reception 5 to 8 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 18 and 19, noon to 5 p.m.
Learn more at westsidearts-chicago.blogspot.com

South Chicago: Claretian Associates is promoting a whole series of events including a gallery in their own office space, a knitting workshop at Villa Guadalupe, cartooning for kids and a performance by the 63rd Street Drummers.

Friday, October 17
Knitting Basics by Marisa Arevalo of Studio KOI
Villa Guadalupe
3201 E. 91st Street
6:15pm - 7:15pm
Participants must bring their own supplies or project.

Saturday, October 18 Saturday, October 18
Sweetest Day for Artists, Performers, and Musicians by The 63rd Street Drummers with Ms. Yakiri, Flo Mills, and Artist Friends Pilgrim Baptist Church 3235 E. 91st Street 2pm - 4pm

For the full schedule, go here: http://www.claretianassociates.org/ChicagoArtistsMonth08.htm

Little Village Arts Fest:

Villarte, an emerging arts coalition in Little Village, organized two days of free art exhibits, performances and workshops that kick off Friday night, October 17, from 6 to 10 p.m. in the Second Federal Savings parking lot at 25th Place and Pulaski. Get the official map and program at Catedral Cafe (2500 S. Christiana) or download it here.

Pilsen Open Studios:
Bigger than ever, this Saturday and Sunday event features dozens of artists and locations throughout the neighborhood (see map below by Salvador Jimenez). Many of the artists will be at the kickoff from 5 to 10 p.m. Friday, Oct. 17, at Prospectus Art Gallery, 1220 W. 18th Street.

By any measure, that's a pretty convincing display of cultural strength, don't you think?

Soggy Tourists in Our Own Town

Last Saturday, 21 of us braved the record-breaking rain for the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation's Veggie Bike and Dine event. The event raised money for CBF and for NeighborSpace, which manages land for community gardens across Chicago. The event wound through a number of NCP neighborhoods and got me thinking about the potential for events like this to help neighborhoods snag more tourists in their own town.

We met up in Pilsen, at the Xochiquetzal Peace Garden, created by Whittier School. Signs in English and Spanish pointed out herbs like manzanilla/chamomile. Soy Organic, Pilsen's only organic grocery store, provided a yummy breakfast shake to rev up our metabolisms. We came from Ukrainian Village, West Loop, Oak Park and even the south suburbs, just to name a few.

It wasn't too wet on our way from Pilsen to North Lawndale, by way of Little Village and the Farragut High School parking lot. We arrived in time to watch our snack being made at the Green Youth Farm at 3539 W. Ogden, near the Pink Line Central Park stop. There we had salsa fresh from the garden: red and yellow tomatoes, garlic, cucumber all picked and chopped before our eyes. Teen tour guides from Manley and Collins Academy high schools showed us what they'd been growing all summer in the extensive network of tall raised beds built back in 2005. The salsa was the best I've had all summer, hands down.

Afterwards, we were treated to a special tour of a recently redone community garden nearby. At this point, it was pouring pretty hard and my vision narrowed to the bike in front of me, so I still don't know where in North Lawndale we ended up, but we got to see a newly paved garden featuring pear trees with fruit ready to pick.

Later, we biked through giant puddles in Garfield Park and admired the Conservatory's demonstration gardens. Finally, we visited El Yunque Community Garden in Humboldt Park and Frankie Machine Garden in Ukrainian Village. In the end, we all dried out and enjoyed vegan pizzas at Crust: Eat Real.

All the way along, people on the street cheered and waved at the sight of the soggy cyclists. We had plenty of room for guests at the afterparty, since about half the bikers didn't show, so some of the stalwart community gardeners who turned out to show us their work came and joined us for pizza.

Events like these, whether a 12-mile bike tour or a chamber of commerce restaurant crawl, really help outsiders get the feel of a neighborhood. Here's to sunnier days and more bikers in the group next year!

Bringing parents Into school planning

photo credit: Chicago Center for Urban Life and Culture blog

Every two years, all Chicago Public Schools prepare school improvement plans, known as SIPAAAs (School Improvement Plan for Advancing Student Achievement). The latest round of plans are due in early April. Getting parents involved in the planning can be a challenge.

Last week at Orozco Elementary in Pilsen, Principal Coralia Barraza, home-school coordinator Teresa Fraga and other staff were eager to show me how they are bringing parents into the process. They translate SIPAAA documents into Spanish and get small groups of parents together to discuss what's working, what needs work, and who and how the work will get done. They use charts to keep track of parent input, and Barraza painstakingly translates their work into English for inclusion in the SIPAA.

But getting to this level of parental participation was built on many other activities that bring parents into the school building, such as workshops to teach parents, many of whom didn't go to school in the United States, how to help their children do a science fair project. Man, I wish my local grammar school had workshops like that!

The Orozco folks also passed on a tip they've learned from neighboring Walsh Elementary: schedule short meetings for parents to help with the SIPAAA right after school starts, when some parents may be able to stay for half an hour to give input.

Fundamentally, Orozco has a core of involved parents who step up as needed and who pass the word through the community to recruit parents or spread information quickly. It's clear Teresa Fraga's deep roots in the community--she's been there nearly 40 years, I think--were instrumental in building that network.

There's so much complaining in school quarters about parents not being involved, it is very refreshing to find examples where they are. If you have such examples, or tips on how schools can do a better job of tapping into parental energy and expertise, please leave a comment and share your knowledge.