Young Cultural Stewards (YCS) engage youth ages 5-25 through art and nature, music and technology, cultural programming, job training and mentorship. YCS supports social and environmental justice, provides models for employment in cultural production, and nurtures aesthetic, digital, and cultural literacies. We aim to create safe and liberatory public space by and for youth that cultivates them as agents of change in their neighborhoods, communities, and ecosystems.
Our Program Ecosystem:
ArtSeed: Mobile Creative Play
ArtSeed is a summer pop-up program that engages youth ages 5-15 across parks and community gardens through art-making, storytelling, and nature-based play. ArtSeed has expanded beyond traditional park programming and built relationships with community gardeners in order to participate in city-wide mutual aid efforts with a focus on the South and West Sides of Chicago. Through these relationships, teaching artists and youth participants practice community care, creative healing, and reciprocity with the natural world.
*small is all*
*small is all* is a hybrid (virtual and in-person) youth program centering BIPOC & LGBTQIA+ youth ages 10-15. *small is all* invites young people to deeply engage with nature and investigate the ecological and social relationships in the world around them. Building on years of racial and environmental justice programming, *small is all* supports young people in healing their relationships with one another and the natural world. Each season *small is all* youth attend in-person field trips to Chicago Park District parks and community gardens, engaging with BIPOC ecologists, environmental justice organizers, and artists.
Climate Justice & Arts Teaching Artist Cohort
The Climate Justice & Arts Teaching Artist Cohort features BIPOC & LGBTQIA+ teaching artists with backgrounds in community organizing, climate justice, interdisciplinary arts, and community healing. Through a year-long fellowship, teaching artists participate in a Community of Praxis in which they learn, create, and share by attending field trips, meeting climate justice organizers, participating in land stewardship, and creating art inspired by their collective learning. Teaching artists co-facilitate the *small is all* and ArtSeed youth programs and co-create an annual curriculum and exhibition featuring their lesson plans, art, and program documentation.
Inferno Mobile Recording & Media
We are the Chicago Park District's mobile sound and media arts program, and we create community-relevant and participant-centered digital media with people all around Chicago. Through creative writing and digital music making, participants explore collaboration and document their own ideas to share at home and with the world.
TRACE (Teens Re-Imagine Community, Art & Environment)
(Teens Reimagining Art, Community, and Environment) is a curatorial, leadership, and job readiness program that nurtures youth's creativity while teaching them tangible and intangible life skills through experiential and ideational learning.
Through TRACE, youth are taught to practice creative activism and use art to engage, inspire, and persist for positive change within themselves and their community.
TRACE is headquartered on Chicago’s south side in the Englewood neighborhood at the Hamilton Park Cultural Center, with a satellite on the west side in the Austin neighborhood at the Austin Town Hall Park Cultural Center.