The CivicLab

I seek to re-open the physical space for the CivicLab. I co-founded the CivicLab as (I believe) the first co-working and maker space dedicated to civic engagement and social justice in America in June 2013 in Chicago’s West Loop. Decades of community organizing work, nonprofit organization leadership, grassroots democracy, and fighting corruption in Chicago led me to the conclusion that social justice champions needed and deserved the same advantages and perks lavished upon tech startups and for-profit businesses at incubators and accelerators such as 1871 at the Merchandise Mart. During COVID we have done over 20 online civic engagement experiences and we know there a pent-up need for coming together in physical space for social change work and connected fellowship and wellness activities. When we operated the CivLab for two years (closing in July 2015), we hosted 16 civic organizations and produced over 100 classes and events for over 2,000 people. We used principles of human centered design and planned serendipity combined with my theatrical production experience to make the space an intentional gateway, anchor, and laboratory for civic engagement. It worked! See https://www.civiclab.us/our-work for a sketch of what happened there.

I’ve started 15 nonprofit enterprises in the arts, community development and civic engagement. My experience in the arts, education, civic engagement, and program design allows me to create events off and online that educate, activate and entertain. I built a unique community arts program at Peoples Housing in 1993 that blended the arts, training and microenterprise and engaged over 12,000 people annually. I started Greater Chicago Citizens for the Arts and the Creative America Project to get creative professionals to run for local office. I started the CivicLab in Chicago’s West Loop as a co-working and maker space dedicated to civics that impacted over 10,000 people. My civic work has triggered over 200 public meetings (see www.civiclab.us, www.tifrports.com, www.wearenotbroke.org. My work expands civic imagination and civic possibility for justice. The CivicLab is a combination of workshop, laboratory, schoolhouse, community center, wellness station, hang-out, and justice accelerator. My vision is to create a prototype street-level space that can duplicated in cities and places across the USA. We have already inspired a CivicLab in Italy (https://www.facebook.com/groups/labasecivica) and the Sudan (https://www.facebook.com/SudanCivicLab + www.tinyurl.com/CL-Sudan-AN)! Listen to testimony: https://tinyurl.com/harambee-testimonials

We seek support for the CivicLab. We were America’s first co-working space for civic engagement (http://www.civiclab.us/our-work.). We housed 16 organizations, hosted dozens of meetings, offered over 80 workshops, built tools, held celebrations and incubated several civic groups. The CivicLab was a place connectivity, learning, and fellowship. We seek to rebuild this space in a Chicago neighborhood with low political power and civic metrics. The literature is overflowing with statistics that show low rates of volunteering, civic participation, and running for office. COVID has isolated us and depressed us. We know that billionaires corner the market on media and messaging and stoke flames of fear and division to keep us apart. We know that space making is part of making meaning and community and the CivicLab WAS such a place. Democracy is a high-touch and slow enterprise and requires association, fabrication,  and experimentation, and activation to thrive and evolve. Democracy makers deserve a home as much – if not more than – the for-profit tech innovators who have hundreds of incubators and accelerators to nourish their work. This model can be duplicated in cities across the USA and the world!

The CivicLab is a template organization with programming and pedagogy that can be replicated across the USA. Eric Klinenberg addresses the need for “social infrastructure” in “Palaces for the People – How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization and the Decline of Civic Life” (https://www.ericklinenberg.com). The CivicLab is a new addition to a growing trend around maker spaces, place making, human-centered design, tech/business incubators and co-working facilities. The problem, simply put, is civic erosion and the diminution of democratic values and practices in America and across the planet. This is not a problem that technology can solve. We need to be proximate to one another. We need to be in physical space and be able to co-learn, collaborate, co-fabricate, and act together for justice. After a year of isolation and an Insurrection in Washington we assert that civic engagement for justice and equity needs a home and hub with the greatest urgency. We have the expertise and experience to combine technology and community building with justice organizing and leadership training. We have been building, educating, and disrupting constantly since 2013 and although our doors closed in July of 2015 our work has continued.

We continue our civic research and training efforts despite not having an office or central location. Our Tax Increment Financing work – the TIF Illumination Project (www.tifreports.com) triggered 80 public meetings. My book “Chicago Is Not Broke. Funding the City We Deserve” (www.wearenotbroke.org) triggered 60. We have successfully challenged the dominate civic narrative of scarcity. We have expanded our collective civic imagination. This work has influenced campaigns for city council, for  office mayor, and is found in community organizing efforts around public education, housing, the environment, and police reform. We maintain a mailing list of over 7,000 and continue to do online events. We are working (via Zoom) with activists from Cincinnati, Detroit, St. Louis, and the Illinois towns of Berwyn, Evanston, and Homewood – training dozens of people to Illuminate the civic finances and corporate give-aways of their cities. We know dozens of activists and small organizations who would love a home like the CivicLab and we would turn them all into educators and trainers – as we did in 2013-2015. [April 2019 – seven newly elected city councilmen march outside City Hall behind the banner proclaiming what we have been teaching about since 2016!]