Re-Mapping the Publics…
Open through Fall 2024
Sweet Water Foundation welcomes you to the third exhibit in the Thought Barn: Re-Mapping the Publics… , an assemblage of art, artifacts, and reflections on city planning and development. Re-Mapping the Publics… offers a blueprint for re-mapping our city’s resources to create true common wealth - the spaces, structures, networks, resources, and opportunities essential to mending the urban fabric, healing communities, and equipping our neighborhoods to thrive, rather than merely survive.
This exhibit builds upon Sweet Water Foundation’s previous exhibit, We The Publics...from Bounded Rationality to Unbounded Possibilities, which provoked a reframing and reclaiming of the ‘Publics’ and offered The Commonwealth as a living demonstration of the paradigm shift required to build public trust.
Re-Mapping the Publics… continues the conversation through an examination of how cities utilize public money, labor, land, and materials to address challenges and plan for the future. The second half of Re-Mapping the Publics… invites us to imagine what if? What if neighborhood development took place on a human scale, fueled by relationships and a collective commitment to do the necessary work?
Read more about the exhibit below.
EXHIBIT HOURS | by Appointment Only
ALL VISITORS MUST PRE-REGISTER TO ATTEND | Email info@sweetwaterfoundation.com to request an appointment.
ABOUT THE EXHIBIT
For this show, Sweet Water Foundation's Thought Barn has been split into two sections:
The first half of the exhibit outlines the history of the exhibit, shares the We the Publics…manifesto, examines the utopic origins of urban planning and development in Chicago, and the organization of the City of Chicago. Using examples from across the City and those specific to Chicago’s South Side, it illustrates the process and promises of two decades of Chicago’s city planning and development. This section highlights the limitations of the linear planning and development process, offering SWF’s practice of Regenerative Neighborhood Development (RND) as a contrapositive.
The second half of the exhibit demonstrates the possibilities of RND, showing how the six blocks of The Commonwealth have been re-generated over time through the daily work of the humans of SWF. It asks What if… every neighborhood had a RND node like The Commonwealth supported by City agencies to do the work of the Publics at a human scale? This part of the exhibit re-imagines the city’s functions and resources across seven different city departments, showing how public work could be re-mapped to support RND neighborhood nodes that directly contribute to and foster public health, education, arts + culture, streets, parks + recreation, and housing. Each of these examples pulls from actual examples of RND, using The Commonwealth as a demonstration of a neighborhood node.
The exhibit also features an awe-inspiring model of 3 stages of the neighborhood’s history - 1926, 1958, and 2012 - that illustrates the rapid decline and vacancy of the neighborhood. This model, which is made of reclaimed wood scraps, shows the ecology of absence -- and gives visitors an opportunity to examine the complicated history and continued impacts of redlining and disinvestment on Chicago’s South Side.
CONTRIBUTORS
Sweet Water Foundation Core Team and Fellows- and Humans-in-Residence.
SWF Core Team: Emmanuel Pratt, Jia Lok Pratt, Courtney Hug, David Snowdy, Rudy Taylor, Jr. , Lucero Flores, Alysse Hines, Knowledge Theodore, Phoenix Lewis.
SWF Translator-in-Residence: Kate Martin Mytty
SWF Fellows-in-Residence: Donasia Gray, Andrew Epps, Kaya Karibi-Whyte, Endiya Griffin.
