Life is our
creative material.
A poem. A classroom. A way of moving through the world. An institution. We approach each as something people can shape together.
From the inside,
out.
Our practice begins with attention: breath, body, and presence. It moves through text, voice, and performance into the shared work of making meaning.
At the Hope Institute spring showcase, the students took the stage with words they had chosen or written themselves. Before the audience heard a word, the students had already shaped what could happen in that room.
That same practice can reach into the life of an institution. Read a budget as a script: who gets paid, whose time does it depend on, and what will happen if everyone plays their part? The people doing the work can rewrite the script and put it into practice.
Many forms.
A shared conviction.
The Practice of Living Art
A ritual of living art that brings performance principles into everyday life. Breath, movement, attention, and reflection become ways to notice how we live—and take part in shaping it.
The practice underlies the Foundation’s approach to creative learning.
Performance Literature Workshops
Text becomes voice. Voice becomes performance. Participants work with speeches, poetry, stories, and material they create, learning through interpretation, rehearsal, and sharing.
The record includes youth enrichment, school partnerships, and professional learning. Contact us about current opportunities.
The Uhuru Institute
The Foundation’s un-school vision, developed from the Joy Arts Institutes and renamed in 2021. It asks how education can cultivate whole human beings through rigorous study, creative practice, and play.
Explore the educational vision with us. Current enrollment is not announced here.
Cultural Transformation
Original works and creative inquiry that challenge inherited narratives and open space for other ways of seeing. Performance becomes a place to ask whose stories are heard and what a community might imagine next.
The archive includes works at different stages of development; completed work and projects in development are identified separately.
The practice becomes visible.
Great American Speeches
A free youth workshop joined oratory with meditation and breath work. The final report records 14 sessions and 27 participants, with a final performance at IIT.
A stage the students made their own.
At Hope Institute Learning Academy’s Spring Showcase, the material was chosen or written by the students. The performance put creative ownership into practice.
Writing and creativity at Cheekwood
A five-day workshop sequence moved through poetry, stories, writing for the digital world, and performance. Each day began with sun salutations.
House of Joy
A documentary project exploring Chicago House music and its South Side roots. The footage exists; final editing and digital conversion remain to be completed.
Culture also lives
in what we build.
The Power Reclamation Fund and the Seshet Juris-Consortium extend the Foundation’s concern with freedom into institutional capacity and community self-advocacy. Both are in formation.
The Power Reclamation Fund
Capital and institutional architecture for Black women and Black girls. The founding campaign builds its reserve toward a first cohort.
The Seshet Juris-Consortium
Exploring legal education, community self-advocacy, and approaches to conflict grounded in truth, balance, reciprocity, and collective responsibility.
Where could this
practice meet you?
For workshops, creative partnerships, or a conversation about the work, reach out to the Foundation.