Arts Education in Uptown Chicago

We are Axis Lab, a community start-up art, food, and design studio that operates within Argyle Street of Uptown. We engage in arts educational programming, urban design, culinary curating, and other multidisciplinary approaches to advocate for equitable development.

Argyle, Uptown a historically diverse, vibrant neighborhood has been a port-of-entry for newly arriving immigrants throughout the past decades. Though within the past several years, the neighborhood has been in a constant state of transition, where inclusive development remains a central concern.

Chicago is a critical site, as funding for public education is being drastically cut and withheld by the State of Illinois. According to the Chicago Sun Times, Chicago Public Schools are facing drastic cutbacks to summer school programs.

Our mission is to introduce some much needed FREE summer programming in Chicago, starting with Argyle Street that would kick off alongside the completion of the Shared Street project and the opening of Argyle’s annual Night Market. The summer arts education series entitled PrAxis, features two main workshop series, which aims to:

+ Build a collaborative planning process to address issues of race, gender, and class inequities facing the community.

+ Cultivate a safe space that build trusts and encourages community accountability and sustainability

+ Empower youth and local residents to envision their future through the arts.

The first series, entitled, “Shared Streets: Uptown Community Mapping” is a community mapping project that engages the youth, ages 14-19 to map and address community needs while envisioning what the future of not only Uptown, but the city as a whole can become from the ground up.

The second series, entitled, “Catalyze: Building a Healthy Community” is a workshop series that incorporates arts education to engage with community members of all ages and experience levels. Workshops consist of a wide range activities such as yoga, hip hop dance,and theater.

Our core team has personal connections to Argyle and are rooted in our identities as immigrants and children of refugees, where we collectively have experience working with the Argyle community for over 20 years. Working with the Asian American community and advocating with other communities of color is at the heart of our work.

We are seeking to raise $2000. The money raised will go directly towards our summer PrAxis workshops series to help fund our workshops.

Any contribution you can make will be greatly appreciated and you can check our website: www.axislab.org for updates on the workshops.


With support from the 48th Ward Alderman Harry Osterman's Office & Uptown United.