In the community

Evanston 5th Ward

Family Focus is an organization with locations throughout the Chicagoland area that provides a wide variety of services to children and families, all in effort to strengthen the communities they serve. In our 5th Ward Studio, OSP regularly facilitates art groups for children enrolled in after school programming through Family Focus Evanston. We provide an open and judgment free environment for our participants to have fun and connect with one another. Our facilitators encourage all participants to direct their own art making experiences, helping to build each child’s autonomy and sense of self

Evanston 5th Ward

Kingsway Preparatory School is a private elementary school operating in the same building as our 5th Ward Studio. Once a week, OSP provides arts services for the school’s preK students, giving them an opportunity to freely connect with their creative side in a safe and familiar environment. Students are encouraged to follow their intuition while art making, and learn important social and emotional skills in the process

In the community

One of Open Studio Project’s longest-running community partnerships, our collaboration with Youth Opportunity United (Y.O.U.) brings the Open Studio process to youth in Evanston schools in the after-school and summertime hours. Students from Nichols and Chute Middle Schools worked in our studio, where the creative process runs wild, and our facilitators brought OSP’s art and wellbeing program out to King Arts.

Open Studio Project partners with Connections for the Homeless to provide a weekly art group for residents of the Margarita Inn shelter. Making art together in the Margarita’s parlor has offered participants a safe space to socialize, be creative, and heal—crucial steps on their path to permanent housing.

Open Studio Project has partnered with North Side Housing & Supportive Services to provide therapeutic art groups at Chicago’s newest transitional housing shelter for men. Located in Rogers Park, this innovative shelter was built with trauma-informed design and centers the personal dignity of residents. We provide an open-studio environment that encourages participants to explore a variety of materials and art forms as an avenue towards independence, resilience, and creative self expression.

With the continued support of a National Endowment for the Arts: Creative Forces grant, we have partnered with the Evanston Vet Center to provide Art & Wellness workshops to veterans and their families. Monthly art groups welcome veterans, their friends, and family to the Vet Center to experience the benefits of the Open Studio Process for creativity and wellbeing. Vision Board workshops bring the creative process to women veterans for goal-setting, dreaming, and readjusting to civilian life.

In our ongoing partnership with the 19th Judicial Circuit court, we facilitated Art Therapy groups to court-involved youth at the Hulse Juvenile Detention Center’s secure and residential facilities.