Artists in Residence

Welcome to Potluck: Chicago

SPRING 2012 Community Workshop II: February 13-17, 2012

The Potluck is a creative community building project, which lifts its name from the custom of a collective meal to which everyone brings a dish. It's about conversations, share of creative tools, an inclusive exploration of community and “creative placemaking” in cities, like Chicago, which are increasingly plural. 

The Potluck has been initially imagined by London-based international arts company motiroti, as the 2011-2012 Critical Encounters artists in residence at Columbia College Chicago. Alongside Columbia, a range of partners have joined the project early on to contribute ideas and planning—including The Dorchester Projects, the En Las Tablas Performing Arts Center and the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.

Together, we will offer food and culture sharing workshops as an invitation to bring people from Chicago's diverse communities around the table in new ways, to exchange ideas and develop new relationships.

The Potluck is a flexible, participant-centered  process that will respond to the common interests of the network and communities involved, and is likely to include skilling up students, prototyping new works in public spaces in the city, and producing materials and creative campaigns.

The fun began in November with our series of Open Space Technology-style gatherings across the sites in the city that this network enables us to access. We invited participants to offer their thoughts and ideas around "How can we harness the city's diversity for the common good?"

We hope to begin to build a new network of grassroots creative activism that will be of lasting value to the city, and a model that can be adopted elsewhere.The Potluck is running online as well as offline from November 2011 to February 2012, to extend and capture the conversations—through a project blog here, and on Twitter (@plchicago).
Wherever you are in the world, if these themes and ways of working interest you, do connect in and add your offerings!

Check out what workshop participants are saying here!

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Download the press release here.

SPRING 2012 Community Workshop II: February 13-17, 2012

Apply for the spring workshops here!

See their works at

 www.motiroti.com