We recently connected with Janell Nelson and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Janell, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

BACKSTORY: EAC and Folded Map NFP are a joint venture to uplift through art and battle systemic racism in the name of social justice. Folded Map Project’s mission is to become a resident-, advocacy- and policy-influencing tool that invites audiences to open a dialogue and question how we are all socially impacted by racial and institutional conditions that segregate the city. We seek to do this through creating experiences and conversations that will seed future action—collective, social, and political—to disrupt the cycle of segregation and the inequities and exclusion that it promotes. Folded Map is also the parent entity of an initiative to utilize artists from an historically disinvested area to help fuel healing discussions and interactions toward true equity: Englewood Arts Collective.

EAC is co-founded and primarily led by a small group of caring creatives who’s ultimate goal is to reflect the beauty of and artistically support interactions that have a positive impact on the South Side of Chicago and Black artists as a whole.

EXAMPLE OF A MEANINGFUL PROJECT:
BACKSTORY ON THE PROJECT and quotes you can pull:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/ClxGxFmPZgj/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

https://blockclubchicago.org/2022/12/09/the-englewood-arts-collective-is-transforming-a-vacant-south-shore-storefront-into-an-artists-haven/

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

We founded in 2017 with no agenda, just the goal to positively represent the neighborhood we grew up in my amplifying the work we are already doing as working artists. It all started from a text message and email from Tonika Lewis Johnson, and we aligned our energy and efforts in a volunteer capacity to work together as a group.

We’re a group of caring creatives who all hail from the Greater Englewood, Chicago community—prominent leaders and behind-the-scenes stakeholders who’ve been putting in the work of creative expression through the lens of equity, joy and representation before any of it became trendy. The ultimate goal of the EAC is to reflect the beauty of, enrich the community within, and help support events and interactions that reflect not just Englewood, but Black creatives at-large in a truthful, positive way. Reframing the mainstream narrative, from the inside out. We believe in the power of a people when they tell their own story, the power of Art as a legitimate, viable conduit for positive change in communities, and the potential for Artists to be leaders and influencers of said change.

From mutual-aid grants to other artists, guerilla-style transformative placemaking activations, community beautification activations, intergenerational arts programming and project placements-for-hire for ourselves and other Black and Latinx talent, we put our years of expertise as artists and creative business owners to use for the greater good.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding aspect is the awareness and embodiment of freedom that comes from knowing that you have the power to create a fulfilling life to live for yourself. That by leveraging your artistic skill set with consistent effort, you can define—and redefine—what success means.

We are a multidisciplinary group that has formally supported all forms of art, (except culinary arts). Specifically, the cofounders of EAC typically to-date have produced placemaking events and activations hinging on our cofounder’s expertise, so that has looked like: printmaking, ceramic and beatmaking and paint instruction programming as teaching artists, transformative placemaking via graphic design, murals, photography, and sculpture. We’ve also launched mutual-aid and regranting initiatives where we directly funded dancers, rappers, photographers, puppeteers, and textile artists from the South Side of Chicago.

For EAC, it’s incredibly rewarding to conceptualize and implement intergenerational activations and pop-up programming that leaves impressions of love and healing in historically disinvested communities. To create tangible examples of how art can be a driver of healthy economic and societal growth is invigorating for us.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Multiple consistent impressions from all active cofounders (Tonika Johnson, Janell Nelson, Pugs Atomz, Cujodah, Rob Smooth, Tanya Ward, JoVonna Jackson, Glenn Willoughby, Demetrius Rhymes & JustFlo).

We’re all working artists in our own right, and we come together consistently under the umbrella of EAC to engage communities and partner with other orgs to produce FREE artistic activities for locals. We’ve supported resource fairs, music fests, revitalization projects and regranting initiatives. When we are individually or as a group contracted for-hire, we frequently represent EAC, and proudly reinforce that who we are is rooted in where we came from.

Verbally and through action, demonstrate consistency with our values, such as: creating opportunities for and amplifying other artists, producing quality, high-caliber thorough work in all that WE do, whether that be consulting or mural-making.

Contact Info:

• Website: englewoodartscollective.org
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/englewoodartscollective

Image Credits
Tonika Lewis Johnson, Glenn Willoughby, Demetrius Barry