2019 National Forum on Family Philanthropy

For more than a generation, tireless education, cultural, and philanthropic leaders have been working to reinstate arts education in Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the country’s third-largest school district. Following a concerted collective impact effort from hundreds of participants, in 2011 Ingenuity was created as Chicago’s first city-wide organization committed to coordinating information and resources toward the common goal of improving and expanding arts education in CPS. Today, 150,000 more CPS students have consistent access to arts education than eight years ago.

Join us on a site visit to hear how Ingenuity has become a national model of collective impact, working in close partnership with supporters that include the Crown Family Philanthropies; and tour two of Chicago’s leading youth arts organizations both in and out-of-school: Marwen and Young Chicago Authors. Since 1987, Marwen has been educating and inspiring Chicago’s youth from under-resourced communities and schools through free visual arts programs. Their work has expanded to offering college and career programming, and their current executive director is an alumna both of Marwen and of a family foundation. Young Chicago Authors (YCA) cultivates the voices of young people through writing, publication, and performance education and will guide site visit participants through a brief writing workshop (no experience necessary). YCA is the home of the largest youth spoken word slam poetry festival in the world, Louder Than A Bomb, which has become a national model to educate and organize.

Designed by the 2019 National Forum Host Committee, this experience will offer Forum participants the chance to learn more about effective and ongoing philanthropic collaborations in Greater Chicago. These will be small group experiences - each limited to 25-30 participants.