make art, be art

make art, be art is an artistic and spiritual home for healing arts programming based in Chicago. We experiment with the sacred, the silly, and the subversive to nurture embodied, thriving kinship.

Currently, our programming includes workshops and educational series that combine ritualized text study, visual art making, and movement exercises. In the future, we hope to organize gatherings, storytelling and skillshare events, healing rituals, retreats, group devised installations and performances, and community cohorts for extended learning and practice. We collaborate with a variety of cultural workers and make our offerings available both online and in person.

At make art, be art, we become storytellers, artists, movers, weavers, and builders — even if those are titles we don’t usually claim. We use our bodies to nurture imagination, creation, movement, connection, and (re)humanization — necessary practices that counter the destruction, isolation, and dehumanization of our times.

make art, be art weaves wisdom from the following movement lineages: abolition, disability, healing, and transformative justice, intersectional feminism, theatre of the oppressed, collective acceleration, diasporism, and Shomeret Shalom (jewish nonviolence).