Rumble Arts Center partners with a variety of fellow Chicago nonprofits to bring premium arts programming to the Humboldt Park community. Information on a few of our partners and the programs they host at Rumble Arts appears below.
C4 was founded in 1972 to help people released from psychiatric hospitals into the Uptown and Edgewater communities. Organized as the Edgewater-Uptown Community Mental Health Council, concerned residents received a federal grant to open an outpatient clinic. Their funding application eloquently described the plight of their neighbors discharged from state hospitals: “If qualifying for service is commensurate with length of time denied services, then these former patients have been standing in line for as many as 40 years. …We cannot repay 40 years of institutional confinement, but we can provide a more meaningful experience, and perhaps, rekindle hope and the spark of motivation.”
Since that time, C4′s service area has expanded to rekindle hope for individuals and families on Chicago’s North Side and beyond. A leading provider of clinical services, C4 is recognized as a compassionate and innovative community mental health agency, keenly sensitive to the diverse racial and ethnic populations it serves. From its beginning as a one-room storefront, C4 has grown to include five facilities that provide a range of mental health, substance use and family counseling services. True to its mission, C4 has continually developed services to meet emerging mental health and social problems, including assistance for those struggling with substance use, parenting classes, survivors of sexual assault, young adults, and children under three years old.
C4 at Rumble Arts
Rumble currently offers four art therapy classes in partnership with C4: Mujeres Talentosas (Women’s Art Studio)(Adults), Young Artists Studio (Ages 12 to 15) , Express Your Stress (Adults), and Doing Art Together (Ages 7 to 12). These classes are considered therapy/support groups and are facilitated by a licensed art therapist through C4. Interested participants will be expected to meet informally with the art therapist prior to acceptance into the group.
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Insight Arts is a contemporary arts organization dedicated to increasing access to cultural work that supports progressive social change. Its unique organizational model allows them to engage in community based, regional and national work.
They organize their work around three core values: (1.) Access to information, education and art is a basic human right. (2.) Meaningful social change is dependent on the creation of cooperative social and political structures. (3.) Time for contemplation and analysis is crucial to community and individual empowerment.
These values have facilitated the development of an organization with three main areas of cultural work: (a.) offering free arts education classes to youth and adults, (b.) presenting regular performances, exhibitions and other special events related to our core values and (c.) providing rehearsal space and administrative support for a wide variety of performance collectives and artist projects.
IA and Rumble
Rumble Arts has partnered with Insight Arts to provide space to allow the Rogers Park based organization to expand its mission to the Humboldt Park community. With the help of the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, Insight Arts is able to offer free arts educational programming including Transitions, two Service Learning Programs, a children’s martial arts class, and a African Drum and Dance class.
Transitions is an after-school program for youth in 6, 7 & 8 grade. The ages 11 to 15 are times of transition in the lives of youth. A space where you are safe, encouraged to ask questions and to both independently and collective explore this time in their lives is essential. Youth will have the space to create collaborative art and media projects that will encourage them to reflect and think critically about themselves, their communities and their role as members of the community at large. Youth will explore issues that affect them and their communities, contributing to an ongoing dialogue about how to work for social justice.
Service-Learning Programs: Media-Arts (visual arts) & The Living Newspaper (performance) provide opportunities for High School students to earn service-learning hours. Insight Arts’ approach to service-learning focuses on the arts and community involvement by addressing social justice issues. Naturally, youth will serve the community by building social, civic, and academic skills, as well as recognizing their role as members of the community at large.
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The Westside Writing Project (WWP) is a youth enrichment program that works to improve the overall communication skills of area youth by helping students develop an interest in media and journalism. The mission of WWP is to provide positive youth development to young people ages 13-19 through the use of writing, digital media, and journalism, as tools for individual and community transformation.
In 2006, WWP began working with students in the West Humboldt Park area to publish a simple, four-page newsletter. Since that time, the organization and its programming have expanded to provide hands-on experience in and exposure to the various career fields available in media and journalism. WWP now offers media-related programs, both during school hours and after school, that provide a unique, youth voice on issues facing our young people, as well as our city and our nation as a whole.
Rumble Arts Center hosts the Westside Writing Project’s Intro to Digital Media and Video Podcasting program on Saturday afternoons.
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Mofindu African Drum and Dance Company, based on the West side of Chicago, is a 501(c)3 non-profit traditional arts organization with a mission to educate communities about West African Culture by way of music and dance.