Friends of the Parks: free lecture - Chicago on the Cheap

Free lectures Friends of the Parks

Instead of the annual Free Netsch Lecture’s Friends of the Parks is offering three free webinar workshops and one free in-person event.

Reimagining the Ways We Engage Power for Park Advocacy: A Collaborative Workshop with Chicago United for Equity’s People’s Policy School

When: Thursday, October 28, 2021 6PM-8PM
Where: Virtual/Webinar Click here to register for the Thursday, October 28 workshop

Between neighborhoods and wards, agencies and sister agencies, Local School Councils and Park Advisory Councils, Alderpeople and the Mayor – the map of who makes decisions impacting the lives of Chicagoans is complex. That’s not even including County, State, or Federal levels of decision-making. Join the People’s Policy School to explore the multiple layers of power and decision-makers that craft the policies our communities face daily.

Reimagining DuSable Park: A Design Studio Led by IIT Students to Inform an Updated Park Framework Plan

When: Thursday, October 29, 2021 12PM-2PM
Where: Virtual/Webinar Click here to register for the Friday, October 29 workshop

Graduate students in the Landscape Architecture + Urbanism program at Illinois Institute of Technology convene a discussion to look back at the 2006 Framework Plan in the context of recent political and environmental contexts as a way to “Reimagine” DuSable Park. The workshop will include a short presentation of the student’s design scenarios in progress as a prompt for an open discussion on the design of DuSable Park.

DuSable Park is the park our tiny Mayor pledged $30m to build out as an alternative to renaming Lake Shore Drive to Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable Lake Shore Drive.

This picture is probably 3+ years old when the city was doing remediation work on the future park site. That’s Navy Pier to the right.

Reimagining our Relationship with the Lakefront: What’s it to you? A Collaborative Conversation Kick-Off with Preservation Chicago

When: November 12, 2021 12PM-1PM

Where: Virtual Click here to register

Reimagining FOTP’s Last 4 Miles Initiative in Current Context, as part of the Deep Dive: Great Lakes Panel Series

When: November 13, 2021 Time TBA

Where: In-person Location TBA Click here to register

Join us as we reimagine our Last 4 Miles plan to complete the lakefront park and path system, and prevent future shoreline erosion. This event is part of the Chicago Humanities Festival for a panel called “Speculative Infrastructure” as part of the “Deep Dive: Great Lakes Series.”

Topics include: Can we adapt infrastructure to withstand the effects of climate change? Where do we begin? Who has already started to build the infrastructure of the future? Communities that live next to rapidly warming and fluctuating bodies of water like Lake Michigan understand firsthand the urgency of these questions. What do they advise?

Join CHF for a panel discussion about emerging visions of eco-futurism and green technocultures in the face of global warming. Panelists will explore art and policy-driven imaginaries for how to transform our rapidly deteriorating infrastructures into sustainable, integrated environments.

This program is the second panel in our Deep Dive: Great Lakes series, curated by Rachel Havrelock.

About the Friends of the Parks’ Walter Netsch Lecture Series

The series honors renowned architect Walter Netsch’s vision and leadership that changed the culture of the Chicago Park District in the 1980’s. My understanding is that after Harold Washington died he wasn’t supported and resigned and many of the changes Netsch made were undone and patronage and mismanagement resumed at the Park District. Anyway, the lecture series offers free quarterly lectures on topics of parks, the environment, urban planning and public policy.