South Side Community Art Center Receives $300,000 Grant from Alphawood Foundation

South Side Community Art Center Receives $300,000 Grant from Alphawood Foundation

CHICAGO – February 8, 2016 – The South Side Community Art Center, the oldest African American art center in the country, announced today that it has received a grant totaling $300,000 from the Alphawood Foundation.  The grant is intended to allow the South Side Community Art Center to devote more resources to fundraising and development, increase staff capacity and operating hours, and begin planning for the restoration and preservation of its historic building.  The grant will be received by SSCAC over the next 3 years.

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Citywide campaign transmits love and shows the sexier side of HIV prevention

Citywide campaign transmits love and shows the sexier side of HIV prevention

Chicago, February 1 — Today, the Chicago PrEP Working Group (CPWG) launched PrEP4Love, a citywide, sex-positive media campaign designed to increase awareness of PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), a daily HIV prevention pill for HIV-negative people. Honest and visceral photography with a simple tagline — “One pill. Once a day. Protect against HIV.” — is displayed in ads throughout Chicago on CTA trains and buses, as well as in an interactive, heated bus shelter at State and Lake that will be going up soon. The campaign also includes a large online advertising component anchored by the prep4love.com website — where you can see the campaign imagery.

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Congrats ChiArts!

Congrats ChiArts!

The Chicago High School for the Arts (ChiArts®), the city's first public arts high school, has received a 1+ rating--the highest possible--from CPS's School Quality Rating Policy system, based on academic growth, student attendance and school culture, among other factors.
 

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Best theater for everyone

Best theater for everyone

I want art that asks big questions, that challenges the hell out of me and makes me laugh my face off. That’s Free Street Theater, creating performances by, for and with communities across Chicago and interrogating the idea of “where theater belongs and who belongs in a theater.” They stage stories that crack the world open, most recently The Young Fugitives’ “Track 13” exploring the history and present-day reality of crime and policing from the points of view of youth of color. “We’re trying to do something different,” said ensemble member Elijah Ruiz in an interview with HowlRound. 

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Celebrating The 606 and Great Planning in Chicagoland

Celebrating The 606 and Great Planning in Chicagoland

There are shelves in the world stuffed with good plans that never see the light of day. To celebrate great plans that do, Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) established the Burnham Award for Excellence in Planning in the 1980s to recognize visionary planning efforts with demonstrated results in the Chicago metropolitan region.

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