We increased our footprint to 12 acres across 6 city blocks,

The Commonwealth continued to grow in 2023, from small design + build projects to large installations to the daily care of our structures and spaces. This year, we acquired an additional 1.5 acres of land. This vast swath of land, now known as The Prairie, sat vacant and unkept since SWF started stewarding the land at The Commonwealth in 2014, serving as a site for illegal fly dumping.

In early 2023, SWF removed years of built-up trash, carefully began documenting existing plant life, and secured the land with prairie-style fencing. We researched tallgrass prairies shaped and stewarded by Indigenous peoples in the Illinois area as part of the Spring 2023 RND Research internship program to guide our work as we started to steward the site as an urban prairie by introducing and cultivating native plants over time. The Prairie is now a space for healing, learning, and beauty at The Commonwealth.

During the summer, we focused on [re]creating the Healing Garden, a ~15,000 square foot site on the Community Farm that offers a variety of fruit trees and bushes, perennial flowers, and native plants. The Healing Garden was the site of SWF’s End of Summer Celebration, where children and families engaged in civic arts, activated the sunflower patch maze, and shared a farm-to-table meal. The re-creation of the Healing Garden offers a clear demonstration of SWF’s underlying belief that every neighborhood has the seeds for its own regeneration and the possibilities of transformation if we re-map our city's resources.

SWF also completed renovations of the first floor of Civic Arts Church, activating 1800 square feet of programming space at The Commonwealth, and continued to cultivate, landscape, and beautify land across six city blocks.   

1.5+

ACRES OF VACANT LAND
[RE]CREATED INTO AN URBAN PRAIRIE

6

CITY BLOCKS
CULTIVATED, LANDSCAPED, & BEAUTIFIED

1,800 sq ft

OF INDOOR PROGRAMMING ACTIVATED
AT CIVIC ARTS CHURCH

15,000

SQUARE FEET OF LAND
[RE]CREATED INTO A HEALING GARDEN

practiced Regenerative Neighborhood Development across the country and the globe, and…

Workshops at the Green Heart Project
Charleston, South Carolina

At the beginning of 2023, SWF team members traveled to Charleston, SC for a convergence with The Green Heart Project (GHP). In addition to appreciating the connections of the work across different cultural and geographic contexts, a primary focus of the trip was to demonstrate how SWF integrates carpentry as an integral part of its education and community programming through a series of hands-on workshops. 

After meeting with the Green Heart leadership and core team to learn more about the historical context and connections of Green Heart’s work within Charleston, the SWF team led a series of carpentry workshops. The first Build-It Workshop focused on teaching the Green Heart team how to build an Interlocking Pony and reinforcing how more carpentry projects could be integrated into their daily programming.

On day two of the convergence, SWF and GHP collaborated to deliver an Interlocking Pony workshop to a group of high school students from Burke High School. Through the convergence, both Green Heart Project and Burke High School, which primarily focus on farming/gardening programming, successfully extended the scope of their individual and collaborative initiatives to include carpentry.

Building at Coalfield Development
Huntington, West Virginia

In the fall, the team visited West Virginia for a two-day journey that highlighted the similarities between the South Side of Chicago and Huntington, WV, that anchor us in deep restoration and remediation work of both ecology and humanity. 

After visiting several Coalfield Development sites, the SWF team led carpentry and civic arts workshops. The first focused on transforming wastes into resources with a carpentry Build-It Workshop, during which the teams built SWF’s Pallet Chair. Pallets otherwise set aside for the trash or landfill were deconstructed and transformed into chairs. This was the first introduction to carpentry and building for members of Coalfield’s agriculture team and an inspiration for the possibility of transforming wastes into resources for Coalfield’s construction team members. 

SWF also delivered a Civic Arts Workshop featuring activities - nature weaving, nature printing, and weaving on a hand-made stick loom - using natural materials (leaves, sticks, plants, etc.) sourced outdoors at Coalfield sites. For many Coalfield team members, this was their first opportunity to engage in art-making at work and experience using accessible, nature-based art forms. Many workshop participants shared how the two workshops meaningfully integrated and transformed art and workforce development training.

…nourished the community year-round.

The cultivation of life and growing and sharing of food transpired all year long. SWF grew inside three Hoop Houses year-round, providing fresh greens and herbs to team and community members even in the coldest months of the year. In summer, we cultivated a community farm that spans an entire city block and 20 garden beds, growing local favorites like collards, kale, and chard and introducing new crops like bitter melon and black-eyed peas. 

For 22 weeks, from May through September, we welcomed the community to participate in the weekly Wellness Wednesdays ritual of cultivating the Community Farm, followed by a farm-to-table meal prepared by the SWF team, fellows, and community members featuring produce directly from the Community Farm and Garden, with recipes reflecting the many cultures present.

From May through mid-November, produce from the Community Farm, Gardens, and Healing Garden was available during our Weekly Farmer’s Market. Each week, 400+ visitors and market-goers experienced eating/shopping with the seasons - accessing produce that is in abundance as the seasons change with a variety that is, oftentimes, unavailable in stores.      

22

WEEKS
OF FARM-TO-TABLE, COMMUNITY MEALS
ON WELLNESS WEDNESDAYS

365

DAYS PER YEAR
SWF IS GROWING FOOD
AT THE COMMMONWEALTH

400+

FAMILIES FED
EACH WEEK DURING HARVEST SEASON

In 2023, we Re-Mapped the Publics…

Re-Mapping Education via The Communiversity

What if? What if every school, college, and university was connected to a neighborhood node where students and teachers directly engaged in the regeneration of their neighborhoods, learning while doing — engaging in carpentry, civic arts, agriculture, and critical dialogues alongside people across generations and life experiences?

Throughout 2023, The Communiversity provided experiential and grounded learning opportunities to students, faculty, and community members of all ages at The Commonwealth and beyond. We welcomed new cohorts of undergraduate and graduate students and community practitioners as Urban Ecology Global Fellows and RND Research interns, welcomed 100+ students from nearby elementary schools for hands-on field trips through Seeding the Future programming, and hosted hands-on immersion experiences with university students and faculty, and practitioners and professionals from across the world. 

Through this work, SWF is rooting The Communiversity as a transformative institution on Chicago’s South side.

9

IMMERSIONS AT THE COMMONWEALTH
that engaged students and faculty from 6 universities, 2 international delegations from Central and South America, and 60+ members of the Creative States Coalition representing more than 40 arts advocacy organizations from across the country.

18

UNDERGRADUATE, GRADUATE, & COMMUNITY PRACTITIONERS
from 7 universities and 2 community-based organizations engaged in Communiversity fellowships and internship programming

150+

K-12 STUDENTS, TEACHERS, AND FAMILY MEMBERS
participating in year-round Seeding The Future programming in schools and at The Commonwealth

Re-Mapping Arts & Culture

What if? What if our cities supported hyperlocal art-making, gallery, and performance spaces that cultivate and showcase artists at every level? What if public arts focused on using affordable, accessible, and aesthetic materials and mediums connected to the urban ecology and transforming “wastes” into resources?

Sweet Water Foundation’s artistic and cultural practices embody an expansive definition of art that flows with the rhythms of our natural environment and responds to the ever-changing needs of our community.  In 2023, arts and culture at The Commonwealth included nature printing, mulberry dying, weaving, macrame, culinary creations, hand-crafted carpentry projects, and the fine art of community building. These rich, accessible, and diverse art forms provide avenues for all members of our community - not just those who identify themselves as “artists” - to practice the essential art of being human - what we call Civic Arts - through engaging with their natural surroundings, diverse mediums of practice (visual arts, carpentry, culinary, etc.), and in fellowship and labor with others.

Throughout 2023, we welcomed hundreds of individuals to engage in civic arts at The Commonwealth during Farmer’s Markets, celebrations, weekly arts + culture workshops, and events such as:

• SWF’s Sixth Annual Juneteenth Celebration at Civic Arts Church

• Weekly, free, civic arts activities from May through September, engaging visitors, fellows, and community members in art-making.

• Installation of the Sankofa Living Memories Collage Series at CAC, featuring elementary students from SWF’s Seeding the Future Program;

• Hosting local artists and practitioners as Humans-in-Residence;

• Design, build, and installation of “Living Room,” a 900 sq foot installation on the stage in CAC, built from the waste stream of the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial; and

• Launch of the Fall Civic Arts Workshop Series featuring four local artists who shared their practices, which included coffee painting, crochet, paper cutting, and collage.

Re-Mapping Parks & Recreation

What if? What if city parks moved beyond traditional recreation and engaged residents in the hands-on cultivation of productive landscapes - spaces that produce fruit, herbs, and vegetables?  

SWF challenges the notion and purpose of traditional parks today and has cultivated The Commonwealth as an exemplar of what 21st-century urban parks should strive to be.  Far too many urban areas are rife with vast open spaces due to generations of municipal neglect and predatory lending practices that have hollowed out entire neighborhoods, resulting in an ecology of absence.  What if cities provided access to equipment, supplies, and tools so that residents could maintain safe, inviting, and beautiful spaces outside the boundaries of traditional parks? 

From RND Park to Civic Arts Yard to the Community Farm to the Prairie, the Commonwealth’s vast open, green, productive, and regenerative spaces show us what is possible if the resources and political will that create traditional parks were instead redirected to construct bio-dynamic campuses that directly and holistically respond to the conditions of our communities and the crises we face. 

SWF CORE TEAM

Emmanuel Pratt
Jia Lok Pratt
Courtney Hug
David Snowdy
Rudy Taylor, Jr.
Kate Mytty
Lucero Flores
Alysse Hines
Knowledge Theodore
Phoenix Lewis
Donasia Gray
Endiya Griffin
Kaya Karibi-Whyte

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

James Godsil, Co-Founder and President Emeritus
Kenneth Fuller, President
Todd Leech, Treasurer
Candis Castillo, Secretary
Angela Ford
Stephen Haymes
Dr. Derise “Mama Afua” Tolliver

A2rU / Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities
Alphawood Foundation
Anonymous Family Foundations
Aurora University
Birwood House
Builders Initiative
Coalfield Development
Conant Family Foundation
Energy Foundation
Feedom Freedom Growers
Freedom Dreams
Harvard Graduate School of Design
Illinois Arts Council Agency
James and Grace Lee Boggs Center

Jonsin for Change
Lake Forest College
Mellon Foundation
MKE Grind
Prince Charitable Trusts
Regeneración
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Surdna Foundation
The Green Heart Project
The Obsidian Collection
The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation
Walter Mander Foundation

Ahkea Smith
Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor
Alesia Prince-Patterson
Allison Savage
Andrea Hug
Ann Wood Washington
Angela Curtis
Auriel Dawson
Betty and Chuck Billingsley
Brian McCammack
Cecile Savage
Chimaobi O. Izeogu
Clifford Shapiro and Darlene Vorachek
Coach Kellogg
Cordra Stewart
Daniel Salomon
Danyson Tavares
Darlene Grant
Deacon Monroe
Deborah Smith
Dorothy "Mama Sunshine" Lyles
Elizabeth Fiedler
Elizabeth Nordmeyer
Erin Copeland
Ethel Parker
Gary Johnson

Gina Milum
Gretchen Wilbur
Hailey Matthews
Hannah Covington
Jasmine Noble
Jean Robbins
Jesse Blom
Just-Us Welch
Karen Westrell
Kenai McFadden
Kenneth Weathers
Khary Frazier
Kim Jackson
Kim Sherobbi
Kolenda "Kokoa" Rattler
Lily Song
Mama Agnes Armour
Mama Erma J. Sias Bien-Aime
Mary Wells
Maryrose Flanigan
Michelle Nordemeyer
Mitch Glass
Mollie Cashwell
Monique Thompson
Myrtle Thompson-Curtis
Nataka Crayton

Nelda Ruiz
Nick Guertin
Priscilla Thomas
Rachel Cahan
Renee Spicer
Rhonda Long
Ricardia Davis
Richard Feldman
Robert Meeker
Robin Kelly
Sam Scardefield
Sandra Oviedo
She'Lon Muhammad
Stephen Ward
Steve and Carolyn Kaiser
Susan Magsamen
Susan Mendoza
Sylvia Wilson
Tracey Lam
Triniti Watson
Tyler Wagner
United Methodist Women
Victoria Pratt Davis
Virginia Washington
Whitney Anderson