Continuing Programs

Parent Development Program
A literacy development program for parents around topics important to a family’s life in the city—culture, education, work, health, media, politics, environment. Click here for a full description of program and to register for program. Download files from last year's program "Reading Chicago and Bringing it Home" and the Parent Program Activity Book in English and Spanish.

Citizen Leaders (1996-Continuing)
Citizen Leaders is a training initiative which enables grass-roots leaders to develop local community projects of their own design. Using a community innovation guide developed by IMAGINE CHICAGO, neighborhood leaders develop plans, write proposals, and organize and implement innovative community projects.

Urban Imagination Network Teacher Renewal
The Urban Imagination Network Teacher Renewal is a 2–year personal renewal program for Chicago Public School teachers. It explores the connections between the inner life of teachers and the renewal of public education.

Community Technical Assistance
and Consulting
People in Chicago and around the world consult with IMAGINE CHICAGO about innovative civic projects and connections. IMAGINE CHICAGO is open to exploring new partnerships and can provide training workshops and consultation on a fee-for-service basis.



Completed Programs

Urban Imagination Network
The Urban Imagination Network, designed and facilitated by IMAGINE CHICAGO, links seven Chicago public schools and six museums in a comprehensive structure to improve reading comprehension. It includes a parent training program and a  Parent Citizen Leaders program.

Parent Citizen Leaders of the Urban Imagination Network
Parents in Urban Imagination Network schools create projects that make a visible difference in their children's schools.

British Airways World Sales Conference (April 1998)
An intergenerational cross-cultural initiative partnered 340 British Airways’ top sales executives with 400 members of the Chicago Children’s Choir at The Field Museum. In a day of music, education, and innovative corporate- community connections, children and adults worked together to understand, to imagine and to create global connections. The conference was designed to inspire people through coaching, and asking the right questions to increase understanding and promote good decision making.

Reading and Writing A City Curriculum (1997)
Funded by the Graham Foundation for
Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts
A curriculum development project designed with the Center for Urban Education and public school teachers. Using materials on Chicago's river front history and architecture as a starting point, it challenged students to think about Chicago’s built environment, linkages between Chicago's past and present, and to imagine and describe the city's future.

Connections that Work (1996 and 1997)
Funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation
in partnership with The Seabury Foundation
A joint venture between IMAGINE CHICAGO and Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management. Focused on scaling up the impact of Kellogg youth and community health grantee organizations in Chicago, the process helped build shared visions of the future, created partnerships, and developed institutional capacity to innovate.

Making Civic Connections (1996)
Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities
and the Illinois Humanities Council
A year-long series of intergenerational conversations and dramatic presentations that helped link the perspective of diverse individuals and newcomer communities to documents of "American" self–understanding and to opportunities for civic participation in Chicago. Twenty ethnic and religious groups participated as organizational partners in conversations also open to the public. Collaborators included the Chicago Historical Society, Chicago Public Library, Loyola University, Metropolitan Chicago Interreligious Initiative, and Pegasus Players. Click here for the complete program document.

Sacred Spaces/Public Places (May-June 1996)
A series of public programs that enabled participants to clarify, document and share publicly how they thought about "sacred space" in the city. It explored links between spirituality and public life and the community-creating power of urban "sacred places". Done in collaboration with the Art Institute, the Field Museum, the Chicago Historical Society, and religious communities, the six-week program included writing workshops, tours, lectures, and presentations.

Chicago Futures: An Owner's Manual (1995-1996)
Funded by the Chicago Community Trust
The development of a framework for a contemporary civic education curriculum. The framework can be used to examine any aspect of urban development – past, present and future – from an approach that emphasizes the identification of assets and collaborative planning with those assets. It includes a template developed with DePaul’s Center for Urban Education and the Shedd Aquarium entitled, The Chicago River: Past, Present and Future.

African American Leadership Partnership Workshop (1995)
On March 24-25, 1995, IMAGINE CHICAGO designed and led a conference for forty African-American pastors and six community–based organizations on using intergenerational appreciative inquiry as a tool in community assessment and outreach. The intent was to share methodology that has proven effective in discovering what organizations do well, and building local collaborations around those strengths.

Follow-up activities for which IMAGINE CHICAGO's help was requested included working with: