Open Call
Grappling with and engaging the cultural implications of homelessness
Arts Letters & Numbers
Eligibility
Live Streamed discussion with Rhoda Rosen & Lawrence Weschler
Number of Participants
500
Deadline
No deadline
Duration
August 30, 2021 - August 31, 2021
Meals
No meals
Public Programs
Courses, Discussion, Online Exhibition, Publication, Workshops
Disciplines
Activists, Documentary, Entrepreneur , Journalism, Research, Thinkers
Languages
English
Program Description
In the brutal winter of 2013, curator Rhoda Rosen and artist Billy McGuiness, living at opposite ends of the 26-mile-long north-south Red Line of Chicago’s metro service, launched a practice of preparing home cooked meals every Saturday night and going out to the blustery platforms at one end of the line or the other to share them (with proper tablecloths, plates and silverware) with some of the people experiencing homelessness who had taken to living out their nights on the metro trains and were being forced to disembark between rides. From that initial action grew a widening community and the insight that on top of being houseless, people experiencing homelessness were living out a sort of exile from the city’s vital cultural life. The community themselves set out to remedy that situation, systematically challenging Chicago’s cultural institutions to make room and provision for them.
