ED Programming Update

As Arts of Life continues to innovate and expand, I wanted to share how our mission is working in the broader community. 

Four years ago, our forced pandemic closure made us realize that our community could work in settings outside of our brick and mortar studios. We also saw a large number of artists not returning to the studio or with reduced schedules once we did reopen. We recognized an opportunity to meet our artists’ evolving needs and to expand our reach. With the investments of several visionary funders, we started building our North Shore Community Programs in 2022. We worked together with the artists to develop two new approaches to programming: 

1. Providing facilitation in artist’s homes so they could continue their artistic careers. In weekly three-hour sessions, AofL staff help with studio setup, creative practice facilitation, and more. We currently support five artists through this program.
2. Connecting artists with local art institutions to increase access to community and artmaking. Arts of Life is proud to have developed a series of workshops and classes that provide space for artists with I/DD to explore new media, teach classes, and engage with their creative colleagues while also supporting the critical DEIA work of our partner institutions the Evanston Art Center and The Art Center Highland Park. Now in our second year, we have welcomed 154 artists to 41 workshops and classes. 

But we haven’t stopped there. You might not know this, but I worked as a DSP in college and spent my summers in New York State working at Camp Jened, which was recently featured in the Crip Camp movie. I was eager to use my education and camp experience and headed to Chicago, where I thought there were more opportunities to make a difference. I started my career on the South Side at Lakeview Living Center, an Intermediate Care Facility for people with I/DD. That experience made a significant impression on me, and the Collective Decision-Making model we use at Arts of Life can be traced back to my time at Lakeview. I still remember when my motivation shifted to creating the conditions that gave all the power back to the people with I/DD. As I moved through my career, getting back to the South Side has been a goal, and I’m thrilled to share that our South Side program launched on March 5th at the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, the oldest active church in Chicago, organized in 1833, two months before Chicago officially incorporated. FPCC is honored to have found such a perfect match through the Sacred Spaced program. Supporting Arts is a vital part of their mission, and Arts of Life feels right at home surrounding our artists with various creative practices in residency at the Church. I’m looking forward to how this program grows and what will develop by being in community with the South Side Creative ecosystem.

The two studios are also busy taking an ambitious approach to new licensure requirements. We launched our Off-Site Program in July 2023, further developing what AofL historically called “Field Trips.” Our Off-Site Program aims to build creative connections between our artists and the broader arts community and expose them to Metro-Chicago’s vibrant artistic culture. At the same time, we are realizing another 20-year bucket list item. In April, we launched an art archiving and preservation program funded by a landmark investment from the Smith-Tieken Foundation. We will archive every piece of art made in our program, migrate our archive to an industry-standard system, upgrade our storage and preservation of artwork, and create a 25th-anniversary catalog to celebrate our artists’ work. A complete archive and high-resolution photos will enable Arts of Life to further our mission by increasing our creative partnerships and collector opportunities and improving our artists’ exposure. 

These two projects support a pillar of our Strategic Plan: Employer of Choice. We doubled our program team and increased their salaries to account for this increase in their workload for off-site programming. We updated job descriptions and added admin support to improve the division of labor across the program teams and prioritize our artists’ creative practice. We also hired three contractors whose sole responsibility is completing the archiving project, freeing our Exhibition and Program team to focus on maintaining the system moving forward. We still have work to do in this Pillar and will continue to partner with our program team to identify priorities as we look to our next Strategic Plan. 

It’s been exciting to share these updates with you, and I’d welcome the opportunity to discuss anything further with you regarding AofL.  You can always reach me at dfisher@artsoflife.org. 

All the best,

Denise Fisher, Executive Director