On Saturday, April 7, 2018 more than 50 children and their parents filtered through the Smart Museum of Art to participate in Family Day: Building Blocks and Sunflower Stalks.

After a series of planning calls throughout this winter, the Smart Pod Project, officially launched in March with a full site visit and planning session between Sweet Water Foundation staff and project partner organizations including Chicago Public Schools’ Career and Technical Education (CPS CTE), CPS Chicago Builds, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Building upon the momentum of the past several years of the Sweet Water Foundation’s Re[CREATE]Ed Spaces Program in partnership with the Chicago Architecture Foundation and the Chicago Community Trust’s Hive Chicago Fund for Connected Learning, SWF has engaged in a design-build collaboration with the Freedom by Design Group at IIT.

On Friday, March 16, 2018, two Sweet Water Foundation (SWF) representatives traveled to Boston to present at the 6th Annual Massachusetts Urban Farming Conference organized by the Urban Farming Institute and Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources.

In 2010, Orrin Williams met Sweet Water Foundation's Co-Founder, Emmanuel Pratt, at a meeting in West Englewood. An instant bond was formed as they quickly recognized the synergies in their work and a shared vision of transformation on Chicago’s South side. The two have been working together ever since and Sweet Water Foundation has benefited greatly from Orrin’s leadership, vision, and contributions over the years.  

On Saturday, February 3rd, more than 25 members of the extended Sweet Water Foundation community attended the first of twelve workshops in the year-long Radical [Re]Construction of Values event series. 

Just in time for the 2017 holiday season, Sweet Water Foundation engaged in our first-ever retail experience, hosting pop-up shops in the months of November and December at the Chicago Design Market in the Block 37 mall in downtown Chicago and The Silver Room in Hyde Park.

On Saturday, February 24th, more than 40 educators participated in Sweet Water Foundation’s Fractal Seating Workshop at the Smart Museum of Art. The workshop was featured as part of the University of Chicago’s Amplify Education Series, which seeks to develop a model of collaboration that leads to a systemically, and sustainably networked education community that supports rich and dynamic arts learning experiences.

Over the past several years, Chicago has been highlighted in the media as a ‘tale of two cities’: one of them safe and prosperous, the other dangerous and poor—and both of them growing more so. Amidst these crises, a radical [re]construction of community is underway at the Perry Ave Commons on Chicago’s South Side, fueled by food, art, and the practice of Regenerative Placemaking.

Each summer, Sweet Water Foundation welcomes high school, college and graduate students to help GROW the neighborhood. A special thanks for making this summer season a success!

This summer, the Re[CREATE]Ed Spaces program brought together more than 20 rising junior and senior high school students from across the city to redesign a vacant lot on Sweet Water Foundation’s Perry Avenue Commons. 

If you’ve ever made your way to the Perry Ave Commons, it’s likely that the smell of greens, freshly picked from the Perry Ave Farm and cooked with love, has lured you to the kitchen where Mama Betty is whipping up dishes for Sweet Water Foundation staff and visitors.

Meet Mike Reynolds...a native of Chicago and retired Union Carpenter who has been with Sweet Water Foundation (SWF) for two years. Before joining SWF, Mike worked with Habitat for Humanity in Chicago. Although it took a couple of months of nagging by a colleague to visit the Perry Ave Commons, Mike was instantly inspired by the organization's work and has proudly been with Sweet Water Foundation ever since. 

On Saturday, June 17th, Regina Dillard founder of Inner Sanctum Wellness, led an exciting Living Foods Workshop at the Think-DoHouse on the Perry Ave Commons to explore the power of eating raw foods.

Re[CREATED]Ed Spaces is a collaboration with the Chicago Architecture Foundation that emerged from Mozilla Foundation's Hive Chicago Network and is funded with the generous support of the Chicago Community Trust's Hive Chicago Fund for connected learning.

Volunteers help jumpstart summer at the Perry Ave Commons! This season, Sweet Water Foundation is grateful to have had the support of dozens of volunteers to get the farming season off to a great start. 

Check out the June 2017 issue of Sweet Water News...

Artist, Seoidín O'Sullivan, is the recipient of the inaugural Sweet Water Foundation Residency Exchange with Hyde Park Art Center in partnership with IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) and Create Ireland.

The Assistant Dean of Information Technology at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Stephen Ervin, delivers an Arduino Workshop at the Commons.