First Monday Jazz

Launched in 2013, the First Monday Jazz series is APL’s longest running program, and has featured both established and emerging Chicago artists on the first Monday of every month on the Arts Block, including Dee Alexander, Junius Paul, Yaw Agyeman, Sam Trump, avery r. young & de deacon board, Bomba con Buya, Ugochi, and many many more. To celebrate the five year milestone of First Monday Jazz in 2019, Arts + Public Life partnered with the Jazz Institute of Chicago to dedicate an entire year of its First Monday Jazz programming to women artists and women-led musical projects and programs.

Spinning Home Movies

Spinning Home Movies is produced and presented by Arts + Public Life (APL) and South Side Home Movie Project (SSHMP), with support from the University of Chicago Women's Board.

Each episode features a 20-30 minute set of 8mm, Super 8mm or 16mm vintage home movie footage shot by South Side residents from the 1920s to 1980s, curated and soundtracked by Chicago DJs, musicians, filmmakers and performing artists. The screening of the curated collections are followed by a live discussion, “The Rewind,” where the Spinning Home Movies production team, guest artists and film donors dig deeper into the episode’s themes, discuss the curatorial and creative process, share the back story behind the film clips, and reflect on the unique experience of engaging South Side artists with this local film archive.

Yoga on the Block

Arts + Public Life partners with South Side creative entrepreneurs and certified yoga instructors to offer free weekly and monthly community yoga classes throughout the year for all ages and experience levels, both virtually and at our spaces on the Arts Block.

Weekly Yoga with Latipha Rivers and kids jamm Family yoga will resume in 2022.

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Committed Knitters

Committed Knitters is a volunteer-based group that goes to Cook County Jail every Sunday for a few hours to teach knitting and crocheting to the women serving their time. As a long-standing Arts + Public Life keyholder partner, they meet weekly on Wednesdays at the Arts Incubator Flex Space to build a sense of community through knitting, crocheting, the sharing of stories and pleasant bites, along with birthday celebrations complete with singing and impromptu dancing.

Grown Folks Stories

Grown Folks Stories, created by Cara Brigandi and Eric Williams, founder and owner of The Silver Room, is two hours of five minute stories hosted by Whitney Capps that range from the hilarious to the absolutely somber.

This ever-popular gathering of nonprofessional, unrehearsed storytellers, who give us the real stories we live everyday, will reconvene monthly in 2022 at the Green Line Performing Arts Center for storytelling that you've never experienced before.

Chop It Up

CHOP IT UP is an Arts + Public Life dinner series, where viewers sit down with an intimate group of notable practitioners – ranging from artists and designers to journalists and entrepreneurs – for informal conversation. Over home cooked meals, or dinner ordered from local favorites, practitioners serve up aspects of their practice or craft while exploring the intersections of their work. Gather around our (virtual for now) table for 90 shared minutes of candid “industry” conversation.

In 2021, APL teamed up with artist Rick Lowe and journalist Natalie Moore for Chop It Up: Black Wall Street Journey Edition. Presented in conjunction with Black Wall Street Journey—a hub for neighborhood regeneration initiated by Lowe in Washington Park—and anchored by the centennial anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and observation of the historic Black Wall Street, guests from disparate sectors of the Black economic landscape weighed in on cultural dimensions of Black ownership, business, self-reliance, determination and mutual aid.

CHOP IT UP: Black Wall Street Journey Edition

• Watch Part 1

• Watch Part 2

• Watch Part 3