Take a Tour Led by Community Docents
Sat, August 20, 2011 2:00 PM - 6:00 PM
The first public tour of our new community docent program, Neighborhood Voices, is scheduled to depart on August 20. The tours coincide with a summer festival taking place in the community.
The Neighborhood Voices tour program is bringing CAF to neighborhoods across the city, empowering residents and leaders to tell the stories of their communities. In 2011, we trained residents in Bronzeville, South Shore, and Chatham to conduct these tours.
Please join us in celebrating these public tours and experience the South Shore community.
Public tours will take place on Saturday, August 20, and depart from South Shore at 1813 E. 71st Street. The tour departure point is just steps from the Metra. If you drive, street parking is available but may be limited due to the street festival.
Tour times:
2:00 – public tour
4:00 – public tour
To reserve a spot on the trolley, please RSVP to southshorechamberinc(at)yahoo.com
Location: 1813 E. 71st Street, Chicago, IL (Map)
Fees: Free
“For Distinctly South Shore"
An Exploration of Public Space
South Shore Chamber Inc. and the Chicago Architecture Foundation are highlighting the ‘Distinct taste’ in South Shore by featuring artists to showcase the community's potential.
Introduction
Building facades and vacant property are generally considered private spaces. Yet the public’s experience of a neighborhood is defined by the visual and functional exchange between building facades and the streets. When a neighborhood has an agglomeration of blank, featureless facades, the public experiences it as dull and blighted, and people move away from the decaying space. The South Shore community is plagued by a plethora of empty storefronts. These bare surfaces create a public environment with significant potential for visual enhancement. In an effort to improve the community's visual perception, the South Shore Chamber and the Chicago Architecture Foundation are sponsoring an invited competition entitled “Distinctly South Shore“ .
Our goal is to transform the blank surfaces of our community from a liability into an asset by sponsoring creative interventions that redefine the public experience of the neighborhood.
The Opportunity
A partnership between the South Shore Chamber and the Chicago Architecture Foundation is seeking proposals from local artists for a community-wide creative intervention that fundamentally changes the visual perception of the South Shore community, activating its blank surfaces and leftover spaces both during the day and at night. Using a medium or media of their choosing, we are opening up the entire community as a canvas and asking artists to think of its building walls, storefront windows, and other potential sites as “public space” in need of activation. We are not addressing a specific theme; rather, we are looking for artists whose work maximizes the available sites and creates a bold impact on the street. Through this process, we hope to generate transformative ideas for introducing visual interest, curiosity, and delight in urban areas where they are otherwise completely absent.
Locations/Sites
The South Shore Chamber Inc. and the Chicago Architecture Foundation will identify properties in the South Shore community that feature vacant and operative storefronts.
Property owners will be encouraged to participate by involving them in the property task force and showing them the advantages it brings to the community through total participation.
Working with local architects and urban planners, we will identify several locations along 71st Street, from South Shore through Kimbark Avenue, on both sides of the street, to maximize the art's visibility in the community. Through an RFP process, we will work with artists to develop proposals for displaying their art in the space in a way that maximizes the use of the storefront. We will encourage the artists to work in teams to create engaging, 3-dimensional designs that highlight the potential of the South Shore community.
We will create a panel of judges that includes representatives from the South Shore Chamber, the Chicago Architecture Foundation, the building owners, and esteemed members of the artistic community. The South Shore Chamber will work closely with the property owner throughout this process to ensure full inclusion.
District Tour
The development of the South Shore tour provides us with a tool to acquaint property owners, artists, and project participants with the assets of the community. Once the art installation is completed, tours will be scheduled during the exhibition to help maximize the impact on new visitors to the neighborhood. It is possible that, as an extension of this project, a special 71st Street tour could be created to further highlight the assets of one of our community's most vital commercial districts.
