2024 Spring Break Immersions at The Commonwealth

This spring has brought varied temperature swings, which has meant plenty of time to balance indoor and outdoor activities. In March, Sweet Water Communiversity welcomed its first groups of the year from near and far to The Commonwealth for immersions, ranging from a few hours to a few days with the SWF team. Students from Howard University, Lake Forest College, and Chicago Public Schools spent part of their spring break cultivating life alongside the SWF team and Community. We invite you to read more about the immersions at The Commonwealth.

HOWARD UNIVERSITY IMMERSION | MARCH 5, 2024

On Tuesday, March 5, SWF welcomed 10 students from Howard University to plug in for a day during their Alternative Spring Break trip in Chicago. 

Their visit began with introductions to the site, the Howard University students, and the SWF team, followed by activities across The Commonwealth. Despite the cooler day, the group warmed up quickly by filling the Community Garden beds with soil in preparation for seedling transplants the following week. In one hour, the group literally moved more than a ton of soil and filled 20 garden beds, demonstrating the collective power of small actions. 

After filling the garden beds, the students took a tour of The Commonwealth that landed in the Civic Arts Church. There, they shared a meal of Vegan Black-Eyed Peas and greens prepared by a SWF team member, using freshly harvested greens from the hoop houses and black-eyed peas saved from the previous summer’s harvest. They enjoyed a true farm-to-table meal and the Communiversity immersion concluded with Civic Arts nature printing and shared reflections.  

In a short time at The Commonwealth, the students began to see the connections and value created through SWF’s Regenerative Neighborhood Development (RND) practice and the stewardship of The Commonwealth. Students reflected on how a deeper sense of community and stronger team bond grew through laboring together and harvesting the “fruits of their own labor”. They reflected that the civic arts activity (nature printing) reminded them that what people normally discard as “wastes” can be turned into beauty. Finally, they saw how something seemingly small – filling the garden beds with soil –  generates infinite value as the 20 garden beds they filled in the Community Garden feed hundreds of people each week throughout the summer and fall seasons, showing the collective possibilities of small actions. 

LAKE FOREST COLLEGE SPRING BREAK IMMERSION | MARCH 10 - 13, 2024

The week after the Howard Immersion, the SWF Communiversity welcomed Spring RND Research Interns from Lake Forest College during their spring break for a three-day immersion at The Commonwealth.

On Monday, the RND Interns and SWF team met in person after six weeks of online engagement. The interns dove right into the daily SWF routines – starting first with caring for life, by getting acquainted with and contributing to the watering, pruning, and care for the crops growing in the three Hoop Houses located on the Community Farm. From there, the SWF team and RND Interns moved to clear and prep a back quadrant of the farm for the potato patch spread woodchips across 24 farm rows in preparation for seedlings. 

On Tuesday, the SWF team and RND interns worked in the Prairie, a ~3-acre nature reserve SWF is cultivating and the focus of the intern’s Spring 2024 RND Re-search Project. The interns were finally able to walk the land and contribute to its transformation after spending the initial weeks of their internship documenting the state of Illinois’ prairies, creating profiles of plants growing in the Prairie site, and examining the ~100+ year history of The Prairie site. The immersion provided them with the opportunity to connect their re-search work to real life. Collectively, the SWF team and RND interns cleared a 5 x 30-foot area of mugwort by hand (while enjoying mugwort’s natural scent), and explored in real-time why pesticides/herbicides are too often used to clear the land undercutting the very notion of ecological restoration of prairies throughout Illinois. 

On Wednesday, the final day of the RND Intern Immersion, the SWF team used Interlocking Ponies and Burros to quickly set up an outdoor work-shop to introduce the RND Interns to the basics of carpentry – including the source of wood (trees) and differences between nominal and actual measurements. Each RND Intern was supported by a peer mentor as they measured, drilled, screwed, and sawed reclaimed wood to further connect thinking with doing. 

The Immersion closed with a procession to the Civic Arts Church for a shared farm-to-table meal, civic arts, and reflections. The RND Interns valued their newfound relationships with working with the land and the humans of SWF, their growing understanding of the opportunity to turn “wastes” into resources, and the importance of SWF’s approach to Solutionary planning. 

CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS | MARCH 27, 2024

During Chicago Public Schools’ Spring Break, SWF hosted a special edition of Wellness Wednesday welcoming community members, including adults and youth, who would have normally been in school or at work. Wellness Wednesdays emerged in 2021 as a new weekly ritual between June and September at SWF, welcoming local residents and youth to help weed, water, and cultivate the SWF Community Farm and, afterward, enjoy a farm-to-table lunch. 

During this special edition, more than a dozen SWF community members joined the SWF team in cultivating food in the Hoop Houses, followed by a farm-to-table meal in the Civic Arts Church. The special edition of Wellness Wednesday concluded with nature printing to celebrate the beauty of spring plants like dead nettle and dandelions. 

Thank you to all who participated in Spring Communiversity Immersions at The Commonwealth during their spring breaks. There GROWS the neighborhood!