Earlier today, FHS, in partnership with local artist and entrepreneur Alexie Young of Art West Chicago, was selected by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events and the Mayor’s Office of Equity & Justice as a grant recipient of the Together We Heal Creative Place Program (TWHCPP) for an award amount of $250,000!
Our project proposal outlined a plan to engage in community storytelling to help inform the designs of public art installations, vacant lot activations, and public space improvement projects within Homan Square. Over the next two years, this grant will allow FHS to enact and celebrate arts-based solutions, with their known ability to act as a convener for dialogue, problem solving, reflection, and transformation when aligned with community development work.
The Together We Heal initiative was launched in 2020 with the intent to educate and engage about long-standing systemic injustices, identify lessons learned from the past to inform new values and norms that shift power, envision a more inclusive future, and design policies to produce and sustain more equitable outcomes.
This program is part of Mayor Lightfoot’s Chicago Recovery Plan, which utilizes once-in-a-generation federal funding and an equity-based investment strategy to catalyze a sustainable economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Racial healing and transformation are an essential part of our ability to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and civil unrest of the past 2 years,” said Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot. “I want to thank and congratulate our grantees for their visionary plans to create shared spaces for our communities to come together to heal and unite. These spaces give residents the opportunity to reflect on our past, reclaim our present, and reimagine our future.”