Deem Symposium: Workshop Tickets Now Available
Dears readers,
We are delighted by the overwhelming response to our second Symposium announcement!
We are almost sold out and so excited to see many of you there in just over a month.
As we’ve shared, one element of this year’s program that is different from last is the addition of four workshops, co-organized with local partners at sites around the city. Each of these will offer a uniquely Chicago-specific experience and a deeper dive into understanding the practices and spaces of creative thinkers and organizers in the community.
You can find more details here and secure tickets at our Eventbrite. Capacity is limited so please plan ahead if you’d like to join us.
With gratitude,
The Deem team
Friday May 17, 1–3PM
Mobile Makers
Envisioning Liberation in Changing Communities
Mobile Makers Chicago, 1757 N Kimball Ave. Chicago, IL 60647
Join Mobile Makers for an experiential workshop about place-keeping, third space, belonging, and leveraging design to make positive change in the built environment. Participants will learn about the Humboldt Park and Logan Square communities and how developments like the rails-to-trails project “The 606” have spurred gentrification and displacement. Through a neighborhood walk, group discussions, and art making, participants will envision liberatory futures for the changing communities across our nation.
Mobile Makers, founded in 2017, is a nonprofit organization that makes design education accessible to all people. Through youth design and skill-building workshops, community engagement, public installations, and pop-ups hosted out of a retrofitted mail truck, Mobile Makers encourages conversations about positive change in the built environment.
Saturday May 18, 12–4:30pm
Englewood Arts Collective
UnBlocking Injustice— It’s NOT A Game®
MCA Chicago
Can reparative design solutions for harmed communities be...fun? Englewood Arts Collective invites Symposium guests to reimagine futures for the Greater Englewood neighborhood with a hands-on activity that has a hyper-local focus. Taking one residential block, centering homeowner’s needs—with vast possibilities and restrictions—EAC challenges us to co-configure a visual action plan of restorative justice, with Arts funding as the fuel. Using the actual city block they will be beautifying as part of Tonika Johnson’s restorative unBlocked Englewood project as a “gameboard,” you’re invited to explore what it’s like to ideate urban planning as an artist—with dignity for residents as your guide.
This workshop will function as a drop-by style table outside the auditorium for any Symposium attendees to visit and engage with between Saturday’s programs.
Sunday May 19, 10–11:30AM
Brandon Breaux
Sunday Morning Reset: Meditation as a Creative Clearing Practice
Just Don, 170 N Sangamon St, Chicago, IL 60607
This workshop will begin with a brief introduction to artist Brandon Breaux’s creative practice, followed by a meditation and breathing exercise with the intention of opening up the group to the possibility of reframing how we engage with and at conferences. In order to use design as a problem solving tool, we must expand our capacities to see things differently. We live in a world that heavily relies on domain expertise, but sometimes domain expertise, or being committed to a particular view, limits our possibility to develop creative solutions. This is an exercise designed to facilitate guests’ processing of their experiences of the weekend from a different and more open place.* Coffee and pastries will be served.
Brandon Breaux is a fine artist/designer working out of Chicago. His creative experience consists of painting, sculpture, web, video, print, and interactive projects.
*Disclaimer from the artist: Take caution with participating in meditation practices if you have dealt with a significant amount of trauma that has yet to be addressed by a licensed therapist or counselor.
Sunday May 19, 1–3PM
Territory NFP
Opening the Gates: Restorative Design Justice In Practice
557 N Central Ave, Chicago, IL 60644
Opening the Gates is an intergenerational gathering of designers, Austin neighborhood residents, community partners, West Side youth, and Deem Symposium guests with the goal of challenging ourselves to co-design a new community asset without gatekeeping or assumptions of insider knowledge. This workshop will center around the real opportunity to develop city-owned land at 557 N Central Avenue, and throughout the Austin community. Territory is working to create a Restorative Design Justice practice based on the free exchange of ideas among a diverse group with a mutual commitment towards acknowledging harm embedded in urban design, and using design to make our community whole again. The experience will include a presentation by members of Territory around the significance of place in this context, restorative justice strategies, and breaking bread.
This event is part of “Creating Space” a series of on-site placemaking activations co-hosted by Root2Fruit, Austin Coming Together, Austin Experience, InspireTheNXT, Your Passion 1st and Territory. Territory is a place-based urban design studio where young people are building better futures for themselves and their communities through the hands-on practice of design. Territory is located in the Austin neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side. Doing projects in public spaces, young people use their lived experience, gain civic problem-solving skills, discover transformative career pathways in design, and advocate for including young people in the design and planning of Chicago.
[Deem will provide Uber transportation to the workshop from the MCA, but guests are also welcome to get there on their own.]