At this year’s ASU+GSV conference in San Diego, our Museum of Art and Social Justice proudly showcased a retrospective of all twelve art exhibits since 2016. The interactive exhibit showcased artifacts from past shows and celebrated the publication of the second edition of our museum book. This new edition includes our positive affirmation coloring book, thoughtfully crafted lesson plans for educators, and a forward from April Montgomery, KIPP Chicago’s Executive Director, and her meeting with the legendary Malala Yousafzai. This remarkable encounter was a profound source of inspiration for several of the museum’s exhibits, illustrating the power of education and advocacy to drive positive change.

CMASJ Duke Summer Internship

This summer, we partnered with Duke University’s “Duke Engage” program to support an intern, Sophie Rees, for the Children’s Museum of Art and Social Justice, who spent eight weeks working on lesson plans to support Whole Child Initiative priorities. One of her projects focused on “Hip Hop and Mental Health” and creating lesson plans to bring this theme to life for our middle school students. Our KIPPsters will learn the elements of a song, explore form and lyrics, and learn how form and content impact mood. To debunk the idea of a “starving artist,” students will dream of creative careers in music, create a future plan, and learn about professionals who bridge art and science, art and sports, and other nontraditional career paths. Finally, students will be able to make their own music through Chrome Music Lab; more on that below. 

During this time, Sophie invited fellow Duke interns to explore the five sub-genres of hip-hop and unpack common myths and narratives about hip-hop. Some of the questions students reflected on were: What are the narratives about your community that are untrue, incorrect, or unfounded? Why are they harmful to the organization or the community? What are some strategies your organization uses to dispel or push back on those narratives? 

We offered our space to the students so they could delve deeper into this theme of (de)centering narratives through a creative activity that asked them to create a mixed media art installation or collage that highlights their knowledge of the narratives and counternarratives of Chicago, their organization, and/or hip-hop.

Chrome Music Lab

Chrome Music Lab is a great FREE classroom resource for teaching basic music education, from song-making to chord mapping to rhythm tracking. It is very user-friendly, and there is an abundance of free lesson plans and resources to teach teachers how to utilize this tool. It is easily accessible on Chrome. This would be best suited for basic-level classes and could be used in conjunction with the first lesson plan. Give it a try!

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Yodit Weldu is the high school transition advisor at KIPP Academy Chicago and a current KIPP Chicago McNair Fellow. The McNair Fellowship is a signature program of KIPP Chicago that elevates leaders to thrive in their roles and amplify the impact of their leadership. A core component of the McNair Fellowship is designing and executing an Impact project aligned with each fellow’s passions and growing skillsets.  

Yodit had the honor and privilege to lead the KIPP Chicago collaboration with the KIPP Metro Atlanta Schools region to create and develop their own Children’s Museum of Art and Social Justice (CMASJ). The purpose of the CMASJ is to create a space where students can be heard and infuse a social justice curriculum into the arts. The Atlanta museum will offer a space to showcase and celebrate their artistic explorations of social justice themes, inspiring action toward social change. 

Monday, December 12, 2022, the KIPP Atlanta Children’s Museum of Art and Social Justice showcased the first installation: Afrofuturism. This exhibit showcased art by their students, where they self-defined imagination, pushed boundaries, and created new worlds in outer space. Thank you, Deshawn Gaston, for hosting the hands-on experience painting session for families during the event. Thank you, Leslie Locks, for spearheading this exhibit in Atlanta by creating a space for our students to showcase their work to the public. Thank you, Mini’imah Shaheed, April Montgomery Goble, Peter Gooden, Joslyn Villalpando, and the KIPP Metro Atlanta Schools for making this vision a reality.

Yodit is excited to continue to grow and expand this partnership throughout the year. We are excited to see the next art exhibition collaboration Spring of 2023!

Windy Indie 

Windy Indie pulls strings on hearts everywhere she goes. Her infectious positive energy, undeniable work ethic, and incredible violin playing are just some of the characteristics that make her a distinctly unique star. Born and raised on the West Side of Chicago, authenticity is central to Windy’s budding success. Her passion for violin playing is deeply connected to her desire to be relatable and a source of inspiration and pride to her community. When she steps on stage, she wants people to know that she’s not an anomaly and that many people can see themselves in her story if they look closely enough.

This story started where all of our stories begin, at home. Windy’s mom played the violin in church as a young girl, which inspired her to leap at the opportunity to learn to play as a student at KIPP Ascend Middle School. Not only did KIPP expose Windy to violin lessons early on as a student, but she also credits KIPP for helping her define how she would operate her business. The emphasis on being organized and honoring the benefits of a strong daily routine stuck with her and continues to help guide her today as she self-manages the ins and outs of her entire operation flawlessly.

Windy is an independent artist that is quickly making a name for herself. She has been invited to play for Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Lupe Fiasco’s band, Juice WLRD Day, at the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, and has appeared on the hit show Empire three times, amongst many other opportunities.

Windy desires to use her talent as a performing artist to build community and help facilitate critical conversations. She’s passionate that as her work evolves, so does her purpose. She’s unwavering about breaking stereotypes and disrupting outdated beliefs about how things should be done and what is possible for others. Classically trained with a proclivity toward jazz and hip-hop, Windy won’t be boxed in.

Honing her skills for ten years before stepping out on faith to become a professional violinist, she sees herself as her greatest competition. As she grows, her dreams do too. She’s working on developing expertise in audio editing, hair, and make-up. She has aspirations to release her own music, host her own concerts, teach workshops to other budding artists, and take her music on the road for an international tour. 

Windy is climbing to the tune of her own violin, and the sky is truly the limit. You can support her by following her on Instagram @windyindiemusic, reposting her performance videos on your social channels, and booking her at windyindie.com. 

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Environmental Justice: Rooting for Change is a multimedia exhibition by 6 to 14-year-old artists exploring environmental injustices around the world, from deforestation and contaminated soil to noise pollution and hazardous air quality. The Museum’s first exhibit since returning to school in-person, and 10th show overall, was created with visual arts, music, dance, and science classes across 8 KIPP Chicago schools. 

In 1982, an environmental protest in Warren County, North Carolina, sparked the national Environmental Justice movement after the State decided to dispose of toxic soil in a small community with mostly Black residents. Residents and Civil Rights activists quickly called this out as environmental racism, citing that while the state population is 20% Black, 75% of the State’s toxic waste sites are located in Black communities. The movement for Environmental Justice was born in the United States with this protest. 

While the issues explored in Environmental Justice: Rooting for Change affect us all, Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and those with low incomes are disproportionately affected by the impacts of environmental hazards. As those in power make environmental policy decisions, the affected people should be included and centered in the discussions. Environmental Justice is realized when every person, regardless of race or income, lives in a healthy environment. 

As students explored Environmental Justice issues from around the world, they simultaneously studied the activist movements that are happening to combat the harmful effects of these injustices fiercely. As a result, the work you see in this exhibition is ultimately a celebration of the people using their voices, asserting their power, and organizing to create meaningful change. 

Coming Soon!

In our next edition, learn how one of our McNair Fellows is leading a partnership with KIPP Atlanta. Look for more about how the recreation of our Afrofuturism show is going in Atlanta!

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We are thrilled to partner with Joseph Altshuler, Could Be Architecture, and his cohort of University of Illinois architecture and landscape architecture students. Joseph is currently teaching an advanced design seminar on children’s play structures. On March 2nd, Joseph and three of his students led a workshop with a class of 4th graders from KIPP One Primary to allow students to share design ideas for a play structure.

Using students’ designs and ideas, Joseph and his students will be working with a local fabricator to design and build a small play structure. It will debut to the public at an open house at the Design Museum of Chicago before it finds its permanent home inside KIPP One Primary!

AllKinds Studio Designs a Gallery Wall

The brilliant artists of AllKinds, a multidisciplinary design and fabrication studio that creates custom art installations, donated their time and expertise to install a beautiful gallery wall at KIPP One Academy. With a wire hanging system, felt blocks for pinning, and custom designed and painted letters, students’ ACHIEVEments can be displayed with elevated professionalism.

Showcasing our Time Capsule Project at ASU+GSV

Check out this video, shown at this spring’s ASU+GSV Summit, showcasing KIPP Chicago students’ participation in the Once Upon A Time Capsule project!

Creative Schools Fund Grant Recipients

Each year, a dedicated arts liaison from every school works with the Excellence team and School Leader to craft a $10k Creative Schools Fund grant proposal to bring meaningful art programming to students. We were thrilled to win three grants, with all programming scheduled to happen at the start of next school year. KIPP Ascend Primary will work with SkyART to bring arts therapy programming to 32 students for one semester. KIPP Academy Chicago Primary and KIPP Bloom Primary will both have the incredible opportunity to work with members of AllKinds Studio to design and create a unique art installation for their schools.

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On October 26th, a group of students enrolled in Loyola’s Philosophy of Education course toured our CMASJ with Jennifer Hodges. The purpose of this class is to provide space for future educators to define the purpose of education while also challenging them to rethink how they view education and schooling. We hope their experience learning about our museum will give them the courage to radically reimagine how they will impact students as teachers!

On November 16th, we welcomed Kinnari Patel-Smyth, KIPP Foundation President, to visit CMASJ to learn more about our work. We had a meaningful conversation about the power of the arts and the future of our museum work.

A group of college students from Baldwin Wallace toured with us on December 17th as part of their alternative holiday break. We loved sharing our goals of infusing social justice into the arts and hearing more about the work that the BW students are leading as they explore their interests in social justice work.

Once Upon Our Time Capsule

As more students from across multiple campuses participated in the Once Upon Our Time Capsule project, we continued to witness the impact this pandemic has had on our children. Through their artwork, students revealed the challenges and unexpected joys of living with COVID-19 for nearly two years.

We are currently displaying many of the finished time capsules along with several sealed drums full of time capsules at our CMASJ. These time capsules will be sealed until the year 2026 when participants will open them to learn about the effects of this pandemic through the eyes of children across Chicago.

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Once Upon Our Time Capsule was founded by Stacey Gillett and Stephanie Hodges to celebrate Chicago’s children and to foster new ways of building community as we continue to navigate the pandemic. In collaboration with over 35 youth-serving organizations, engaging thousands of children ages 5-12 from over 70 different communities, this project encourages youth to create time capsules to capture their experiences of living through a pandemic. Approximately 70% of participating children represent Chicago’s BIPOC communities. Once Upon Our Time Capsule is supported by the generosity of Bloomberg Philanthropies, Chicago Public Library Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Polk Bros. Foundation.

Students from KIPP Bloom Primary’s art classroom participated in illustrating the joys and challenges of living through a pandemic before placing them inside decorated time capsules. Check out the NBC5 feature with our students! Look for time capsules on display soon at our CMASJ.

KIPP Metro Atlanta Visits the Museum

This summer, we had the pleasure of hosting KIPP Metro Atlanta’s Executive Team at our Children’s Museum of Art and Social Justice! We know that strong partnership and collaboration is the cornerstone of excellent schools and school communities, so we were thrilled to welcome this team for a day of inspiration, collaboration, and community. The intention of the visit was to share the vision, mission, and growth of the museum over the last five years. In addition, KIPP Metro Atlanta’s Executive Team was able to tour the museum and learn more about The Whole Child Initiative.

Coloring Book

Our coloring book is full of 30 + pages, all designed by KIPP Chicago students. Copies of the coloring book can be ordered here. All proceeds from the book will help us to install identity-affirming, positive murals in our schools, like the mural shown here from KIPP Ascend Primary. Also, check out how KIPP Forward’s Ms. Weldu created a bulletin board at KIPP Academy Chicago using pages from the coloring book!

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Gratitude
With the wonderful generosity of Deborah Quazzo, Managing Partner at GSV Ventures and friend of KIPP Chicago, 500 individuals will receive a copy of the coloring book at this year’s ASU GSV conference in San Diego. KIPP Chicago looks forward to presenting at the conference in August! Thank you, Deborah, for supporting our endeavors to ensure quality arts programming for KIPP Chicago students.

Creative Schools Fund grants
Each year, a dedicated arts liaison from every school works with the Excellence team and School Leader to craft a $10k grant Creative Schools Fund grant proposal to bring meaningful art programming to students. This school year, KIPP One, KIPP Academy Chicago, and KIPP Ascend Middle School were awarded the grant to carry out various forms of arts programming. The grant helped these schools hire guest artists to teach in virtual classrooms, purchase custom-made creative workbooks and art supplies for students, and hire artists to add murals to school walls.

Installing CMASJ Artwork in Schools
As we continue to prioritize creating warm, welcoming, and affirming school environments, we believe student-created work should always be on display as much as possible. This spring, we installed our Activist Soup portraits, along with the bios of each person, to create a beautiful, meaningful, permanent fixture at all of our schools! Please consider a donation to our Go Fund Me to aid in our efforts to continue installing identity-affirming imagery in schools!

Duke Engage Interns:
We are thrilled to be working with three students from the DukeEngage program from Duke University this summer. The vision of DukeEngage is for students and faculty to collaborate with communities, locally and globally, to address critical social issues through an immersive summer of community engagement. This summer, our three interns, Axelle Miel, Victoria Wang, and Victor Clifton, will be collaborating with our efforts to elevate the work of CMASJ. We’re so excited to see what their unique backgrounds and perspectives will bring to our programming!

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As we continue to engage students in virtual art experiences around social justice themes, we are also developing resources for all students while learning at home. KIPP Chicago students created our first CMASJ virtual project which lives on our website as a downloadable coloring book. A hard copy can also be purchased here.

This coloring book is a compilation of positive affirmations collected from our teachers. Students in grades Kindergarten through 8th from across the region chose an affirmation to illustrate and submitted their designs. Positive affirmations can be used to reprogram our thought patterns and change the way we think and feel about things. They are the messages we choose to tell ourselves over and over until we internalize and believe them. We hope that this coloring book can be utilized to practice mindfulness and meditation while reflecting on the affirmations on each page.

Thank you to Dr. Mahalia Hines, who inspired this project with her daily, positive affirmations. We love the idea of believing in our full potential and envisioning our highest selves through the consistent affirming of positive beliefs!

Alumni Artist Feature: Amare Williamson

Amare Williamson, a KIPP Academy Chicago alumni, is now a Sophomore at ChiArts, a prestigious and rigorous arts, and college preparatory high school. Amare’s beautiful illustrations of Black women are part of our latest CMASJ coloring book, and one of her pieces is our cover feature! Her inspiring artistic journey is just beginning, and we look forward to watching Amare use her artwork to engage in social and political issues. Below is a conversation with Amare.

When did you know you were interested in visual art?
When I was in Kindergarten, around that time, I used to always try to draw my classmates or teachers or anyone around me, I was always fascinated by facial features. I wanted to draw a lot. I was mainly inspired by my older brother. He was really into art. I wanted to do it also.

Is there someone in your life who has helped you discover your artistic talents?
My mom, most definitely. She always tells me stories, like how in preschool, I used to draw her as a stick figure. I used to always draw food; I like drawing food. She, to this day, always pushes me to keep improving, and she’d do anything to help me with my art. She sings, but she doesn’t do any visual art.

What are some of your favorite art media/ways to make art?
My favorite is traditional. Sketching on paper using charcoal or ink. I recently started getting more into digital art.

What inspires you and your art?
Mainly my culture inspires me a lot. Black culture. I love making artwork about my people. Anything that I feel like, in the media, or just everywhere, where we aren’t represented a lot. Young girls like me, we don’t have a lot of representation. I love to make artwork that makes us…shows us how beautiful we are and that we matter. I just love bringing the beauty out of Black people. I try to learn more about myself, ya know?

How has your experience at Chi Arts helped you grow as a young artist?
Before going to Chi Arts I wasn’t as passionate as I am now. They really push me with learning new things like sculpting and painting that I’ve never done before. And they’ve given me materials that I’ve never even heard of. The school is amazing, it has an amazing personality. People are nice there and accepting. It’s amazing. They push their students a lot. They’re really inspiring.

Do you know where you want to go to college?
It’s between two colleges- California Arts and Spelman. Either one of those. I’m still looking for more art schools.

Do you want to find a career in the arts? If so, what is your dream career?
Most definitely. I want to stick with making art. I love every art media so I will just go with the flow, try new things, practice certain things. I just really want to have my art out there and make inspiring art about political things…things that people are talking about.

A Visual Arts Lesson on Public Space and Confederate Statues
We are so excited to announce that our CMASJ lesson plan, A Visual Arts Lesson on Public Space and Confederate Statues, is part of the winning group of proposals for the ASU+GSV Creator Competition! This lesson for 7th-12th graders utilizes this Fireside Chat: Tearing Down the Statues with Deborah Quazzo and Mitch Landrieu to engage students in a re-imagining of public spaces without confederate statues. If confederate statues stand for divisiveness, hate, and racism, how can students design new art structures to illustrate equity, truth, reconciliation, unity, and hope?

Partnering with Urban Gateways
We are working to partner with more arts organizations around Chicago, expanding our strategic vision of offering engaging art and social justice experiences to our community. In seeking arts organizations with a similar mission of offering arts and social justice experiences to kids, we are grateful to be in conversation with Urban Gateways, which engages young people in arts experiences to inspire creativity and impact social change. Our first joint project was a collaborative grant proposal to bring a 14-week visual art program to KIPP Ascend Middle Schoolers that would include work with two local artists.

Installing CMASJ Artwork in Schools
As we continue to prioritize creating warm, welcoming, and affirming school environments, we believe student-created work should always be on display as much as possible. We are beginning to install our Activist Soup portraits, along with the bios of each person, to create a beautiful, meaningful permanent fixture at every one of our 8 schools. Please consider a donation to our Go Fund Me to aid in our efforts!

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Mural collaboration at KIPP Bloom
Jennifer Hodges, Director of the Whole Child Initiative and Joslyn Villalpando, Director of Arts Programming collaborated this summer to design and paint a mural at KIPP Bloom, centering an interactive experience with butterfly wings and a Jean-Michele Basquiat inspired crown so students feel welcome to become part of the artwork.

KIPP Chicago t-shirt design

Purchase a t-shirt here to donate to KIPP Chicago! Orders will be taken until October 18th and t-shirts will ship by October 30th. All proceeds will go toward arts programming and remote learning.

Highlight of past CMASJ exhibit

We will continue our Children’s Museum of Art and Social Justice work to celebrate and promote Black and Latinx centered themes, like one of our favorites from 2018, Springtime on Neptune. This exhibition explored themes of Afrofuturism to celebrate a reimagining of our earth with Black people at the center. Springtime on Neptune also coincided with Chicago’s 1st annual Wakandacon, which filmed some of its promotional material in our museum, and the release of Black Panther, the Marvel movie featuring an Afrofuturistic theme. We would be remiss if we did not mention the August 28th passing of Chadwick Boseman, who played King T’Challa in Black Panther among other notable characters in movies. Black Panther just came out when we were creating the artwork for Springtime on Neptune and it was incredibly inspiring to see a Black superhero in a major Marvel film. Wakanda forever!

As we adjust to creating content for online viewing and interaction, we are excited to offer ideas for kids to engage in art and social justice.

Resources
Check out our CMASJ lesson plans page here.

Check out the YouTube page of KIPP One Primary art teacher, Ms. Weldon, who shows us how to make art from household objects.

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“Learning to stand in somebody else’s shoes, to see through their eyes, that’s how peace begins. And it’s up to you to make that happen. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.” -Barack Obama

Be on the lookout for a virtual tour. In the meantime, check out this video created by KIPP One Primary’s visual arts teacher, Ms. Weldon, and her students for the current show, Self(ie) Love. The song was written by the guitar player in front! And MarcAnthony, alum of KIPP Ascend Middle School, created this video of some of the artwork being made for our current show, Self(ie) Love, open until June 12th.

MarcAnthony is starting his own company called, Phwealthy, to help small businesses advertise through video. We are so proud of his entrepreneurial skills and can’t wait to see where he goes!

New website

We’re excited to share our new CMASJ website with you! This new site features lesson plans from every art show to share with other educators, photos from all 11 of our exhibitions, and more. We hope this can be a resource for parents and educators who are engaging their kids in learning about art and social justice.

Click here to sign up for our CMASJ newsletter to receive updates, volunteer opportunities, and calendar information.

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