MLK Day 2023: Southside Stories

In collaboration with South Side spaces, Arts + Public Life, Court Theater, Intonation, Lumpen Radio, and more, join us and celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. and honor the legacy of historical Black leaders, spaces, and stories from the Southside of Chicago! 

RSVP Here

South Side Home Movie Project Screenings
11am-3pm

Enjoy a series of home movies from the South Side Movie Project archive paired with music from local DJs in select episodes of Spinning Home Movies. 

About South Side Home Movie Project:
The South Side Home Movie Project (SSHMP) collects, preserves, digitizes, researches and screens home movies made by residents of Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods. Founded in 2005 by professor Jacqueline Stewart, SSHMP seeks to increase understanding of the many histories and cultures comprising Chicago’s South Side, and of amateur filmmaking practices, by asking owners of home movies to share their footage and describe it from their personal perspectives. The archive includes small-gauge films (8mm, Super8mm, 16mm) covering a period from the 1920s to the 1980s.

South Side Stories Podcast with HPAC and Intonation Teens and Lumpen Radio
11am-3pm

Our teens are starting a podcast! We are kicking things off and inviting guests to share stories and favorite memories about the Southside through a series of prompts. In partnership with Lumpen Radio and Intonation Music, we will be collecting anecdotes and audio to sonically honor the legacy of Chicago’s Southside community members through storytelling and oral history. 

Sign up for a slot here:

Drawing the Southside with Mobi Coloring
11am-3pm

Illustrate and bring a splash of color to custom coloring pages from Mobi Coloring featuring 

faces, places, and objects that are emblems of the Southside of Chicago! 

About MobiColor
Established in 2017, MobiColor is a brand that wants to bring creativity, culture, and, relevancy into peoples’ lives through coloring. We wanted to answer one question, when’s the last time we colored? We knew the joys and benefits of this when we were kids, but it seem to have gotten lost when we grew up. 

We know your time is very valuable and we want to be able to fill it with rekindling those moments of feelings, creativity, relaxation that we all had we we were kids and give you back the your time in a unique way!

Florence Price Performance with Members of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago
12 -1pm

Members of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago will present a performance honoring the legacy and story of Florence Price, the first Black female composer to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933. Also a trained pianist, organist and music teacher in Chicago, Price studied at the University of Chicago. Join us in honoring her Southside story and hear the music that defined her legacy.  

Something Outta Nothing: A Conversation with Kahari Blackburn and Sulyiman Stokes
1-2pm

In collaboration with South Side Weekly, a platform for and by South Siders, Kahari Blackburn and Suliyman Stokes are behind a new project aimed at exploring what it means to be a South Sider from a particular artists’ point of view. The result of each collaboration results in a physical object created in with their product team. “Something Outta Nothing,” inspired by a Nikki Giovanni quote, is an artist t-shirt designed by Blackburn, alongside a video filmed by Stokes, discussing Blackburn’s creative history and the influence the South Side and his family has given to his practice. Join Blackburn and Stokes as they discuss the new project, the work, and their love of the South Side.

About Kahari Blackburn and Sulyiman Stokes

Kahari Blackburn:

Kahari Blackburn is Chicago born and based visual artist who loves analog and digital visual mediums. He is currently obsessed with paper collage and simple flat round children’s book style illustration with the hopes of translating this style into large scale interior and exterior paintings as well as wood sculpture and fiber tapestries.

He is a part of the Mural Moves Paint crew which has designed and installed many large scale murals over the city of Chicago. As well as an active part of Natty Bwoy Bikes & Boards a free weekly youth program that leads and teaches skateboarding and basic bicycle mechanics to kids on the South Side. His art practice mainly comes from growing up in a creative household where visual art has always been a part of our shared passion and favorite form of personal expression many thanks to his mother Dorian Sylvain.

Sulyiman Stokes: Sulyiman is an interdisciplinary artist/cultural worker whose sole focus is telling Black folks’s stories.

The Southside’s Urban Griot: Bill Walker with Juarez Hawkins
2-3pm

Join Creative Wing Artist, educator, and curator of our 2017 exhibition, Bill Walker: Urban Griot, for a talk and artmaking activity about the forefather of the community mural movement in Chicago. Hawkins will share her work and book on the former exhibition, and engage guests in a collage activity around Bill Walker’s practice. 

About Juarez Hawkins
Juarez Hawkins is an artist, educator and curator. She received a B.A. from Northwestern University, and her M.A. from Columbia College Chicago. Juarez has exhibited widely, hosting solo exhibitions at Concordia University, the 33 Collective Gallery, and the South Side Community Art Center. As Co-Curator of Gallery Programs at Chicago State University, she has organized exhibitions from the permanent collection, as well as student work, and established artists including Richard Hunt and Marva Pitchford Jolly. Juarez is a member of Sapphire and Crystals, a collective of African American female artists.

South Side Institution and Organization Info-Tables
11-3pm 

Learn more about the Southside’s rich cultural institutions and organizations! Featuring University of Chicago premier theater, The Court, to learn more about their upcoming season of plays and engagement programs, The Smart Museum’s Black Wall Street Project, and the revitalization efforts of the Forum Theatre!