Category Archives: Events

Stomping Grounds is back digitally this Thursday 4/16/ 2020 on Free Write Live

WE ONLY HAVE 15 spots and it’s filling up fast.

Sign Up HERE

Stomping Grounds is a free monthly open stage event for young creatives to develop performance, curation, and exhibition skills while connecting to the Chicago creative community. The event is hosted by Free Write Arts & Literacy in collaboration with Kuumba Lynx and Elephant Rebellion. Sign up to perform is on a first come first serve basis – so come on time!

This months Feature is: Daryn Alexus

BIO:
Daryn was born and raised in Washington DC and came to Chicago to attend Columbia College. While there she won the Biggest Mouth Competition, the school’s most competitive music competition. After graduation she decided to stay in the city, calling Chicago her second home after living here for nearly 8 years now. She’s had several opportunities to perform at great venues around the city; Lincoln Hall, Chop Shop, Schubas, Reggie’s, and The Metro among many others. IN 2014 she released an EP titled GREEN that led to a few articles from The Chicago Tribune and the Red Eye and opened the door to many other wonderful unforgettable opportunities and friendships. Daryn now continues to make music with her producer Dee Lilly in her South Side Apartment. Currently releasing tracks for her “Wild Flower Series” and moving towards another EP at the top of the year, Daryn is sure to keep busy creating.

Baldwin Protocols Reading Series presents:
Confine & Isolate: Survival Strategies from Formerly Incarcerated Youth

Free Write Community Navigators tell stories and share tactics for survival and humanization, from the rigors and inhumanities of their incarceration; and how the lessons learned there might benefit us in this moment of quarantine and confinement.

join us via: Twitch.tv/freewritechi

In case you missed it, watch it here:

Free Write Arts & Literacy Presents
The Artist Will Be Present
September 10 – December 16
9am-6pm
Fourth Presbyterian Church
126 E. Chestnut St.
Chicago, IL 60608

Rewind to 2014. Free Write presented our third annual multimedia exhibition of work produced by students detained in the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center. The exhibition, The Artists Will Not Be Present curated by Chelsea Ross, featured creative writing, visual art, music, and spoken word poetry created by our incarcerated youth.

The title, a play on Marina Abramović’s The Artist Is Not Present, is an acknowledgment of the material reality of the young artists featured in the exhibition. So often, at public exhibitions of our students’ work, do people ask, even after they had been explicitly informed that Free Write works in youth jails and the artists are currently in pre-trial detention, “So, will the artists be here?” No, there are no field trips to art exhibitions, or anywhere, for kids in pre-trial detention. The artist will not be present.

As Free Write enters our 20th year, we find ourselves connected to many of our students as they return to the community. They get out, find us, and say, “Let’s work. What’s next?” At their request, we have developed robust opportunities for them to advance the skills they gained in Free Write on the inside, a “continuum of engagement” with them as they move through and away from incarceration. This exhibition is a follow up to the 2014 exhibition, but flipped to focus on the presence of the artist, their powerful stories, and their leadership in the movement to divest from systems of violence and invest in community-based solutions to issues that give rise to youth incarceration.

In The Artist Will Be Present, the artists require our presence, too. They invite us to see ourselves in them, to connect our personal narratives to theirs. Too often do audiences engage with the stories of our students only to walk away saying, with pearls clutched, “Oh my, those poor children. That must be so hard for them.” This sympathy is other-ing, patronizing, and often skids off toward fetishization. The artists herein have taken tremendous emotional risks by sharing their stories with us. By doing so, they have asserted themselves as leaders in the long process of building the empathy necessary to dismantle this and all systems of violence. It is our turn to be emotionally open, vulnerable, and honest with ourselves and with each other.

Check the church calendar or Freewritechicago.org for info on upcoming talks by the artists featured here.

The Artist Will Be Present is curated by Elgin Bokari Smith and Ryan Keesling.

New Visions Beyond Incarceration by Chicago Artists & Communities

August 6 – October 12
Sullivan Galleries
School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Envisioning Justice shares the work of Chicago artists and communities as they visualize, actualize, and reimagine strategies, policies, and approaches in the service of a society that is just for all.

Featuring artwork, ephemera, and documentation from seven Chicago communities impacted by incarceration and works by artists whose practices respond to such themes, this exhibition interrogates the failures of our criminal justice system while presenting plans toward self-empowerment and communal liberation.

Free Write’s contribution to the Envisioning Justice exhibition:

THE JUSTICE ARCHIVES: A PROJECTIVE HISTORY OF FREE WRITE AND THE CARCERAL STATE   

Chelsea Ross, Free Write Arts & Literacy Curatorial Director 

The Onion recently published an article with the headline: “Tips for Staying Civil While Debating Child Prisons.” The lead photo is a child surrounded by chain link fence, inside a newly-erected immigration detention facility, watching television as a guard looks on. The internment of immigrant children in America is currently one of the “hottest” news topics as I write this on Wednesday, July 3, 2019. As it should be. Especially on the heavily left-leaning algorithm of my social media feeds. Which is exactly why the sardonic Onion headline hit so hard. 

Incarcerating, locking-up, detaining (name it what you will) children in America is nothing new. It’s been a specific practice in this country for 120 years, to be exact, with the first court dedicated to juveniles right here in Chicago. 

Free Write Arts & Literacy has been working within these systems and with criminalized youth since 2000, providing arts and literacy education, technical skill acquisition, and employment opportunities to the youth who enter our classroom and community spaces. In this time, we have also worked to instigate thought, conversation, and action around the fact of youth incarceration. This happens largely through the publication and exhibition of student work, as well as public-facing programming. It’s from these efforts that the need for the Justice Archives arose, first in 2016.

We realized, after years of watching individuals engage with our students’ work with a wealth of sympathy but a lack of personal agency or ownership, that the general public is unequipped to have thoughtful conversations, let alone heated or civil debates about our (as in, it’s all of ours) youth incarceration practices. The fact is that the public is generally uninformed, uneducated, and unable to find access points to meaningful discussion or action around incarcerating youth. And these are the care-enough-to-go-to-an-art-show-by-kids-in-jail, well-intentioned type of individuals; the same kind of individuals who have been sharing news stories and think pieces about the internment of immigrant children with righteous rage. 

So, as is intrinsic to Free Write’s pedagogy, we responded to a need with a tool. 

THE JUSTICE ARCHIVES

While the Justice Archives looks like a timeline, it is actually more of a time-web. Simultaneously historical and ahistorical. Its intention is to document, educate, and inform through tracing histories, but also drawing connections. Connections such as this: The attitudes and policies that allow for the detainment of immigrants and immigrant youth are the same as those that allow for the incarceration of disproportionately black and brown youth in our cities. Connections like: The judge who sentenced the police officer who killed 17-year-old Laquan MacDonald to 6.75 years in prison is the same judge who gave a former Free Write student 31 years at the age of 16. 

Within and around the Justice Archives, visitors to our gallery will find a selection of visual artwork and poetry produced by Free Write students, as well as a complete collection of Free Write publications. The goal is to present an overview of the scope, evolution, and impact of Free Write’s work within the complex and ever-changing social, political, and bureaucratic systems that Free Write staff and students constantly navigate and challenge. The Justice Archives is a living document that relies on first-person narratives and the experiences of survivors of incarceration, activists, stakeholders, educators, policy makers, and community members to trace each thread in the dense web of decisions that give rise to youth incarceration.

Our hope is that you are able to engage with this work with deeper and more complex understandings of the context and systems within which it exists, and that you are able to see your own place and role in these systems. Our hope is that you are able to walk through and away from this space feeling equipped to not only take a position, but also to take action.

Thank you to our colleagues at Illinois Humanities for their continued support and leadership.

The Justice Archives was researched and organized by Free Write Arts & Literacy Associate Director Mathilda de Dios. Graphic design by Normal Studio. Curation and exhibition design by Chelsea Ross. 

MoneyBall

June 22, 2019
Chicago Art Department
1932 S. Halsted
7pm-11pm

Free Write Arts & Literacy Artists: Adam M., Adrian W., Cornelius H., Darian G., Destine P., Frankey L., Hector M., Jasmine, Jeremy D., Jonathan, Joshua S., Jovanny S., Kenneth T., Keshawn H., Kian M., Meisha, Monica L., Nakiyah P., STREETZ,

Featured Artists: Alexandra Antoine, Angela Davis Fegan, Chelsea Ross, Damon Locks, Derrick Woods-Morrow, Don Crescendo, Elizabeth De La Piedra, Emilio Rojas, Iris Bernblum, Jared Brown, Jeffrey Michael Austin, Liz Gomez, Liz McCarthy, Marzena Abrahamik, Melissa Castra Almandina, Nancy Sánchez, Norman Teague, Patricia Nguyen, Ryan Searchl1te, Shawné Michaelain Hollway, Tarnynon Onumonu, Tim Nice, Zakkiyyah Najeebah

Join Free Write Arts & Literacy for our first major fundraising event, MoneyBall!

For 19 years, Free Write has worked inside locked facilities like the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, offering literacy and arts education to detained youth. The title MoneyBall is an acknowledgment of the intersection of two critical systems in which our students and our organization are situated—the Prison Industrial Complex and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. Both “complexes” refer to industries built on the backs of oppressed people. Everyday, the way we choose to spend money “talks” for us. MoneyBall is an opportunity to invest in Free Write’s community-based solutions and explore how we, individually and collectively, can divest from systems of violence.

MoneyBall takes place amidst Free Write’s 2019 exhibition of student work, In Conversation. As an extension of Free Write programming, we produce publications and exhibitions to bring forth student work and stories beyond the walls of the jail and into the public sphere.

This year, over 30 internationally recognized artists will be part of the conversation. In Conversation artists will create original works in response to Free Write student visual art, poetry, animations, and audio recordings. Each piece will be exhibited alongside its source material, included in a printed catalogue, and available for purchase in our silent auction.

Come for the art, stay for performances by Sam Trump, Roy Kinsey, Ben Lamar Gay, Jared Brown, E’mon Lauren, and Darling Shear.

Join us for dinner, drinks, auction, and a dance party with Free Write Sound & Vision DJs 1Solo and Tez. Have your picture taken in a MoneyBall moneygrab photobooth, and a personal fortune poem written for you by Melissa Almandina.

We all work ceaselessly to eradicate the conditions that give rise to youth incarceration. Let’s celebrate together as we lay the foundation for another amazing year of Free Write!

Get your tickets HERE!

In Conversation
Opening June 14, 2019
Chicago Art Department
1932 S. Halsted
6pm-10pm

Free Write Arts & Literacy Artists: Adam M., Adrian W., Cornelius H., Darian G., Destine P., Frankey L., Hector M., Jasmine, Jeremy D., Jonathan, Joshua S., Jovanny S., Kenneth T., Keshawn H., Kian M., Meisha, Monica L., Nakiyah P., STREETZ,

Featured Artists: Alexandra Antoine, Angela Davis Fegan, Chelsea Ross, Damon Locks, Derrick Woods-Morrow, Don Crescendo, Elizabeth De La Piedra, Emilio Rojas, Iris Bernblum, Jared Brown, Jeffrey Michael Austin, Liz Gomez, Liz McCarthy, Marzena Abrahamik, Melissa Castra Almandina, Nancy Sánchez, Norman Teague, Ryan Searchl1te, Shawné Michaelain Hollway, Tarnynon Onumonu, Tim Nice, Zakkiyyah Najeebah

Please join Free Write Arts & Literacy for a very special exhibition of student work, In Conversation.

In Conversation invites over two dozen internationally recognized artists to create original work in response to Free Write student visual art, poetry, animations, and audio recordings.

For almost 20 years, Free Write has been working inside locked facilities like the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (CCJTDC), offering literacy and arts education to detained youth. As an extension of this programming, Free Write produces regular publications and exhibitions to bring forth student work and stories beyond the walls of the jail and into the public sphere. These efforts serve to celebrate, validate, and elevate the work of our students, while also instigating complex conversations about the carceral system, justice, and community accountability.

This year, we invite artists from Chicago and beyond to be a part of that conversation. Each piece will be exhibited alongside its source material and included in a printed catalogue, forging discourse and dialogue between artists inside and outside of detention.

Alongside the exhibition, Free Write will host its first major fundraising event on June 22, MoneyBall. The original work created in response to Free Write student artwork will be available for purchase at auction to benefit Free Write’s continued programming and advocacy work.

In Conversation is curated by Chelsea Ross, with assistance from Omar Dyette.

In Conversation is generously supported by:

Half Acre Beer

Artists Frame Service

Chicago Art Department

“I am my story, a story
that will strengthen, brighten and give
me power.”
Yulanda F., Cook County Juvenile Detention Center

Please join Free Write Arts & Literacy for a strategy session, exhibition of new student work, food, and Half Acre Brewery beer in support of our new arts-based mitigation strategies for court-involved youth to create more positive outcomes in court, school, and public discourse.

Moderated by Kendrick Washington (Northwestern University School of Law Professor and U.S. Department of Education Civil Rights Attorney) with special guests Era Laudermilk (Director of Policy & Strategic Planning, Cook County Public Defender) and Bryan Echols (Coordinator, Community Restorative Justice Hubs) alonside Free Write staff and alumni, we will discuss how, from the classroom, to the courtroom, and into the community, a young person’s artwork and personal narrative positively influence outcomes for them as they navigate the criminal legal system.

Over the next year as we implement these mitigation strategies in our arts and literacy workshops with criminalized youth, we will also engage them and their families, advocates, policymakers, educators, activists, and stakeholders in a series of conversations about this work. Your insights would be valuable to this strategy discussion and the underlying question: How can we, individually and collectively, interrupt the systems and cycles perpetuating incarceration, court-involvement, and criminalization of youth?

Since 2000, Free Write has published seven anthologies of student writing and art, installed over 50 public exhibitions, and worked alongside over 10,000 detained and criminalized youth and young adults.

We have an event fundraising goal of $18,000 in recognition of Free Write’s 18 years of youth engagement, which will be matched dollar for dollar by the Reva and David Logan Foundation.

Your support will help us build the foundation for this new mitigation initiative as well as fund the programs we deliver to incarcerated youth every day.

Donate now! -> www.freewritechicago.org/contribute