The Chicago Public School (CPS) system is the nation’s fourth largest school district, serving over 325,000 students in 634 schools. Further, CPS predominantly serves students of color, with 70% of CPS students reported to come from low-income households. Research underscores that students from disinvested communities benefit significantly from arts programming, which fosters critical thinking, community building, and civic engagement (Source: NEA, Arts Education in America).
Artist-founded in 2017, Artists in Public Schools (formerly CPS Lives) was created by photographer Suzette Bross to integrate artists and cultural producers into CPS through paid artist residencies. Artists in Public Schools offers these artist residencies to CPS at zero-to-low cost, ensuring accessible collaboration between the artists, the students, and the school community. Since its inception, Artists in Public Schools has transformed public school environments into vibrant hubs of creativity, cultivating opportunities for professional, working, and emerging artists to connect with CPS students and faculty to create meaningful art experiences.
CPS Lives seeks to expand our knowledge of the space students inhabit through the work of our artists produced in the public schools. The artists seek to enlarge our understanding of the places students inhabit and their worldview through the use of cultural processes. How public spaces are enriched and developed through the presence of visual production increases the level of the students’ cultural literacy and becomes palpable to the larger civic community, both politically and culturally. This program creates ties to local communities through the exhibitions in their library branches and community centers. By creating this relationship in a public space we come to understand the complexity and importance of the public school system and the increasing importance of these public sites, their value, their diversity.
We want to hear from you! Please feel free to email us…
The Chicago Public School (CPS) system is the nation’s fourth largest school district, serving over 325,000 students in 634 schools. Further, CPS predominantly serves students of color, with 70% of CPS students reported to come from low-income households. Research underscores that students from disinvested communities benefit significantly from arts programming, which fosters critical thinking, community building, and civic engagement (Source: NEA, Arts Education in America).
Artist-founded in 2017, Artists in Public Schools (formerly CPS Lives) was created by photographer Suzette Bross to integrate artists and cultural producers into CPS through paid artist residencies. Artists in Public Schools offers these artist residencies to CPS at zero-to-low cost, ensuring accessible collaboration between the artists, the students, and the school community. Since its inception, Artists in Public Schools has transformed public school environments into vibrant hubs of creativity, cultivating opportunities for professional, working, and emerging artists to connect with CPS students and faculty to create meaningful art experiences.
CPS Lives seeks to expand our knowledge of the space students inhabit through the work of our artists produced in the public schools. The artists seek to enlarge our understanding of the places students inhabit and their worldview through the use of cultural processes. How public spaces are enriched and developed through the presence of visual production increases the level of the students’ cultural literacy and becomes palpable to the larger civic community, both politically and culturally. This program creates ties to local communities through the exhibitions in their library branches and community centers. By creating this relationship in a public space we come to understand the complexity and importance of the public school system and the increasing importance of these public sites, their value, their diversity.
We want to hear from you! Please feel free to email us…
