Whether you are five or well into your fifties, there is a childlike marvel in watching a butterfly unfurl its wings and take off across open skies; or in watching a tomato plant grow, slowly at first, and then all at once. Earlier this year, Sweet Water Foundation and the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum embarked on a journey to keep this wonder alive. Working Through S.C.A.L.E (Sustainable Collaboration Across Living Ecologies) exists at the intersection of life and science.

Kim Sherobbi is a native “Detroiter” who lives in the same house she grew up in. She is on the Board of Directors of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center Sweet Water Foundation’s relationship with Kim is one of many that demonstrate the intersection and similarities between people and communities across the nation. We are excited to highlight Kim’s work as we collectively work towards tackling this country’s most pressing systemic problems.

On June 16, 2018, Sweet Water Foundation hosted the First Annual Juneteenth Celebration @ the Commons. More than 400 people gathered at Sweet Water Foundation’s Perry Ave Commons to take part in an event that was profound, inspirational, transformative, and  grounded in community and history.

Kolenda “Kokoa” Davis is a local resident who grew up in the Washington Park neighborhood. Since she started volunteering at Sweet Water Foundation in 2015, Kokoa has become much more than a volunteer. She is an important member of the Sweet Water Foundation team and family who shares her time, skills, connections, and memory of the neighborhood with the SWF community.

Persida Contreras, a K-4 music teacher at Peck Elementary School, was inspired by the workshop and took the challenge to heart. Ms. Contreras brought two of the fractal seats she helped to create back to her classroom and began using them to reclaim space with her students.

We are excited to announce the launch of the Working Through S.C.A.L.E. (Sustainable Collaborations Across Living Ecologies) program in partnership with the Chicago Academy of Sciences/ Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum (Nature Museum).

Meet Natalie Zepeda...Natalie is an architecture student at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) who has been interning at Sweet Water Foundation (SWF) since December of 2017. After discovering SWF’s pop-up shop at the Chicago Design Museum in the Block 37 mall, Natalie found that she fit right in with the Sweet Water team.

On Friday, April 20, 2018, Sweet Water Foundation hosted the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival’s Neighborhood Tour in the Work-Shop at the Perry Ave Commons.

On Saturday, April 7, 2018 more than 50 children and their parents filtered through the Smart Museum of Art to participate in Family Day: Building Blocks and Sunflower Stalks.

After a series of planning calls throughout this winter, the Smart Pod Project, officially launched in March with a full site visit and planning session between Sweet Water Foundation staff and project partner organizations including Chicago Public Schools’ Career and Technical Education (CPS CTE), CPS Chicago Builds, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Building upon the momentum of the past several years of the Sweet Water Foundation’s Re[CREATE]Ed Spaces Program in partnership with the Chicago Architecture Foundation and the Chicago Community Trust’s Hive Chicago Fund for Connected Learning, SWF has engaged in a design-build collaboration with the Freedom by Design Group at IIT.

On Friday, March 16, 2018, two Sweet Water Foundation (SWF) representatives traveled to Boston to present at the 6th Annual Massachusetts Urban Farming Conference organized by the Urban Farming Institute and Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources.

In 2010, Orrin Williams met Sweet Water Foundation's Co-Founder, Emmanuel Pratt, at a meeting in West Englewood. An instant bond was formed as they quickly recognized the synergies in their work and a shared vision of transformation on Chicago’s South side. The two have been working together ever since and Sweet Water Foundation has benefited greatly from Orrin’s leadership, vision, and contributions over the years.  

On Saturday, February 3rd, more than 25 members of the extended Sweet Water Foundation community attended the first of twelve workshops in the year-long Radical [Re]Construction of Values event series. 

Just in time for the 2017 holiday season, Sweet Water Foundation engaged in our first-ever retail experience, hosting pop-up shops in the months of November and December at the Chicago Design Market in the Block 37 mall in downtown Chicago and The Silver Room in Hyde Park.

On Saturday, February 24th, more than 40 educators participated in Sweet Water Foundation’s Fractal Seating Workshop at the Smart Museum of Art. The workshop was featured as part of the University of Chicago’s Amplify Education Series, which seeks to develop a model of collaboration that leads to a systemically, and sustainably networked education community that supports rich and dynamic arts learning experiences.

Over the past several years, Chicago has been highlighted in the media as a ‘tale of two cities’: one of them safe and prosperous, the other dangerous and poor—and both of them growing more so. Amidst these crises, a radical [re]construction of community is underway at the Perry Ave Commons on Chicago’s South Side, fueled by food, art, and the practice of Regenerative Placemaking.