Dear Friends,

2009 marks the eighteenth year that Insight Arts has been incorporated as a non-profit organization in the state of Illinois. Perhaps it is fitting that Insight Arts is moving “out of the house” during the fall of this anniversary year.  As many of you know Insight Arts was formed primarily by young people aged 15-22 in 1991.  Our organization was only able to begin and survive because of the generous support of The United Church or Rogers Park; a progressive Methodist church located on the north side of Chicago.  We have laughed, cried, worked and struggled with this congregation for eighteen years. We will always be grateful for the support this congregation gave to Insight Arts. We know that many former and current members of the congregation continue to embrace our values and support our important work. As, I sit here writing this letter with moving boxes stacked around a now bare office, I think of all the love and support that has made Insight Arts into such a vibrant and culturally diverse organization. However, and here I break the “cardinal rule” of ask letter writing by honestly telling you that, I am very afraid. Insight Arts does not have the financial resources to cover the costs of this sudden forced move.  We must now pay for the transfer of our communication systems and make changes in all our printed and online materials.  Fortunately, we have a nice office space in the neighborhood that we have been using as an archive that we were able to convert into our new administrative office.  This, however, has forced us to temporarily displace our archives into commercial storage.  We are currently negotiating with a number of spaces throughout the city to find an appropriate and accessible space for our archives. We need your financial support to help us recover from this forced move. Please give as generously as possible this year to Insight Arts.

Many of our supporters in Chicago may be a bit baffled by the idea that Insight Arts could have a “space problem”. Haven’t we opened up two new spaces in the past sixteen months?  Don’t we have this wonderful space called the Center for New Possibilities at 1505 West Morse?  Don’t we now have a year round visual art gallery at 1503 West Morse located within the Common Cup Café?  Well, the answer is yes we do!  However, we have need for much more space. These are wonderful spaces; but they are not large enough to accommodate some of the work that we are called upon to do.  We need to raise enough money to find enough physical space to be able to once again offer free/low cost rehearsal space to artistic projects committed to social justice. We receive at least twelve calls a week requesting space.  We also need to provide more space for our resident ensembles, our arts education projects, and our community art spaces.

During the past two years we have begun many exciting new programs and developed a set of wonderful relationships.  For example, we began offering weekly arts workshops for Jornaleros (Day Laborers) in collaboration with the Latino Union at The Albany Park Workers’ Center. This resulted in the creation of a visual arts exhibition and a short video documentary produced by a coalition of Jornaleros.  We have also added two new resident ensembles to the Insight Arts family; Segundas Productions, an multi-media ensemble composed of Latino men dedicated to combating stereotypes about Latino culture, and re[public]in/decency, an inter-arts activist initiative and experiential think tank that explores the intra-national intersections between performance art, social justice activism and arts-informed education.  We have worked with many partner organizations such as Akabaka Productions, Beyond Media Education, The Chicago Freedom School, Links Hall, Mess Hall, Still Point Theater, the TAMMS Poetry Committee and the Young Women’s Empowerment Project.

DANCE DISCOVERY PARTICIPANTS, Summer 2008

Insight Arts has so many exciting accomplishments over the past year that I would like to focus on.  I’ll highlight just three:

1. Insight Arts Adult Arts Programs – Under the guidance of Anita Alcantara our Adult Arts Education Programs have expanded from weekly workshops for Senior Citizens to include weekly workshops for the African Refugee Community and weekly workshops for mentally ill adults.  Adult participants work on both individual and group projects. All programs are offered free of charge to the community. This year programs expanded beyond the weekly visual arts workshops to include special workshops in writing, dance,computer art and theater.

2. Creatively Engaging in Social Movements: Critical and Meaningful Lenses on Im/migration – This forum, held in collaboration with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, brought together the dynamic work of Mexican filmmaker Marcela Morán, the Latino Union of Chicago and Chicago-based activists and artists in a discussion about how artists relate to struggles for immigration reform and global economic justice.

FLIER FOR "CREATIVELY ENGAGING IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS"

3. Fromthe Chocolate to the Chi: DC Poets in Chicago – Insight Arts worked in collaboration with the Association of Writers and Writing Programs to host a special evening of poetic exchange between writers based in Washington, DC and Chicago. Poets from the AWP also conducted free community based writing workshops for adults and you that Insight Arts.

POSTER FOR "FROM CHOCOLATE TO CHI"

Of course, there is never a dull moment at Insight Arts Center for New Possibilities. During the last year we hosted more then 100 special events,workshops and community meetings. These included monthly series such as Queering the Night (a celebration of LGBTI creativity), Women Out Loud (a celebration of the creativity of women), Gospel Recovery Jubilee (a celebration of the creative process and its role in enabling recovery from addiction to drugs and alcohol), International Artists Group (a monthly community meeting space for artists from around the world) and Imagining a Healthy Global Economy (a monthly community dialogue exploring issues related to the current global economic situation).

Finally, we are very excited to be once again engaging in ongoing arts education programs for teens and children. We most recently began, The Living Newspaper Project,a socially engaged performance-based, service-learning project with public high school students. Students are researching contemporary events and creating “performance editorials” about these issues. They will be performing at our upcoming 3rd Annual Insight Arts Winter Festival on December 12, 2009.

InsightArts is a 501(c)3 organization.  Please make your tax-deductible donation as soon as possible by going to our website at www.insightartsliberation.org and clicking on the “Donate Now” button. You can also send your check in the self-addressed envelope provided in this letter to:

Insight Arts
6934N. Glenwood Ave. #2-C
Chicago,IL 60626

Sincerely,
Craig Harshaw, Executive Director
Insight Arts

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