A nonprofit that promotes equitable transit-oriented development is giving out $1 million in grants to Chicago artists as part of an initiative to preserve neighborhoods’ cultural identity amid gentrification.

A project of Elevated Chicago, the grants are open to individual artists, collectives and entrepreneurs pursuing “culturally centered, community-driven placemaking and placekeeping projects,” according to a program description.

Funding comes from the organization’s partnership with the MacArthur Foundation. Elevated will serve as a technical advisor and regranting partner. 

“This partnership supports efforts to use arts and cultural installations, creative placemaking, and placekeeping techniques to stimulate economic activity and preserve community culture along key transit corridors throughout Chicago,” a statement from the organization reads.

The $1 million will be disbursed in increments of $350,000 per year over four years. Marly Schott, a program manager for Elevated, estimated that projects will be capped at $50,000 each. Projects led by entrepreneurs, small businesses, artists and unincorporated collectives are all invited to apply.

“We’re not putting any geographic boundaries,” Schott said. “We are looking for artists who want to work in the communities in which they move.”

Applicants, she added, should have “a keen interest in community engagement and community development, and bringing their expertise and their vision and their ideas as an artist – their voice, but also to transcend the voice of their community.”

Elevated Chicago is a collaborative of residents, community organizations, artists, developers, regional nonprofits, financial institutions, city officials, policymakers, activists and philanthropists.

During an April 10 event launching the initiative at the Green Line Performing Arts Center, 329 E. Garfield Blvd., Elevated’s executive director, Juan Sebastian Arias, said the organization formed in response to unequal distribution of transit-oriented developments in Chicago.

Transit-oriented developments are mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly developments near public transportation hubs. Since 2013, the city has offered incentives to developers to build transit-oriented projects. But from 2016 to 2020, Arias said at the event launch, almost 90% of these projects have been developed downtown or on the North Side.

Part of the organization’s mission, he said, is combatting displacement of Black and brown communities across the city, particularly on the South and West sides.

Since a peak at 1.2 million in 1980, the city’s population of Black residents has dropped by a third, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the University of Illinois Chicago’s Institute for Research on Race & Public Policy. The reasons for the exodus of working- and middle-class Black residents are myriad: people report being drawn to the suburbs or out of the Midwest altogether by better job opportunities, safer neighborhoods, better schools and amenities and an overall improvement in quality of life for the same cost.

Projects that exemplify a successful integration of arts and culture in the development process, according to the organization, include the Arts Lawn in Washington Park and Bronzeville’s Overton Center for Excellence.

Grant applications will open in August. The selection committee, Schott noted, will consist of other creatives.

In addition to the grants, Elevated is rolling out a workshop series designed to equip artists with the skills to participate in formal development and urban planning processes. Workshops will cover topics such as navigating the city procurement process, negotiating contracts, responding to requests for proposals, branding and grant writing. Elevated said it also plans to facilitate collaboration through expansion of its existing cross-sector working groups. 

“We’ve heard from many of the artists in our circle that support from passion to professionalization would be really helpful,” Schott said. “Strengthening their arts administrative capacity, their ability to apply for grants, to apply for opportunities, things like that.”

Phil Beckham, developer at P3 markets, the group behind the Bronzeville apartment complex 43 Green, said in a panel at the initiative launch that public art helps foster community for decades to come.

“It’s not for me, it’s not for anybody my age, it’s for them and for kids who aren’t even born yet,” Beckham said.

As a kid on the South Side, Hyde Park muralist Dorian Sylvain said that she spent a lot of time in community theaters, where she got to know some “incredibly dynamic arts and culture institution-building women,” such as Avenue Jones Brown, Gwendolyn Brooks and Margaret Burroughs. 

“They taught me growing up that art, culture, community – they’re one and the same,” Sylvain said.

“Arts has been something that has been intentionally removed from our educational system — it has been intentionally marginalized by our society,” she added. “And it is really to our demise.”