Join us for Sip + Shop, a monthly gathering at the L1 Retail Store that celebrates local creative entrepreneurs with a curated shopping experience, good drinks, bites, and even better vibes. Each month, our Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Peter Gaona of Reformed School, invites guest entrepreneurs to share their work and connect with the community—it’s an easy, joyful way to #SupportSouthSideArtists.

As part of The Winter Lounge, our December Sip + Shop brings an extra dash of holiday spirit with ornament and wreath making activities! Featured entrepreneurs Raíces Plant Bodega and Indigo Child Apothecary to share their work and make new connections. Come sip, shop, create, and spread some warmth with us on the Arts Block.

All APL programs are free and open to the public. To help us continue to provide these programs and build a hub for arts & culture on the South Side, we appreciate donations of all sizes. Your support sustains the rich ecosystem of artists that make the Arts Block so vibrant. To make a donation, please visit our giving page.

Join us for a Research Bites conversation with Janelle Goodwill!

Janelle R. Goodwill is a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice.Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Chicago, Janelle earned her MSW, MS in psychology, and PhD in social work and psychology from the University of Michigan. She completed her undergraduate studies at Michigan State University. Goodwill founded and directs of the Positive Urban Research and Prevention of Suicide Experiences (PURPOSE) Lab. 

Research Bites is a speaker series created to build community between the center's faculty affiliates and staff members in order to improve how we support and amplify one another's work.  

Join the Research Bites listserv to attend and/or get updates on future events: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/researchbites

Persons with disabilities who need assistance should contact Tierra Kilpatrick 72-hours in advance at kilpatr3@uchicago.edu.

Read more about them and their work here: https://crownschool.uchicago.edu/directory/janelle-r-goodwill

Join us for a Research Bites conversation with Samantha Coleman!

Samantha Coleman, PhD, serves as the Associate Director of Leadership Development for the Harry L. Davis Center at Chicago Booth. Coleman is a leadership expert whose clinical background deeply informs her work in executive coaching, organizational consulting, leadership development, and higher education. With a PhD in Organizational Leadership and years of experience as a licensed therapist, she brings a keen understanding of human behavior, emotional intelligence, and resilience to her roles. Now the Senior Associate Director of Leadership Development at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, she designs transformative learning experiences that empower leaders at all stages. Her “heart” and “legacy work” is as co-founder of Black to the Beginning, LLC. As a late discovery adoptee (LDA), she blends storytelling and advocacy to ensure the Black Adoption Experience is accurately conveyed for holistic understanding of this nuanced family dynamic. '

When she's not leading groups of Booth alums in leadership development, she's also a recent published author and the co-founder of "The Black Adoption" podcast, which both details her own story of being a Black adoptee of Black parents, but also aims to center other Black voices who have experienced similar circumstances.

Read more about them and their work here: https://intranet.uchicago.edu/en/news-and-events/news/2023/11/staff-spotlight-on-dr-samantha-coleman

Research Bites is a speaker series created to build community between the center's faculty affiliates and staff members in order to improve how we support and amplify one another's work. Join the Research Bites listserv to attend and/or get updates on future events: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/researchbites

Persons with disabilities who need assistance should contact Tierra Kilpatrick 72-hours in advance at kilpatr3@uchicago.edu.

CSRPC is proud to partner with Arts & Public Life (APL) in the university’s first Public Art Project.

The project will feature Chicago artist Yvette Mayorga who has been commissioned to fabricate and install large-scale work(s) of art on the Arts Lawn, APL’s outdoor green space on the University of Chicago’s Arts Block.

More Beautiful, More Terrible: Humans of Life Row is a counter narrative, a sustained act of resistance, an exhibition that reveals the intimate experiences, transformative ideas, and beautiful dreams of people facing the stark realities of life and de facto life sentencing in Illinois. These sentences are commonly described as death by incarceration because they condemn people to confinement until their death. Nevertheless, as contributing artist, Reginald BoClair, states, “Though sentenced to die in prison, we are alive.”

Through personal narratives, artistic expressions, compelling installations, and poetic verse, this exhibition shines a light on the people who inhabit 'life row.'

The U of I exhibition features select works from the original Chicago exhibition along with artistic works and programming from Project 9161— an initiative led by Dr. Rachel McMillian in the College of Education (UIUC) that explores the world of Afrofuturism, visionary narratives, and abolition through the lenses of Black system-impacted scholars.

More Beautiful, More Terrible was originally created by the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project's Think Tank (at Stateville Prison) and the Beyond Prisons Initiative in 2023-2024. It was co-curated and co-organized by Alice Kim and Aaron Hughes.

Join Dean Spade and CSRPC Faculty Affiliate Eman Abdelhadi in conversation around Spade's new book Love in a F*cked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together. This event will take place at Haymarket House, and will also be live-streamed on our YouTube channel.

**This in person event will be live-streamed through Haymarket Books. Register through Ticket Tailor to receive a link to the video on the day of the event. Haymarket House is a fully accessible space and we will have ASL interpretation during the program. 

We ask that all in-person attendees wear masks in the event space during the program for the health and well-being of the speaker and other guests. We will have a reception afterwards with light refreshments and books available for purchase.**

This event is cosponsored by Pilsen Community Books and In These Times. 

In 2012, Karen Lewis led the Chicago Teachers Union to a historic strike, challenging the city’s powerful mayor and paving the way for an unprecedented wave of teacher strikes in the decade that followed. 

But Lewis’s life took her in rich and surprising directions long before she landed in the CTU President’s office. I Didn’t Come Here to Lie, written in collaboration with historian and education expert Elizabeth Todd-Breland, tells Lewis’s story in full for the first time, capturing her lively wit, her charisma, and her commitment to building the schools and communities teachers, students, and families deserve.

From her childhood on Chicago’s South Side to her teen years organizing Black Power walkouts, from her education at Mount Holyoke and Dartmouth to her years in Oklahoma and Barbados and her stints in medical school and film school, readers follow Lewis through a life full of exploration. Wherever she was, she maintained a strong commitment to building fairness. She found her calling in the classroom, teaching science for more than twenty years before becoming a union leader in Chicago.

Up until her untimely death from brain cancer in 2021, Karen Lewis was spirited, unshakeable, and fierce. She remains a model for current organizers and teachers doing the day-to-day work of building a better world. I Didn’t Come Here to Lie is a testament to one of the true revolutionaries of her generation.

Come hear Director of Undergraduate Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity Eve Ewing discussing her new book, Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism.

In the book, Ewing thoroughly examines how U.S. schools are intentionally imbued in an ethos of separation and inequality.

Join us for this screening of the new documentary about Ronnie Carrasquillo's 47-year fight for freedom and the politics of parole. A community conversation with Ronnie Carrasquillo, Dan Protess (filmmaker), Matt Epperson (Smart Decarceration Project), and Alice Kim (Beyond Prisons Initiative, CSRPC) will follow the film. 

Snacks provided. 

Co-sponsored by the Crown Family School of Social Work, Smart Decarceration Project, Beyond Prisons Initiative at the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture, and the Prison+Neighborhood Arts/Education Project

Continuing a rich tradition at UChicago, this year’s MLK Commemoration Celebration features a conversation with Ruby Bridges.

Bridges is a civil rights icon, activist, and author; 2025 marks 65 years since she, at the age of six, became the first Black student to integrate an all-white elementary school alone in Louisiana. Her walk to the front door of the school was immortalized in Norman Rockwell’s painting The Problem We All Live With and her story changed the course of American history.

In this new study group, we aim to cultivate an interdisciplinary, intellectual community invested in research questions and methodologies related to carceral systems, the carceral state, and oppositional formations that seek their abolition. This is a space for graduate students, fellows, instructors, faculty, and others to convene and discuss our works in progress, commiserate about challenges associated with an abolitionist approach in academic research, and explore/exchange emergent modes of abolitionist praxis.

In this new study group, we aim to cultivate an interdisciplinary, intellectual community invested in research questions and methodologies related to carceral systems, the carceral state, and oppositional formations that seek their abolition. This is a space for graduate students, fellows, instructors, faculty, and others to convene and discuss our works in progress, commiserate about challenges associated with an abolitionist approach in academic research, and explore/exchange emergent modes of abolitionist praxis.

These workshops are an open environment for listening, creating, and sharing stories while centering communities of color. This is a place for everyone, no university affiliation required. We are so excited to have you in our story space!