We are in Maywood

This fall we moved into Maywood to help the community build an after school program that would drive informal education and experimental community arts practice through workshops lead from all sorts of people. If you are interested in creating works in the space / school or teaching a workshop by yourself or along with someone else, let us know. We have a teaching laboratory that is still in progress to help the 6-8 grade students and teachers in the school. We also have a press office where we use the current model of a school newspaper to promote our collaborative works and experimental teaching efforts.

Summer 2009

The musical chairs are at the Chicago Cultural Center for the summer and a workshop is scheduled for August on teaching the exhibit. SI is building a community radio station in Maywood, Illinois this fall at the Garfield School. The school has provided ample space for the radio station and adjoining office in addition to a classroom studio for teaching and workshoping various projects. Look very soon for a call for proposals to join in overpowering the school through aesthetics, sound, arts education and teaching. SITE, a new zine form the SI is underway this summer and a space on the website is dedicated to it content.

Developments

This is the time of the year where there is a big pile up of activity in Chicago. It is partly due to the fair / fest scene and equally some activity in reaction to it. Check out Versionfest09 Immodest Proposals until May 2 and the many Versionfest venues that are hosting a variety of outstanding programs and projects www.versionfest.org. We have the prototype of Musical Chairsin the Audacity of Art group show at the Co-Prosperity Sphere. Musical Chairs is a sonic installation designed for replication and intended for schools and public platforms to self initiate original music while considering education through sound / production. Check out King Ludd's Analog Arcade which has been organized by Material Exchange at the Experimental Station for Versionfest 09. Stockyard Institute is also working on Tuesdays at the Multicultural Arts High School with Lavie Raven / University of Hip Hop and Ayana Contreras / vocalo.org on a project called the Cafeteria Sessions. The many projects from the Multicultural Arts High School will be launched at the high school on Thursday, May 21, 2009 under the We Are Everywhere Youth Summit. All four high schools within the Little Village High School campus will participate. The Denmark Journal SPEAK UP will feature this work (Cafeteria) along with two other 2009 youth based projects in Denmark and one in Palestine.   

We are developing a new publication effort called SITE that is organized as a public domain activity book for teaching artists and socially engaged producers. Issue #1 will be distributed prior to the new school year. The publication is set up for a wide distribution throughout the Chicago area and will tap into the 100 public high schools and a network of experimental and alternative schools and teaching sites. Each issue will include free lesson plans, local and international social and arts based projects, and contributions from underrepresented youth, artists, teachers and community members everywhere. We will have suggestions on our website for submitting contributions shortly.  
  
We are working on the Stockyard Institute book this summer as we celebrate 15 years of effort in 2010. The book will be released next year. 

LINKS
http://www.versionfest.org/
http://material-exchange.org/home.html
http://www.experimentalstation.org/
http://www.stockyardinstitute.org/

The Cafeteria Sessions

Stockyard Institute

A series of lunch time recordings and radio workshops with adolescents on socially engaged artistic practice, utopian education and the future of Chicago. The Cafeteria Sesssions will go on throughout the spring at the Multicultural Arts High School with Jim Duignan (S.I.), Ayana Contrares (vocalo) and Lavie Raven (University of Hip Hop).

This series will culminate in a live radiocast from the Multicultural Arts High School from 5:00pm-8:00pm on May 21, 2009.

vocalo link: http://vocalo.org/on-air

iTunesU link: http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/depaul.edu.1621409512.01621409521

Spray painting workshops

Graffiti impresario Zeb has spent the last year delivering spray painting workshops organized through the Stockyard Institute at the Hyde Park Art Center. The last master class of the year involved DePaul University art teachers who will collaborate with Zeb on a large scale wall piece at the HPAC in late December 2008. The piece references censorship / censored and will be on the second floor gallery in the back by the artist studios. The entire process of teaching graffiti with teachers has opened up the singular referents of violence on the public and the old testimonial of destruction to property. These exchanges which included young people and artists from the Hyde Park neighborhood established new vantage points and shed some much needed light on our painted city. They elevated the idea of painting and its influences of writing and semiotics, circulating conversations around maybe, the last radical form.

http://www.g-rad.org/benner/memorial/

http://www.incubate-chicago.org/

School Poster #1
Jim Duignan and rum46 (Denmark)
2008

Please contribute to the project. The posters are 11x17 and will be printed by us and distributed to Chicago schools and cultural spaces. Current participants are Alexander Vaindorf (Stockholm), Manoa Free University (Vienna), Instant Coffee (Canada) and the Denmark Pedagogical University.