make art, be art

We envision a future saturated with loving relationships.
We believe in the arts to take us there.

make art, be art is an educational and spiritual home for healing arts programming based in Chicago. Engaging with study, ritual, and artistry, we tend to the practices needed to be in loving relationships.

Our healing arts programming includes workshops and educational series that combine ritualized text study, conversation, and creative process through visual art making, storytelling, and/or movement practices. 

We collaborate with a variety of organizations, community groups, and cultural workers to make our offerings available both online and in person. All of our programming is either free, donation based, or offers a sliding-scale. 

At make art, be art, we experiment with the sacred, the silly, and the subversive. 

We embody the roles of the artist, storyteller, mover, visionary, weaver, and builder — even and especially if those are roles we don’t usually claim. That’s because we believe these roles have something to teach us about the practices we need to cultivate loving relationships.
 

We dream of a warm, vibrant, and accessible third space where cultural workers weave their artistic and spiritual practices with one another. We gather to ground in ancestral teachings, activating our shared power through our creativity. Together, we are devoted to heal what separates us, practice repair and care, imagine liberatory futures, and co-create a thriving Chicago for all.

In the future, we hope to organize gatherings and events, storytelling and skillshare retreats, healing rituals, group devised installations and performances, and community cohorts for extended learning and practice. 

We believe in naming and honoring our teachers.

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