On a sunny Saturday, amidst the live music, water balloon fights, and petitions at Woodlawn’s Art in Action festival, four University of Chicago students were manning a table, armed with markers and blank maps of Chicago, and encouraging passersby to make their own maps. Their idea was to produce a collection of maps that would chart people’s impressions of where the neighborhood of Hyde Park begins and ends. The mapping society provided three blank maps: one of Hyde Park, Woodlawn, Kenwood, and Washington Park; another of the greater South Side, extending south to 95th, further west, and north through Bronzeville; and a map of the entire city of Chicago. Read the rest of this entry »

Around a rectangular table in a conference room at the Bessie Coleman Library, a group of University of Chicago students and community members are meeting to discuss this year’s Art in Action festival. “Okay, who is taking care of sign-making Monday?” one student asks. Several hands go up from the planning committee, made up of seven students and seven community members, including a local pastor, several artists, and members of various South Side organizations. Enthusiasm is high and periodic chatter interrupts the main agenda: the logistics of an event meant to bring the UofC community into contact with those around it. Read the rest of this entry »

In the 1960s, the University of Chicago was subjecting Hyde Park and South Kenwood to a harsh regimen of urban renewal. It invoked eminent domain to take control of property in areas of “blight” and redevelop them, displacing many low-income residents and businesses. When it turned its gaze southward, however, it met far greater resistance to its gentrifying influence. The Temporary Woodlawn Organization (now The Woodlawn Organization, or TWO) united Woodlawn residents, activists, and religious leaders in opposition to the University’s agenda and the neighborhood’s decline. Led by then-president Arthur M. Brazier and helped by renowned community organizer Saul Alinsky, TWO protested against the unresponsive, underhanded practices of local businesses, landlords, and city officials. Its members called for an end to landlords’ neglect of their buildings and the sale of inferior products at inflated prices. On both counts they won small victories, but 1964 marked a major triumph: TWO extracted a promise from the University not to expand south of 61st Street. Read the rest of this entry »

Art in Action is an annual festival launched by the Southside Solidarity Network, a University of Chicago student group; now in its third year, the event has blossomed into a full day of music, hands-on art, and community discussions where both students and the local community can “have a good time in a safe place,” according to UofC third-year Caroline Weiss. Numerous stands were scattered across the backyard of the First Presbyterian Church at 64th and Kimbark last Saturday, with everything from face painting and T-shirt spray painting to encouraging students registered in the state of Illinois to go out and vote. There was also an eclectic array of activities organized by students and local residents, such as a discussion titled “Hip Hop & Youth,” in which festival organizer Reola Avant and South Side hip-hop artist H.B. Sol led a conversational seminar on the differences between hip-hop culture and the music industry. Student volunteers played with and entertained neighborhood children, and at least for this day there were attempts to breach the wall that often separates the campus from the rest of the neighborhood. Read the rest of this entry »

We asked some leading lights of the South Side art scene: Why does art matter? What is the social relevance of art? Why do we need it on the South Side? What follows are their responses. Read the rest of this entry »

Development in Hyde Park has been a contentious issue since the urban renewal of the 1950s, and judging by the crowd at the panel discussion “Making Hyde Park: Development in our Community,” it’s as hot a topic as ever. Over one hundred students and Hyde Park residents crowded into an undersized room in Ida Noyes on Tuesday, March 4, to listen as a diverse group of panelists put forward their visions for the future of Hyde Park. It was an occasion for “conversation, not debate,” as moderator and University Community Service Center director Wallace Goode emphasized, but that didn’t mean voices were not raised as the panelists argued about issues like retail, density, architecture, and the University’s involvement in development. Read the rest of this entry »

Last spring, Clare Johnson and her boyfriend went bike riding on the North Side in search of a neighborhood that wasn’t undergoing gentrification. Johnson, at the time a third-year undergraduate at the University of Chicago, was looking for someplace she could live without contributing to the controversial process whereby working-class, often physically dilapidated neighborhoods are redeveloped and then shoot up in property value. Although gentrification can bring benefits to a neighborhood, from better city services to more extensive retail options, it often has the effect of displacing the current residents, whose families may have lived in that area for generations. Johnson’s four-hour bike ride yielded disappointing results. “Some places are a little worse, some places are a little better,” she says, but nowhere is exempt. “Every neighborhood is in some process of gentrification,” agrees Rebecca Shi, Johnson’s friend and fellow UofC fourth-year. Read the rest of this entry »