Institute of Cultural Affairs | November 9th, 2018
ICA E-Newsletter – November 2018
In this issue:
  • Sustainability Leaders Roll Around Chicago by Bike and Rail
  • Over 750 Visitors Explore ICA GreenRise During Open House
  • First, Do No Harm When Addressing Housing Instability
  • Sojourners Work to Define Archives Collections
  • Colleague Spotlight: OliveAnn Slotta
  • Upcoming Events
Latest from ICA
Sustainability Leaders Roll Around Chicago by Bike and Rail
Deloris Lucas of We Keep You Rollin'
Riders at The Forum in Bronzeville
A tour guide at Working Bikes
Chicago is a patchwork city of 50 wards, 77 community areas, and 231 neighborhoods. A thread of eight CTA lines, 11 Metra lines, and 140 bus routes attempt to weave them all together, but gaps remain. One of the means of filling those gaps is, unsurprisingly, among the simplest and most energy efficient: bicycling. In Chicago, the proliferation of Divvy, a bicycle sharing sharing system operated by Motivate for the Chicago Department of Transportation, has added nearly 6,000 bicycles across almost 600 docking stations to the equation. New ‘dockless’ bike pilots, such as JUMP and Lime, are emerging to cover areas that Divvy doesn’t reach.

Members of Chicago Sustainability Leaders Network (CSLN) set out on October 13th, 2018, to explore how biking can connect communities during Rollin’ Around Town ...
Over 750 Visitors Explore ICA GreenRise During Open House
Photo by Eric Allix Rogers for Open House Chicago
Among the crowd of curious visitors who made their way to and through ICA GreenRise over the weekend of October 13–14th, 2018, one in particular stood out. ICA staff member Caitlin Sarro was explaining the history of the Guide Suite, a holdover from the building’s time as a Kemper Insurance office, when a man wheeled in with a knowing look on his face. “It’s just like Joe had it set up,” he remarked, reminiscing of his days as an employee of Kemper Insurance in a time before ICA moved into the building, when there was no GreenRise at all.

It’s hidden histories like this that drive people to Open House Chicago, an annual event by Chicago Architecture Center...
First, Do No Harm When Addressing Housing Instability
Guest speakers
Images from the dialogue
Posted commitments
“The cause of harm is a failure of our culture to see housing as a human right” –Ryan Spangler, Heartland Alliance Health

On October 24th, 2018, the Chicago Tribune published an article pointing out a discrepancy between how city officials count the number of homeless people in Chicago and how advocates estimate the figure. That same day, participants gathered at ICA GreenRise to get a lay of the land on homelessness in the Uptown community as part of a series meant to catalyze discussion on localized challenges. For Conversations on Social Justice: Landscape of Homelessness in Uptown, ICA tapped two organizations that currently operate out of GreenRise and serve homeless clients from Uptown and beyond...
Sojourners Work to Define Archives Collections
ICA colleagues pose for a group photo
Twice each year, ICA colleagues gather at ICA GreenRise for a week of work known as a ‘Sojourn’, dedicated to the Global Archives project. The name, Sojourn, means a “temporary stay”, but the consequence of one of these weeks of work is almost the opposite. Sojourns arrest time, delving into the past with an eye toward the future, seeking to preserve the ideas, actions, and projects carried out by so many colleagues throughout ICA’s history. Preservation here means more than simply halting the decay of paper and the fading of memory; it means making these ideas and methods accessible and relevant now. It means putting hundreds of thousands of pages and photos and countless hours of tape and video onto a website that reaches people who have never before heard of the Institute of Cultural Affairs.

The week of October 21st through 27th focused on defining and building out the contents of the nine primary collections that users will navigate when the ICA Global Archives website launches later this year.
Colleague Spotlight: OliveAnn Slotta
"In 2015, a group of ICA colleagues in the Denver area began working to organize Accelerate Neighborhood Climate Action, inspired by the accelerate77 program ICA was doing in Chicago. We developed a format for an all-day Forum that invites neighborhood residents to create action plans to address climate change by reducing their carbon footprint. There are now 22 action plans across 8 of Denver’s 79 neighborhoods."
Upcoming Events
Nourish (comm)Unity: Community Tech
Windsor Park Lutheran Church
November 10th
Saturday 10:00 am – 2:00 pm
How can communities leverage data to solve problems? Join Chicago Sustainability Leaders Network and partners for Nourish (comm)Unity: Community Tech. Chi Hack Night participants will present on the state of civic technology in Chicago and how it can be used to improve life for residents. Afterwards, a facilitated "World Cafe" activity will ask questions of the community and harvest the results.

Community Tech is part of the Nourish (comm)Unity series curated by Chicago Sustainability Leaders Network.
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