What we build, and what we choose to save, reveals what we believe the future is owed. In this episode, we travel to Chicago's South Side—to The Land School, a building Theaster Gates rescued from demolition—for a conversation about Black cultural production, community stewardship, arts and culture nonprofits, and the long arc of institution-building. We speak with Theaster Gates, artist, founder and executive director at Rebuild Foundation; Michelle Boone, president and CEO at the Poetry Foundation; Marshall Hatch Jr., co-founder and executive director at MAAFA Redemption Project; and Faheem Majeed, artist, educator, and co-founder and co-director at Floating Museum. Together, they explore what it means to build and sustain worlds of possibility rooted in art, faith, place, and the slow, deliberate work of community.

The conversation about arts and culture nonprofits moves through questions of time and transformation, the distinction between culture and artist, how faith shapes long-term vision, and what it actually requires to invest in futures we may not live to see. Rooted in the specific geography of Chicago's South and West sides, it is also a conversation about what any city owes the people who made it.

Resources

Arts and Culture Nonprofits

Rebuild Foundation: Theaster Gates's cultural organization dedicated to neighborhood revitalization on Chicago's South Side through art, preservation, and community development.

The Poetry Foundation: An independent literary organization and arts and culture nonprofit committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture, home to Poetry magazine.

MAAFA Redemption Project: Marshall Hatch Jr.'s organization working at the intersection of faith, healing, and community restoration in West Garfield Park, Chicago.

Floating Museum: Faheem Majeed's co-founded arts and culture nonprofit operating on the principle that the city is the museum, neighborhoods are galleries, and citizens are cultural producers.

South Side Community Art Center: One of the oldest African American art institutions and culture nonprofits in the United States, foundational to Faheem Majeed's practice.

Additional Resources

Toni Morrison: Referenced in the opening invocation: "This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal."

Read the full article about arts and culture nonprofits in Chicago at The Bridgespan Group.