Join Jane Addams Hull-House Museum at the opening of Claiming Space: Creative Grounds and Freedom Summer School, a collaborative exhibition with artists, educators and students that explores the transformation of public school space amidst the backdrop of depopulation, divestment and school closures on Chicago’s West Side.

In 2013, the City of Chicago closed and consolidated 49 Chicago Public Schools (CPS). More than 3 million square feet of public school space became designated as “under-utilized” or “under-performing” and was turned back over to the City of Chicago for resale or repurposing. Hull-House Museum will partner with Creative Grounds, led by architectural urban designer, Paola Aguirre and artist Sara Pooley, to document and make visible the statuses of closed, sold, non-utilized and merged West Side Chicago Public Schools. Through an interactive mapping installation, Creative Grounds will visualize the impacted landscape and the affected communities, contemplate their enormity and reflect on possibilities for the future.

Jane Addams Hull-House Museum has also partner with educator and Austin resident, Danton Floyd, founder of 360 Nation, a community organization that runs Freedom Summer School based out of Charles Sumner Math & Science Academy. In 2013, the City of Chicago designated Charles Sumner Academy, located between the North Lawndale and West Garfield Park neighborhoods, as an “under-utilized” school. Sumner was spared closure and remains a growing, high-performing school, and beacon institution in the community, but three schools in close proximity were shuttered or consolidated.

360 Nation Freedom Summer School students spent the summer learning how to identify and transform neglected spaces into welcoming environments, where they could better see and express themselves through a lens of self-determination. They cleared and configured empty lots around Charles Sumner Academy into viable play spaces with found and discarded materials. In July 2017, Hull-House commissioned teaching artist Leah Gipson, who is the founder of West Side Art Chicago, to work with Floyd and 360 Nation students over six weeks to create new designs, from the organization’s existing motifs, into dynamic patterned wallpaper. Hull-House also partnered with Alexandria Eregbu, a West Side based artist and designer, to further interpret the designs by 360 Nation students into logo graphics that communicate key values related to the exhibition and the student’s experience.

For a companion exhibition, Hull-House will partner with artist and activist Nicole Marroquin who uses art, archives, and living testimonies to make connections between youth-led political movements and spatial justice. Her collaged screen prints chronicle the high school walkouts organized by Black and Latinx students in Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods between 1968-1973. At the time, students advocated for themselves, agitated and were brutally confronted by Chicago police. Marroquin’s work reflects on the claimed spaces and experiences of student activism.

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Tags: Alexandria Eregbu, Chicago, Claiming Space: Creative Grounds and Freedom Summer School, Danton Floyd, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Leah Gipson, near west side, Nicole Marroquin, Paola Aguirre, Sara Pooley