Past Grantees

Awakenings uses the arts to engage and promote healing in survivors of sexual violence. Participants have found that, in the setting of art classes, the sharing of experiences and understandings has enhanced their abilities to process, claim their own voices and move forward from trauma. In the Awakenings/Innovation 80 Healing Arts Program participants will make art together over a 6-month period.

awakeningsart.org 

BandWith provides exceptional music programs to the underserved community of East Garfield Park. Its Innovation 80 project will begin a choral program, focusing on instruction and performance to build on the pilot the organization conducted last summer. BandWith partners with Chicago West Music, an Innovation 80 2022 grantee that draws participants from a wider geographic area.

bandwithchicago.net 

Chicago Arts and Music Project (CAMP) will expand its string instrument program, which has been engaging 3rd to 5th graders in underserved Chicago schools. Their advanced students have had difficulty competing against others their age who were able to begin lessons earlier. The Innovation 80 Project, Fiddlesticks, will be a Suzuki string program for 1st and 2nd graders.

chicagoartsandmusicproject.org 

Chicago Mobile Makers seeks to open the field of architecture to youth of color. Its design workshops encourage disadvantaged youth (ages 8 to 18) to become change-makers in their own communities and build life-long design skills. The Innovation 80 project, Design for Change, will be an after-school program in Humboldt Park for middle- and high-school-aged students.

mobilemakers.org

Chicago Poetry Center operates through Chicago Public Schools to connect people with poetry, poets with communities, and foster creativity and reflection. The Innovation 80 Early Reader Pilot Program will serve two schools in the underserved communities of Bronzeville and Bedford Park to develop a curriculum that will engage pre-readers with poetry.

poetrycenter.org 

FreshLens teaches life skills through photography to teens from underserved communities. FreshLens students’ photographs now adorn Innovation 80’s website pages. FreshLens also runs an advanced course in event photography, which Innovation 80 supports by funding graduates to photograph events held by other Innovation 80 grantees who wish to take advantage of this offer.

freshlenschicago.org 

Lawndale Pop-Up Spot features a community museum housed in a shipping container, intended as a spark to revitalize North Lawndale. Its Innovation 80 project [Your Exhibit Here] will demonstrate the impact local museums can have on their communities by teaching a group of local youth museum curation principles and, with community involvement, creating an exhibition.

lawndalepopupspot.org

Palenque LSNA serves Northwest side neighborhoods using Latinx and immigrant traditions in arts, culture, and design to reconnect its Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Immigrant communities in the face of rapid gentrification and displacement. Innovation 80 is helping to fund three mosaics by Greenstar Movement in and around Logan Square that will foster pride and belonging for these communities.

palenquelsna.org

The Simple Good explores the meaning of “good” through art and discussion. Working with grades 3 to 12 in Chicago Public Schools, it aims to empower youth to bring positivity into their communities. The project with Innovation 80 inaugurates a pilot program to expand the concept of “the simple good” to younger children, developing a curriculum to engage first graders.

thesimplegood.org 

The Sukkah Design Festival pairs three North Lawndale community organizations with three architect / designers, each team to design and build an innovative sukkah (an outdoor room erected for the Jewish harvest festival Sukkot). Participants gain "design literacy," a sense of how spaces can be purposefully created. Each organization will own and repurpose its sukkah to use in its mission.

chicagosukkahfestival.org