Community Highlight: North Lawndale
We’re introducing a series of articles highlighting the collaborative work in community gardening and growing happening in Chicago’s neighborhoods. For our inaugural piece, we’re shining a light on some of the amazing work being done in the North Lawndale community! Read on to learn about three projects (of many!): the Garden to Table (G2T) Pipeline, the Chicago Architecture Center’s Open House Chicago in North Lawndale, and the artistic Whirlygigs project.
The Garden to Table (G2T) Pipeline
The Garden to Table Pipeline began at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic when community organizations like North Lawndale Greening Committee, Stone Temple M.B. Church, YMEN and NLCCC GROWSS Committee rallied to provide critical food and other necessities to those in need. Initial funding was provided by the American Heart Association Bernard J. Tyson Fund. This summer, YMEN was awarded a Lawndale Fresh Grant to expand the Garden to Table Pipeline.
According to Kimberly George, Community Asset Manager at YMEN, “The most exciting part of the G2T Pipeline is that it is accomplished on a very local level, with community residents and local resources….The solution to providing affordable, fresh, nutrient rich food exists in the community. CCGA is a critical link in the G2T Pipeline, supplying local gardens with plants and resources. More important is the camaraderie, inclusion, education, stewardship of land and community that exists among CCGA gardeners.”
Four objectives critical in the operation of an effective and efficient food system include:
1) Increase community gardens, public green spaces, while decreasing the number of vacant/neglected lots. Gardens that make up G2T are designated on the map shown above with green squares. Note: The traditional food system model (grocery stores) does not exist in North Lawndale; the G2T Pipeline creates a new model.
2) Educate new and existing community gardeners to grow nutrient rich, locally grown food
3) Provide community residents with opportunities locally to participate in urban agriculture, culinary arts/hospitality, food service/sanitation, entrepreneurship, and community engagement
4) Provide creative opportunities for social cohesion where every resident feels welcome, valued, respected and safe
We look forward to following their work and sharing their milestones achieved, challenges overcome, and lots of pictures! Click the link below to read more about this vital project. Follow the Garden to Table project on Facebook
Contributed by Kimberly George and CCGA communications team
Open House Chicago Highlights North Lawndale’s Community Gardens
Increasingly, the Chicago Architecture Center’s (CAC) Open House Chicago (OHC) has been venturing beyond buildings, into other community spaces that demonstrate the breadth of design, building, and placemaking in neighborhoods. In 2020, due to COVID, CAC hosted a panel featuring many of North Lawndale’s garden stewards, accompanied by a video created by Jay Simon and Simeon Frierson, showcasing 9 gardens. This year, the OHC app included a walking tour of 12 community gardens, with audio narrated by Dr. Shemuel Israel, Annamaria Leon, and Blanche Killingsworth.
Additionally, OHC attendees were able to visit the first Chicago Sukkah Design Festival, in which three teams of architects, designers, and community members created three structures that will fill needs of community organizations. Two of them will continue outside, one next to the YMEN Bike Box and another at the Men Making a Difference day camp space. The third will eventually move indoors to form the content of the Stone Temple Baptist Church museum. It’s wonderful to see so many of North Lawndale’s amazing assets highlighted by such a high-profile Chicago institution!
Contributed by Mamie Gray
Pictured here are the whirlygigs installed at the MLK District Garden (16th Street and Ridgeway Avenue); Love Booms Here Plaza (Douglas Boulevard and Central Park Avenue); and Stone Temple Baptist Church Community Garden (3622 W Douglas Boulevard). The other five Whirligigs are located at: Spaulding Memorial Garden (16th Street and Spaulding Avenue); Homan Grown (16th Street and Avers Avenue); YMEN Bike Box (13th Street and Pulaski Road); CCA Perma Park (13th and Pulaski Road); Farm On Ogden (Ogden Avenue and Central Park Avenue).
Whirlygigs that are More than Weathervanes
Between January and October 2022, the caretakers of eight community gardens located in North Lawndale worked on the design, fabrication and installation of whirligigs – sophisticated weathervanes – which are now signaling each one of their gardens. This project was made possible by a Neighborhood Access Program grant from the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE). To come up with the final design, a team of four designers and project managers met with liaisons from the eight gardens several times for ideation sessions and progress review. Along the way, improvements were made both to technical elements – making sure the whirligigs would take the wind correctly, be at the right height and have the right length – and to the artwork, keeping the essence of what each garden wanted the whirligig to express. Together, the curating team and the garden liaisons chose the elements that are specific to a particular whirligig and those which are standard to all of them. The result is a beautiful set of eight distinctive kinetic sculptures whose moving parts spin in the wind, making its speed and direction visible. The whirligigs are both technically precise and artistically meaningful. The cut-out elements and adinkra symbols were chosen by the gardens’ liaisons to represent the vision of each individual garden yet together, the whirligigs tell the story of a community that champions collaboration and participation in all of its decision making.
Contributed by Mamie Gray