This project will center on artist-led collaboration, formal and informal action research, and place-keeping activations.
Hello, friend or lover of arts, culture & community, Please share the attached flyer and web link.
It is a survey conducted during May 2023 about the space needs of South Side Chicago artists and creatives. Whatever way you feel comfortable sharing is appreciated. The survey will continue research for my Three Walls/Rad Lab fellowship.
https://three-walls.org/programs/rad-lab/
The survey flyer with the QR code is attached & here is a direct link to the survey also:
Philosophy
Neighborhood: Greater South Shore
Racial Justice Issue: Self-Determination & Gentrification
This project will center on artist-led collaboration, formal and informal action research, and place-keeping activations. The focus will be to study the feasibility of developing a permanent work/live space cooperatively owned by artists of all abilities. It will also include capacity building about shared ownership.
BIO
Kiela is a lifelong Chicagoan with a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and 30 years of professional arts experience teaching, consulting, planning, and creating collaborative community-based mural projects. Kiela's leadership in conceptualizing, designing, and creating art with the community was also seeded by her family legacy of licensed architects/designers and civil rights activist parents. Her desire to collaborate with and empower other artists and the non-artist community about the power of art and the importance of art spaces has fueled her engagement around artist ownership and community peacekeeping concepts.
ABOUT
RaD Lab+Outside the Walls Fellowship supports ALAANA (African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, and Native American) artists and creatives who use radical imagination to practice a racially just society. The fellows will demonstrate alternative ways toward racial equity through the lens of radical vision and social justice.
We will support a combination of project grants at $40K annually for research, implementation, and continuation. Artists have challenges receiving funds at all stages of their projects, and being able to fund at least two phases will invest in the artist and the idea. With this understanding, the program will offer multi-year grants. Additionally, artists rarely get the opportunity, time, space, and financial resources to put their imaginations of justice into the world. The fellowship will help expand the funding landscape and distribute the funds to the most vulnerable community—ALAANA individuals.
The program is divided into RaD Lab (research and development) and Outside the Walls. During the RaD Lab year, the fellows spend a year researching, developing, and testing their project for Outside the Walls. Over this time, each awardee will present their idea to their communities/neighbors, stakeholders, and the interested public every quarter.
Outside the Walls is our presentation model that presents convenings, workshops, exhibitions, and installations in Chicago neighborhoods developed through RaD Lab. The art or research form will be installed in spaces that do not typically host art exhibitions and are easily accessible. In addition, outside the Walls features programming led by artists and their neighbors to support the exhibitions and the engagement cultivated during RaD Lab.
With both parts, Threewalls assists with public engagements by brainstorming different ways to present to the public, logistics (securing space, communicating with various groups), and documentation. Threewalls collaborates with the fellows throughout the process and conducts quarterly check-ins to help solve problems and ensure they progress on their projects.
