1st Accordion
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ABLE (Artist Breaking Limits and Expectations) uses theater to engage people who have intellectual or developmental disabilities. The organization has had a wait list for participants and their project will start “In the Wings” that will give those on the waitlist an introduction and chance to begin learning before there are openings in the company program.
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America Scores Chicago will extend their program, Literacy in Action, into summer. They teach poetry and soccer to ages K through 8th grade. They have writing coaches and soccer coaches and Innovation 80’s grant will fund a teaching artist to help the children turn their poetry (including hip hop) into some form of visual art.
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APTP (Albany Park Theater Project) trains youth from Albany Park to create professional-quality plays with themes relevant to their lives. Two years of interviews of local residents will inform a production that explores immigration experiences. Actors will interact with audiences through four apartments (stages) created in a warehouse.
2nd Accordion
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ABLE (Artist Breaking Limits and Expectations) uses theater to engage people who have intellectual or developmental disabilities. The organization has had a wait list for participants and their project will start “In the Wings” that will give those on the waitlist an introduction and chance to begin learning before there are openings in the company program.
-
America Scores Chicago will extend their program, Literacy in Action, into summer. They teach poetry and soccer to ages K through 8th grade. They have writing coaches and soccer coaches and Innovation 80’s grant will fund a teaching artist to help the children turn their poetry (including hip hop) into some form of visual art.
-
APTP (Albany Park Theater Project) trains youth from Albany Park to create professional-quality plays with themes relevant to their lives. Two years of interviews of local residents will inform a production that explores immigration experiences. Actors will interact with audiences through four apartments (stages) created in a warehouse.
Our grant recipients and their participants are at the heart of our mission. Taken together, these nonprofit organizations use a broad range of arts—music, theater and storytelling, visual arts, glass blowing, puppetry—to engage and support participants of all ages in underserved Chicago communities.
Chicago Mobile Makers
Chicago Mobile Makers seeks to open the field of architecture to youth of color. Its design workshops encourage disadvantaged youth (ages 8 to 18) to become change-makers in their own communities and build life-long design skills. The Innovation 80 project, Design for Change, will be an after-school program in Humboldt Park for middle- and high-school-aged students.
Chicago Poetry Center
Chicago Poetry Center operates through Chicago Public Schools to connect people with poetry, poets with communities, and foster creativity and reflection. The Innovation 80 Early Reader Pilot Program will serve two schools in the underserved communities of Bronzeville and Bedford Park to develop a curriculum that will engage pre-readers with poetry.
FreshLens Chicago
FreshLens teaches life skills through photography to teens from underserved communities. FreshLens students’ photographs now adorn Innovation 80’s website pages. FreshLens also runs an advanced course in event photography, which Innovation 80 supports by funding graduates to photograph events held by other Innovation 80 grantees who wish to take advantage of this offer.
Lawndale Pop-Up Spot
Lawndale Pop-Up Spot features a community museum housed in a shipping container, intended as a spark to revitalize North Lawndale. Its Innovation 80 project [Your Exhibit Here] will demonstrate the impact local museums can have on their communities by teaching a group of local youth museum curation principles and, with community involvement, creating an exhibition.
Palenque LSNA
Palenque LSNA serves Northwest side neighborhoods using Latinx and immigrant traditions in arts, culture, and design to reconnect its Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Immigrant communities in the face of rapid gentrification and displacement. Innovation 80 is helping to fund three mosaics by Greenstar Movement in and around Logan Square that will foster pride and belonging for these communities.
The Simple Good
The Simple Good explores the meaning of “good” through art and discussion. Working with grades 3 to 12 in Chicago Public Schools, it aims to empower youth to bring positivity into their communities. The project with Innovation 80 inaugurates a pilot program to expand the concept of “the simple good” to younger children, developing a curriculum to engage first graders.
Sukkah Design Festival
Photo by Dion Turner
Photo by Brian Griffin
Photo by Dion Turner
The Sukkah Design Festival pairs three North Lawndale community organizations with three architect / designers, each team to design and build an innovative sukkah (an outdoor room erected for the Jewish harvest festival Sukkot). Participants gain "design literacy," a sense of how spaces can be purposefully created. Each organization will own and repurpose its sukkah to use in its mission.
We continue to support our grant recipients from previous years. Please click the buttons below to see more.
All Grantees
Artists Breaking Limits and Expectations (2022) • America SCORES Chicago (2022) • Albany Park Theatre Company (2022) • Awakenings (2023) • BandWith (2023) • Changing Worlds (2021) • CircEsteem (2021) • Chicago Arts and Music Project (2023) • Chicago Poetry Center (2023) • Chicago West Community Music Center (2022) • Free Street Theater (2022) • FreshLens (2023) • Global Girls (2022) • Green Star Movement (2021) • Ignition Community Glass (2021) • Intonation Music (2022) • Lawndale Pop-Up Spot (2023) • Mobile Makers • Music in Urban Schools Inspiring Change (2022) • Palenque LSNA (2023) • Project Danztheatre Company (2021) • Reading Between the Lines (2020) • ReinventAbility (2021) • Silk Road Rising (2020) • The Simple Good (2023) • Sit Stay Read (2021) • SkyArt (2020) • Snow City Arts (2022) • Storycatchers (2021) • Sukkah Design Festival (2023) • The Kedzie Center / 2nd Story (2020) • Theatre Y (2022) • West Point Fellowship (2021)