Arts Issue 3/5: Pitch doc!
Martha Bayne
Hi all -- it's our first special issue of 2020, and it's in just a few weeks. We're looking for writers for any of the pitches listed below and have set a target deadline of Feb 24 to get first drafts done. Some of the pitches below could definitely work outside the Arts Issue, but I'm including them here in the hope that some of them will. Let me know asap if there's something on this list you'd like to pursue.
There may be a few late-breaking pitches coming soon; I will update as those come in but wanted to get this info circulating. Thanks!
Martha
Arts (general)
The first day of school at Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts in September 2016 nearly didn’t happen. Dyett High School was slated to close at the end of the 2014–2015 school year, after three years of disinvestment as CPS phased it out. But amidst protests and a hunger strike by local parents and activists with the Coalition to Revitalize Dyett, CPS announced in fall 2015 that the school would reopen in 2016 as an arts-focused, open-enrollment neighborhood school. Today, the new Dyett is in its fourth year. Examine how the school’s doing now. What is the arts programming like? What do students think of it? How is its enrollment and academic performance?
Crucially, what is the community’s relationship to the school today? In agreeing to reopen Dyett, CPS rejected all the community proposals it had initially solicited in response to public pressure—including a different proposal for a high school for the arts. The hunger strikers had demanded a green technology school, and the Coalition saw the announcement as a refusal to work with the community. The hunger strike continued for two weeks past the reopening announcement before stopping amid health risks and a sense that the city would not bend further. Which of the Coalition’s other demands have been delivered on today? Are students coming primarily from within the school’s enrollment boundary, or outside it?
The writer should speak to people who participated in the hunger strike or other leaders in the Coalition to Revitalize Dyett (perhaps Jitu Brown or Jeanette Taylor), including then-students, as well as current parents, students, and staff. The recent history (also explored in Eve L. Ewing’s Ghosts in the Schoolyard) should be present in and inform the piece, and the coverage should look at Dyett as a site for art, too. Ideally, the piece will be a feature that takes both the art and education angles of the story seriously. (Olivia Stovicek, 02/10/20)
Arts & Mental Health/Healing from Trauma (possible small package)
Art therapy (service piece)
This would be a short companion piece to a longer story, a list or short article about the places on the South Side that offer art therapy and other trauma-informed arts programming. If you’re interested in these services, where can you find them in your neighborhood?
Visual Arts & Architecture
New Dean at IIT
In June of 2019, Reed Kroloff, former director of the Cranbook Academy of Art and Art Museum in Michigan and former dean of architecture at Tulane, was named the new Dean of the College of Architecture at IIT. Kroloff has substantial ties to Chicago; his firm designed the Logan Center at the University of Chicago, and he served as co-curator of the Chicago Architecture Center’s 50 Designers, 50 Ideas, 50 Wards project.
Kroloff moves from one architectural landmark, the Eliel Saarinen-designed Cranbook campus, to another, the Mies-designed IIT. (Mies also served as IIT’s first dean of architecture.) The writer should interview Kroloff about his vision for his new role, the sense of history that accompanies his new position, how he maintains a consistent architectural style across a growing campus (ex: the new Kaplan Institute building), and how he sees IIT’s place in the city and neighborhood. (Sam Joyce)
(Talk to Taylor Moore?)
Murals Under Threat
The City of Chicago’s mural registry -- where artists, organizations, and property owners can fill out a form to officially register their mural with the city -- is notoriously incomplete, and weighted heavily toward the north side, with many well known South Side murals not represented. This can have catastrophic consequences when an unregistered mural is painted over by the city (who can simply point to the registry and claim ignorance) and it more generally privileges the registered murals in terms of maintenance, etc. Everyone seems to know there’s a problem, but no one seems able to take steps to fix it. Why?
The writer should work with a data editor to analyze the data available on the registry, and then talk with city officials and artists about how the program is supposed to work, its shortcomings, and some reasons why the program is only spottily used. Is it a question of outreach and education? Is it something else? Ideally we would pair this with a photo essay of south side murals that are not on the registry, which may make this a better candidate for spring or summer, when photo opportunities will be better. (Martha Bayne, 2/9/2020)
Gallery pages: Here is a list in progress of possible galleries to highlight. Feel free to contribute suggestions.
-- Jose Chicles at Adler (Cordell)
-- Second Fridays in Hyde Park (Mell)
Stage & Screen
Perspective on South Side/North Side Theater Spaces
Though there are plenty of actors, directors, and designers who call the South Side home, as well as exciting performances on the South Side, support for theater in Chicago tends to focus on the North Side. Free Street Theater artistic director Coya Paz’s recent Reader op-ed highlighted and has invigorated a conversation around this issue (see the Free Street Theater pitch). How are those artists impacted by a North-Side-centric theater world? What challenges does that pose? What spaces do they enjoy, or work to build, on the South Side, and how do their experiences differ there? Find an actor to interview and discuss, in a way that explores barriers to access related to the North Side theater world while also acknowledging theater and performance on the South Side. I can connect a writer to two South Side actors who would likely be interested in speaking to this topic; if they both respond positively, interviewing them together, in dialogue, could be fruitful. (Olivia Stovicek, 2/10/20)
Free Street Theater 50th Anniversary
Free Street Theater is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. The community-based theater company has been working since after the 1968 riots to develop theater that, in their words, “challenges our city’s racial and economic segregation,” by offering free workshops and training, accessible and diverse free or pay-what-you-can theatrical productions, community storytelling events, and much more. Based on the north side for many years -- out of Cabrini Green and later the Pulaski Park fieldhouse in Wicker Park, Free Street opened a satellite storefront theater space in Back of the Yards in 2018, and has been ramping up programming on the south side as well as across the city. Last summer the company staged 50x50, a series of performances in all 50 wards in one day, and this event is the backbone of the new documentary Free Street Theater: 50 Years of Joy and Justice, which screens February 17 at Film Row Cinema.
Free Street and artistic director Coya Paz have been much in the news lately after a Chicago Reader op-ed she wrote about economic segregation and the arts elicited a testy response from Chicago Tribune theater critic Chris Jones. The writer should interview Paz and storyfront artistic director Ricardo Gamboa about the past, present, and future of Free Street, and how they see their work fitting into or in conversation with the “establishment” Chicago theater scene. Ideally the writer would also attend the documentary premiere and speak with supporters and performers about their experience of Free Street. I can point a writer to additional resources, including former artistic director Bryn Magnus, board president Caroline O’Boyle, and others. This 1973 documentary narrated by Studs Terkel gives a great peek into the company’s early years. (Martha Bayne, 2/9/2020)
Impacts of South Side TV
The past few years have seen a flurry of TV shows focused on the South Side, with shows like Showtime’s The Chi, Comedy Central’s South Side, and the upcoming AMC series 61st Street all set on the South Side. We’re not necessarily uninterested in a conventional review of these shows, but we are looking for someone with an interesting perspective on it, such as a South Sider who does acting or comedy. How do these high-profile productions intersect more grassroots work being done in the neighborhood? Do they have a creative or economic impact?
Lit
The Double Parlor
Tamara and Steve Smith have turned the first floor of their three-flat in South Chicago into a space for literary and community events that they’re calling “The Double Parlor.” In 2019 they hosted about half a dozen events, such as a reading and book launch for Dave Ranney’s “Living and Dying on the Factory Floor.” Tamara works at the U of C, and also is involved with Charles H. Kerr publishing, a Chicago publisher of radical, socialist, and labor history.
Their building was previously home to the family of Arnold Mireles, a community activist who was murdered in 1997 by an aggrieved slumlord against whom Mireles had been organizing. When the Smiths moved in, they found Mireles’s papers, and have recently donated them to the Newberry Library. The Double Parlor is dedicated to Mireles’s memory. The writer should talk with Steve and Tamara, who can put them in touch with the Mireles family. The next event in the space is scheduled for March 15. (Martha Bayne. 2/10/2020)
Music
Outcome
Washington Park-based rapper Lyk Se7N released a new EP, “Outcome,” last month. The Weekly last talked to Lyk in 2015, when he was a thirteen-year-old dreaming of going to ChiArts and pursuing a career in music. Now that he’s doing both those things, it’d be nice to follow up and interview Lyk about how he got here (and review the album!). (Bess Cohen 11/19)
Donyae Asante Aims to Create
Donyae Asante, a singer/songwriter on the South Side of Chicago is a rising R&B musician hoping to create a safe space for LGBT people of color, especially men. Asante describes his music as “unapologetic,” “healing,” and is hoping to redefine the music scene by providing a new sound unheard by many Chicago artists. (Aaliyah G.)
Music lessons
If you want to learn music on the South Side, where should you go? This is a service-oriented article, or maybe just a list — where do you learn to sing or play an instrument if you don’t want to make the trek downtown?