Gov. Pritzker Joins Community Leaders to Celebrate South Side Arts Incubator

CHICAGO - Highlighting additional state investments in creative facilities, Gov. JB Pritzker joined artists, advocates, and lawmakers to break ground on the St. Laurence Arts Incubator project in Grand Crossing.

"The best way to revitalize our economy is by investing in people," said Governor JB Pritzker. "Later this year, the St. Laurence Arts Incubator will open its doors to the Grand Crossing community, building on its educational legacy with a barrier-breaking approach to supporting artists and entrepreneurs in a community that has been denied generations' worth of opportunity. This is the kind of vision I'm grateful to have take shape in Illinois and I congratulate the advocates who made it a reality."

State funding for the Rebuild Foundation includes $950,000 from the Illinois Arts Council for the Stony Island Arts Bank, $500,000 for facility renovations from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, and $250,000 from DCEO's Office of Minority Economic Empowerment.

The St. Laurence Arts Incubator is the newest and largest project to date from the Rebuild Foundation, which has worked to preserve cultural sites like the Stony Island Arts Bank, the Retreat at Currency Exchange Café, Kenwood Gardens, and the Dorchester Art + Housing Collaborative. 

The incubator will serve as a beacon of creative investment, production, and education by providing Black and Brown artists and creative entrepreneurs with the space, resources, tools, and opportunities to develop their businesses in their communities. With over 40,000 square feet of artists' studios, makerspace, classrooms for creative entrepreneurship courses, an archive laboratory and more, this project will inaugurate a new era of creative empowerment and artistic production on the South Side.

Founded in 2010 by artist Theaster Gates, The Rebuild Foundation serves to provide a platform for art, cultural development, and neighborhood transformation. Through programming, residencies, and public engagement, they celebrate artists and artistic achievement and seek to leverage the power and potential of communities, buildings, and objects that have been historically underserved.