AREA Chicago ART RESEARCH EDUCATION ACTIVISM

"AREA reflects an exciting new energy that challenges who will live in the city, who will benefit from its growth and development, and who will get to participate in fundamental decisions affecting economic, cultural, and social life. AREA is a space to contest whose city Chicago will be." - Pauline Lipman, Author of "Whose City is It Anyways?"

Dear AREA Friend, Ally and Supporter:

For over two years AREA Chicago has been producing critical publications and events in Chicago. ] We write to tell you more about what we have been doing and to ask that you help us to continue this work on AREA by giving us a donation.

The challenge for AREA in the coming months and years will most certainly be how to create a sustainable economy. We must create meaningful and flexible roles for a wide range of contributors/collaborators, build and sustain community around the project and maintain an exciting and diverse approach to the many topics addressed in the publication and during associated events. All this will help avoid the burnout and staleness associated with so much activism and non-profit/NGO work in the US.

In its first 2 years, AREA has received financial support from the combined sources of the Stockyard Institute, Fire This Time Fund, Synapses Foundation, private donors, Peace Party, Lisa Yun Lee, and Crossroads Fund. This past weekend AREA had our first ever fundraising auction and dance party - we are happy to report that we made $4,000 from our community's support.  It takes $7,000 to put out an issue ($4,500 for Labor and $2,500 for printing). That is what your money is going to today. Thanks for your support.

If you would like to make a tax- deductible donations to AREA, make checks payable to Experimental Station and mail to AREA Chicago PO Box #476971 Chicago IL 60647 (write AREA in the memo line). To make an online donation, visit http://www.areachicago.org/donate/

We also encourage you to share other resources like free office space (we really need an office by summer time!), printing, computers, food, your skills, cars for delivering the publication, and many more things we cannot anticipate until you step up and propose them. Thanks for your generosity!

In Cahoots,

Daniel Tucker, Editor - AREA Chicago

Recap: The first 2 1/2 Years of AREA Chicago

What we've been up to?

• -Since the project started five issues have been released, including 70 contributors, 40 advisors/copyeditors/proofreaders, and 60 different projects in the city's current and recent history profiled in the pages of the magazine/website. Each of these issues has had a release event, which serve as a celebratory and networking occasion for contributors and friends of the project. Every event associated with the publication has happened in a different location (Ping Tom park in Chinatown, the Chicago Cultural Center, the Experimental Station in Woodlawn, the Jane Addams Hull House in West Loop, and Co-Prosperity Sphere in Bridgeport), reflecting the project's interest in the diverse geography of the city.

• - All five issues (#1 Privatization, #2 Local Food Systems, #3 Solidarity, #4 Prisons/Justice System and #5 Education) have been published in print with 5,000 copies per issue and online in their entirety, receiving over 1000 unique visits to the website per month.

• -Six lectures as part of the "Infrastructure Series" (at Mess Hall in Rogers Park, Polvo Arte in Pilsen, In These Times in Logan Square, ACME arts in Bucktown, the Hyde Park Art Center, and the Hull House Museum in the West Loop).

• - Editorial retreat at the Jane Adams Hull House and Young Chicago Authors with a 15 person advisory group

• - Another Chicago, the email newsletter keeping contributors updated with organizational developments of AREA, and announcing the events/activities of our local contributors has been regularly sent since September 2006 to over 800 local subscribers.

• -This summer's How We Learn event series brought together hundreds of Chicagoans to nearly 30 events about education, organization and participation. Including presentations by Andrew Gryf Paterson, Josh MacPhee, Feel Tank Chicago, Waite White, Chicagoland Bike Mechanic Orgs, Chicago Underground Library, Mess Hall, Platypus, Free Geek, Chicagoland/Calumet Underground Railroad Efforts, Bronzeville Historical Society, Chicago Women's Health Center, The Odyssey Project, Stephen Haymes, Meredith Haggerty, Lavie Raven, Dave Pabellon, Scott Berzofsky, Dane Nester, Nicholas Wisniewski, Jesse Seay, Lou Mallozzi, Christina Kubisch Daniel, Kunle/Holger Lauinger, John Dewey, Charlie Vinz, Material Exchange, Nance Klehm, Vocalo.org Producers, Anne Elizabeth Moore, Counter Cartography Collective, and Kristen Cox of Fire This Time Fund.

• - Workshops related to publishing and AREA have been developed for teenage contributors at the Howard Area Alternative High School and with the Young Chicago Authors organization. Numerous educators are using AREA texts in their after school program, high school and university classrooms.

• -Lectures by about AREA have been presented at national and international conferences including Artivistic (Montreal), ReActivism (Central European University Budapest), 16beaver Group (New York), National Conference on Organized Resistance (Washington DC), Planners Network (University of Illinois Chicago), UCLA's Department of Urban Planning (Los Angeles), Syracuse University, and in numerous university seminars throughout Chicago at DePaul, Loyola, UIC, and the Art Institute of Chicago. 

• -AREA's mapping endeavor "Notes for a Peoples Atlas of Chicago" has been exhibited in such places as Columbia College's A+D Gallery, the Hyde Park Art Center, UIC's Gallery 400 and the Museum of Contemporary Art.

What People Are Saying About AREA Chicago....

Letters of Support

• "I had the honor of being asked to write an introductory article for the first issue of AREA on the changing nature of the city and efforts by grassroots organizations and artists to challenge injustices in housing, transportation, and the use of public space. A few weeks after the first issue was published, I was contacted by the producers of a Toronto public radio (CBC) news show. They were developing a week-long series on Chicago as a model of urban development that Toronto's mayor was proposing to emulate. The show's producers had found my article in AREA on-line and wanted to interview me for the series. They told me the publication was the only thing they found that challenged the city's development strategy and that raised questions about the displacement and exclusion of low-income and working class people of color. I think this anecdote reflects a larger truth - in a period of media consolidation and info-bite news there is a need for, and an audience for, a small (though expanding), relevant, and honest publication that voices multifaceted critique and resistance. I am looking forward to continued collaboration with the community being built through and around AREA."

-Pauline Lipman - Professor, Policy Studies in Education University of Illinois at Chicago

• "AREA is inspiring to all artists and activists who themselves aspire to engage the social sphere in a critical way."

- Gregory Sholette, Editor of "Collectivism After Modernism" and "The Interventionists: Art in the Social Sphere"

• "As the President of the San Francisco Community Land Trust, I was invited to give a talk in Chicago by AREA on the topic of new directions in housing policy. It was there where I witnessed what AREA is really up to: bringing together people who might never have a chance to meet each other to think about the direction of the city. At the event were local organizers, public housing residents, planners, artists, union workers, just to name a few. I returned to San Francisco inspired by their work, as unusual alliances are one of the only ways forward today."

- James Tracy, SF Bay Area Housing Activist

• "[AREA] functions as a clearing house for artists and activists to talk about their work"

- Martha Bayne, Chicago Reader 09.12.06

• "A great resource to learn about socially engaging and political projects happening in Chicago. AREA is one of the only entities in the city trying to bridge the divides between various communities by giving them a multi-faceted media platform to address their concerns to each other."

- Lumpen Magazine #102