Memory, Music, & The Moving Image: The Work of Olukemi Lijadu

 

The Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois Chicago will host a film screening of “Come and Speak to Me of What You Felt” (2021), “Guardian Angel” (2022), and “Trading Memories Part I” (2022) by 2023 Villa Albertine Resident Olukemi Lijadu. This event, which is open to the public, will be held on Tuesday, August 6th, 2024 from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM CDT at the Great Cities Institute (412 South Peoria Street, Suite 400, Chicago, Illinois 60607-7067). Click here for the downloadable PDF of the flyer. To RSVP, click here.

 

About the Films:

The work, Come and Speak to Me of What You Felt (2021), the artist weaves together fragmented threads of Black music. Come and Speak to Me of What You Felt is an exploration of the search for one’s history and how music can communicate feelings beyond words across time and distance.

A multi-screen projection and multi-sensory live performance, Guardian Angel (2022) is a commissioned film that explores the artist’s relationship with religion, informed by her grandmother, study of African philosophy and Catholic upbringing.

Trading Memories Part I (2022)is a moving image work and soundscape that incorporates film, sound, and photography, based on a collection of photos of a middle-class family in Lagos. These photographs were discovered in 2021 at an antique market in London’s Notting Hill, where they were sold among piles of otherwise discarded goods for just two pounds. The striking nature of these images, functioning as a time capsule far from their original context, immediately conveyed to the artist that they depicted a Nigerian Yoruba family from the early 2000s. The core inquiry of this series centers around the concept of ‘just knowing.’ In Trading Memories Part I, the artist explores the photographs not merely as artifacts of memory and family history, but as sites of encounter between themselves and the images. The work dissects moments of recognition, focusing on the artist’s personal reflections and connections with the photographs. A recurring theme in Trading Memories Part I is the close-up, which emphasizes these moments of recognition. Elements such as the harmattan dust on polished black buckled shoes, the texture of a birthday girl’s tulle dress, crates of soft drinks in glass bottles, white socks, and a Barbie birthday cake are motifs that resonate with the artist’s own childhood experiences in Lagos.

 

About the Filmmaker:

Olukemi Lijadu is a visual artist, DJ and music producer who performs under the moniker KEM KEM. Lijadu engages with sound as a transcendent conduit of memory and reconnection for the fractured African diaspora and work as a form of accessing Atlantic memory. A trained philosopher; she holds a masters degree in Philosophy from Stanford University. She lives and works between London and Lagos. Over the years, her work and performances have been held at ICA London, Frieze Cork Street and Mariane Ibrahim Chicago. Her original compositions have been played on the runways of Copenhagen fashion week and are woven into her films. As a DJ, KEM KEM has performed in and for the Luma Museum, Tiwani Gallery and Corvi-Mora. She was selected as a 2023 Villa Albertine resident where she is currently researching and developing a body of work around the West African influence on Chicago House music.

 

 

Reinventing artists’ residencies, Villa Albertine is creating a network for arts and ideas spanning France and the United States. It offers tailor-made residencies for global creators, thinkers and cultural professionals. For more information on Villa Albertine, please click here.

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Study shows the number of Illinois teens out of school, work is still too high

This news radio highlights the persistent issue of youth joblessness in Illinois, with a study by UIC’s Great Cities Institute revealing that 163,000 young people are out of school and work. The problem is severe on Chicago’s South and West Sides, with calls for $300 million in funding for youth jobs.

“The study by UIC’s Great Cities Institute shows that there are some 163,000 young people not going to school or working.”

“In the city alone, 16 to 24-year-olds, there’s over 25,000 youth and young adults who are out of school and jobless; and they are not moving forward with their lives. It’s a dangerous situation.” He says kids with nothing to do can get involved in unrest and gangs. He’s calling for Gov. J.B .Pritzker and the legislature to commit $300 million to more youth jobs. “We’re hoping that the legislature and the Governor can come up with the money necessary to provide them the jobs this summer and some jobs, you know, simple jobs during the school year,” Wuest said.

The study by UIC shows that young people in Illinois overall experience unemployment more than the national average.

 

 

From WBBM NewsRadio/Audacy (To go to the actual article, please click on this link.)

 

Our Chicago: Keeping Children Safe & Youth Joblessness

This article highlights the efforts of Broader Urban Involvement and Leadership Development (BUILD) in Chicago to engage youth through programs focused on gang intervention, violence prevention, and development, aiming to create safe and relaxing environments for children and teens. It also addresses the severe youth joblessness rates in Chicago, with some neighborhoods experiencing rates as high as 92%. The report, written by the Great Cities Institute at UIC and commissioned by the Alternative Schools Network, underscores the urgent need for youth employment to improve economic conditions in these communities.

It found that young people in Chicago, ages 16 to 24, had higher rates of unemployment than the national average. Black and Latino youth were more likely to be unemployed, than White teens.

“The neighborhoods are in dire straits. They don’t have much in the way of an economy, very few jobs. What used to be an industrial economy in the 50s, 60s is a service economy,” he (Jack Wuest of Alternative Schools Network) said.

“Young people miss out when they can’t find a job,” he said. “They learn how to show up on time, getting paid is a big incentive, it’s their money and it helps their families too. Having that first job, if they’ve never had it before, succeeding, getting there regularly, getting along with people and getting paid that’s a big deal.”

 

From ABC7 Chicago (To go to the actual article, please click on this link.)

 

Chicago’s Youth Joblessness Rate Worse Than U.S. & Illinois

This article highlights Chicago’s alarming youth joblessness rate, which surpasses both the national and Illinois averages, particularly affecting Black and Latino youths. The highest rates are found in South and West side neighborhoods. According to the University of Illinois Chicago’s Great Cities Institute, economic recovery post-COVID-19 has been uneven, with jobless rates for Black teens nearly doubling from 2021 to 2022. Lead researcher Matt Wilson pointed out the persistent disparities, stressing the need for increased funding for youth employment programs to address these issues and boost local economies.

“This report shows that despite an overall rebound in employment levels in Chicago since the pandemic, recovery has been uneven among different racial and ethnic groups in Chicago.”

“Black and Latino teens and young adults continue to have high jobless and out-of-school jobless rates compared to white Chicagoans.”

 

From PR Newswire/Alternative Schools Network
(To go to the actual article, please click on this link. Also available on The Ritz Herald)

 

Video and Photos Available from “Mother Earth Meets the Anthropocene” Event

Video and Photos Available from “Mother Earth Meets the Anthropocene” Event

 

We are happy to release the video and photos from an event that we hosted earlier this year on Mother Earth Meets the Anthropocene:  An Ecofeminist/Environmental Justice Assessment. Jane Caputi, Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University, joined us on February 20, 2024. After Professor Caputi’s talk, she and Great Cities Director, Teresa Córdova, engaged in conversation. In this video, you will be able to see both Jane’s presentation and the conversation afterwards.

“The Anthropocene,” or “Age of Man,” is a proposed name for the current geological age, one, its proponents claim to be a new era where “humans” have become a vast force capable of overwhelming the vast forces of “Nature.” This illustrated talk considered the sexed, gendered, racialized and otherwise political concept of “The Anthropocene” in dialogue with concept with the ancient reality of “Mother Nature” or Mother Earth, common to indigenous ecological knowledge as well as contemporary ecofeminist and environmental justice perspectives.

Jane Caputi has written four books, most recently Call Your “Mutha”: A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene (Oxford University Press, 2020). She also has made two educational documentaries, The Pornography of Everyday Life (2006) distributed by Berkeley Media and Feed the Green: Feminist Voices for the Earth (2016), distributed by Women Make Movies. Dr. Caputi, in 2016, was named Eminent Scholar of the Year by the American Culture/Popular Culture Association and in 2020 the Association for the Study of Women in Mythology gave her their annual “Saga Award” for contributions to women’s history and culture.

Several co-sponsors joined us to host Jane: UIC’s Institute for the Humanities, The Anthropocene Lab, The Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, and Gender and Women’s Studies.

Click here if you want to see the downloadable PDF of the program from the event.

 

Video from “Honoring the Life and Work of John Hagedorn” Event

On Tuesday morning, October 31st, 2023, John Hagedorn died peacefully in his home with his family at his side. We deeply mourn the loss of our dear friend and colleague. John had a long-time affiliation with the Great Cities Institute and in 2016 was given the official title of James J. Stukel Senior Faculty Fellow. He was also Professor Emeritus from the Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice. We offer our deepest condolences to his wife, Mary, and to his family. On the afternoon (from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM) of April 1, 2024, at Student Center East at UIC (750 S. Halsted), we hosted, with the family, an event honoring John and his work. We featured many of his colleagues as well as former students who themselves have gone on to do incredible work in multiple arenas.

The event page is here.

Please feel free to donate to the John Hagedorn Memorial Fund. We will use these funds to continue John’s work.

Video from “Mother Earth Meets the Anthropocene” Event

“The Anthropocene,” or “Age of Man,” is a proposed name for the current geological age, one, its proponents claim to be a new era where “humans” have become a vast force capable of overwhelming the vast forces of “Nature.” This illustrated talk considered the sexed, gendered, racialized and otherwise political concept of “The Anthropocene” in dialogue with concept with the ancient reality of “Mother Nature” or Mother Earth, common to indigenous ecological knowledge as well as contemporary ecofeminist and environmental justice perspectives. This talk event was held in the afternoon (from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM CST) of February 20, 2024, at Student Center East at UIC (750 S. Halsted) in the Cardinal Room. Here is the video of the event.

The event page is here.

Video Available from Event Honoring John Hagedorn

Video Available from Event Honoring John Hagedorn

 

As you may know, Great Cities Institute held an event on April 1, 2024, to honor the life and legacy of John Hagedorn. We are pleased to announce the availability of the video from the event, along with some photos, of the event. John was a James J. Stukel Fellow with the Great Cities Institute and Professor Emeritus of Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

We have also set up a John Hagedorn Memorial Fund. Please feel free to donate. We plan to use the fund to continue John’s work.

Hagedorn’s first book, People & Folks, Gangs, Crime, and the Underclass in a Rustbelt City, argued for more jobs than jails and applied William Julius Wilson’s underclass theory to gangs. He was the architect of a neighborhood-based, family centered social service reform in Milwaukee that became the subject of his dissertation, published as Forsaking Our Children: Bureaucracy and Reform in the Child Welfare System (1995).

He was editor (with Meda Chesney-Lind), of Female Gangs in America: Essays on Girls, Gangs, and Gender, the only edited volume ever published in the U.S. on female gangs. His interest in Chicago gangs led him to become immersed in the history of the Vice Lords and the importance of race. His global travels further informed his understanding of gangs, which led him to edit the volume Gangs in the Global City based on an international conference at the Great Cities Institute.

He was Principal Investigator of a Harry F. Guggenheim study at the Great Cities Institute of why Chicago’s homicide rate did not decline like New York City’s. He argued in 2007 that the decision to not invest in public housing but demolish it was a major correlate of high rates of violence.

In A World of Gangs (2008), he applied Manuel Castells’ work in analyzing gangs, arguing that understanding the cultural struggle for identity was crucial in working with gangs.

His 2015 book, The In$ane Chicago Way: The Daring Plan by Chicago Gangs to Create a Spanish Mafia, looks historically at gangs, organized crime, and corruption in Chicago.

Gangs on Trial dispels myths about gangs and recommends tactics for lawyers, mitigation specialists, and expert witnesses as well as offering insights for jurors. Hagedorn describes how minds are subconsciously “primed” when a defendant is identified as a gang member, and discusses the “backfire effect,” which occurs when jurors hear arguments that run counter to their beliefs.

The video is interesting, not just because of what you might learn about John and his work, but also what you might learn (or unlearn) about gangs, as well as insights on ethnographic research. Each of the speakers offered unique perspectives but all with the same message of how important John Hagedorn was to the world of gang research.

The event featured the following speakers:

Keynote: David Brotherton
David Brotherton is professor in sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center, CUNY. He is also the director of the Social Change and Transgressive Studies Project. Among his recent books are: Routledge International Handbook of Critical Gang Studies edited with Rafael Gude (Routledge 2021); Immigration Policy in the Age of Punishment: Detention, Deportation and Border Control with Phil Kretsedemas (Columbia 2017); Las Pandillas Como Movimiento Social with Luis Barrios (University of Central America Press 2016); Youth Street Gangs: A Critical Appraisal (Routledge 2015); Banished to the Homeland: Dominican Deportees and Their Stories of Exile, with Luis Barrios (Columbia 2011); Keeping Out The Other: A Critical Introduction to Immigration Control, edited with P. Kretsedemas (Columbia 2009); and  The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation: Street Politics and the Transformation of a New York City Gang, with Luis Barrios (Columbia 2004). He is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Critical Criminology: An International Journal and the founding editor of the “Studies in Transgression” book series at Temple University Press.

David Brotherton Introduced by Avelardo Valdez
Avelardo Valdez is professor of social work and sociology at the University of Southern California. He is a nationally and internationally recognized scholar with an extensive publication record in his field of research, which is in the intersection between substance abuse and violence and health issues among high-risk groups. His most recent book is Mexican American Girls and Gang Violence: Beyond Risk. He is also a director of the NIDA Interdisciplinary Research Training Institute on Hispanic Drug Abuse, has served as a member of the Committee for National Academy of Sciences Study of High Rates of Incarceration in the United States (2013-2014), and served on Governor Gavin Newsom‘s Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana Law and Policy in California (2015) and appointed to the Advisory Cannabis Working Group by the Los Angeles County Office of Cannabis Management.

Robert Aspholm
Roberto Aspholm is assistant professor in the school of social work at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He has spent more than a decade working in community practice and research capacities on issues affecting young people in marginalized urban neighborhoods, particularly street gangs, community violence, and violence prevention. His work in these capacities has taken place primarily on the South Side of Chicago and in East St. Louis, Illinois, an industrial suburb of St. Louis and the city with the highest homicide rate in the United States. He recently wrote a book titled, Views for the streets: The transformation of gangs and violence on Chicago’s South Side (2020), as well as co-authored several publications on gun and gang violence in Chicago: Interpersonal gun violence research in the social work literature (2019); The fracturing of gangs and violence: A research based reorientation of violence prevention and intervention policy (2019); and How the coronavirus and Chicago’s gun violence are related (2020).

Lance Williams
Lance Williams is professor of urban community studies at the historic Jacob H. Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies at Northeastern Illinois University. He currently works with Chicago area violence prevention groups that serve young men who are at high risk for being shooting perpetrators or victims. For over 20 years, Dr. Williams has worked as an expert witness in Federal and local gang and violence-related cases. He is the author of Culture and Perceptions of Violence Related Behaviors Among Adolescents (2009), co-author of the book titled The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Fall, Rise and Resurgence of an American Gang (2011) and author of King David and Boss Daley: The Black Disciples, Mayor Daley and Chicago on the Edge (2023).

Words from Meda Chesney-Lind
Meda Chesney-Lind is professor emeritus in women, gender and sexuality at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. She is nationally recognized for her work on women and crime, and her testimony before Congress resulted in national support of gender responsive programming for girls in the juvenile justice system. Her most recent book on girls’ use of violence, Fighting for Girls (co-edited with Nikki Jones), won an award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency for “focusing America’s attention on the complex problems of the criminal and juvenile justice systems.” She also co-edited, with John Hagedorn, Female Gangs in America: Essays on Girls, Gangs, and Gender, which is the only edited volume ever published in the U.S. on female gangs.

Alistair Fraser
Alistair Fraser is professor of criminology at the University of Glasgow, and director of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research. Alistair is the author of two books: the first, Urban Legends: Gang Identity in the Post-Industrial City (OUP, 2015) was shortlisted for the BBC/BSA Ethnography Award and co-awarded the British Society of Criminology Book Prize. His second book, Gangs and Crime: Critical Alternatives was published by Sage in 2017. He is on the International Advisory Board for the Journal of Youth Studies, and is an Associate Editor of Criminology & Criminal Justice.

Benneth Lee
Benneth Lee is instructor in justice studies at Northeastern Illinois University, educating students about inner city gangs; prisons and jails; ex-convict recidivism; and prisoner reentry systems. He is also the founder and CEO of the National Alliance for the Empowerment of the Formerly Incarcerated (NAEFI), which is a community-based organization working in the state of Illinois to empower formerly incarcerated men and women to work towards restorative citizenship. The program involves partnering of male and female formerly incarcerated individuals with trained mentors, providing one-on-one mentoring, through counselling, life skills workshops, leadership development training and support from trained mentors.

Kaitlin Devaney
Kaitlin Devaney is faculty in criminology at DePaul University. She received her Ph.D. with distinction and her M.A. in Criminology, Law and Justice with a concentration in Violence Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research lies broadly in neighborhood-level violence, community-level anti-violence strategies, critical race studies and comparative racialization, and outsider qualitative methodology. She is currently engaged in work that explores the drill rap subculture of violence in Chicago and evaluative prison education research on Northwestern’s Prison Education Program, where she did her postdoctoral research fellowship.

Tribute by Former Students Led by Xavier Perez
Xavier Perez is faculty in criminology at DePaul University. His research interests address two broad areas of study: criminology and latino(a) crime. Specifically, what distinguishes Latinos(as) from other ethnic/racial groups in America? Second, his research interests explore variation in legal traditions around the world and the implications of such variation on crime policies. Specifically, Xavier examines the impact of this training on police behavior and community relations in Puerto Rico, thus exploring how and why countries punish criminal offenders differently and how those differences are often the result of cross-national variation in culture, politics, economics, religion, and social organization. Julie Globokar, a member of the Prisoner Review Board, and Iris Rivera, Juvenile Probation Officer at Cook County Juvenile Court, both former students of John, paid tribute to him.

Moderated by Teresa Córdova
Teresa Córdova is the Director of the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois Chicago.  She is also Professor of Urban Planning and Policy in the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at UIC. Dr. Córdova received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Throughout her career, Teresa has engaged with communities in and outside the university and is an expert in community/university partnerships and methodologies of engaged research. In addition to strategies for community and economic development, her work focuses on global/local dynamics and the impacts of global economic restructuring on local communities, including impacts of resource extraction. She has been instrumental in affecting economic development policy and projects, the provision and design of infrastructure, local governance, and neighborhood change. She currently sits on the Cook County Economic Development Advisory Committee, The Board of Directors of Grand Victoria Foundation, and the Board of Illinois Humanities Council. She publishes extensively in the fields of community development and Latino/a Studies.

Movie Screening with the Filmmaker, Lucas Roxo, Followed by Discussion

 

The Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois Chicago will host a screening of “Listen to the Walls Fall” (Écoute les murs tomber) and “No Man Is Born to Be Stepped On” (Aucun homme n’est né pour être piétiné) by 2024 Villa Albertine Resident Lucas Roxo. This event, marking the final day of Roxo’s residency in Chicago, will be followed by an engaging discussion with the director himself. This event, which is open to the public, will be held on Monday, July 15th, 2024 from 12 PM to 2 PM CDT at the Great Cities Institute (412 South Peoria Street, Suite 400, Chicago, Illinois 60607-7067). Click here for the downloadable PDF of the flyer. To RSVP, click here.

 

About the Films:

“Listen to the Walls Fall” (Écoute les murs tomber) is a feature-length documentary, structured as a diptych taking place at both ends of France: Marseille and Calais. It tells the story of how human beings, driven by the desire to come and go, to live and to free themselves from prohibitions and dead-ends, circumvent, alone or in groups, what encloses them, prevents them, constrains them. Two journeys shaped by the perspectives of the people who inhabit each place.

“No Man Was Born to Be Stepped On” (Aucun homme n’est né pour être piétiné) tells the story of a social bandit in northern Brazil and examines how his legacy resonates with anti-Bolsonaro activists today.

 

About the Filmmaker:

Lucas Roxo is a documentary filmmaker and a media educator. Convinced that information should not be produced only by professionals, his work consisted in settling in popular neighborhoods to participate in the creation of community media. In parallel, he pursued a career as a documentary filmmaker. He was the author of the short documentary I feel your absence, about his family’s exile from Portugal to France, and just finished his second short film, No man was born to be stepped on, which tells the story of a social bandit in northern Brazil and how its memory echoes with anti-Bolsonaro activists today.

 

 

Reinventing artists’ residencies, Villa Albertine is creating a network for arts and ideas spanning France and the United States. It offers tailor-made residencies for global creators, thinkers and cultural professionals. For more information on Villa Albertine, please click here. To also access above event information on their website, please click here.

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