Jane Addams Hull-House Museum and Chicago Public Libraries are partnering for “City of Stories” a CPL Summer Learning Initiative. This partnership will allow CPL and JAHHM to share information, activities, and programs with library staff across eighty branches and tens-of-thousands of library visitors throughout Chicago’s neighborhoods.

JAHHM is enhancing CPL's free drop-in programs with activities grounded in the social reform history and storytelling activities of Hull-House, including bookbinding, zine making, art making, improvisation, and theater arts. The activities reveal collective and neighborhood stories and help everyone—children, teens, and adults—share their voice. Elements of “City of Stories” include professional development workshops led by Chicago-based artists Regin Igloria and Aram Han Sifuentes, and improviser Mo Phillips-Spotts; programs led by librarians, JAHHM educational resources and materials, books recently awarded the Jane Addams Peace Association Book Award, and other books based on the theme “City of Stories.” Jane Addams herself believed everyone had a story to tell and public institutions could harness those voices for the common good.

As part of this initiative, JAHHM and CPL have created professional development opportunities for library staff. The goals of these sessions are to: 

• Build background knowledge that will help librarians conduct programming related to the theme 

• Provide practical activities, strategies and tools that staff can use at their branches. This includes activities that can be adapted for various ages, group types (park groups, daycare groups, story-times participants, etc.) and settings (in-person, outdoors, virtual). 

• Build excitement and engagement with library patrons

Workshop Dates and Agendas

April 7

• Session 1:

  12:30pm-1:45pm: Jane Addams Hull-House Museum Virtual Tour: Identity, Art, and Public Voice for Social Change

  • This program is designed for CPL’s Adult Services, Children’s Services, and Teen Services staff

• 1:45pm-2pm: Break

• Session 2
  2:00pm-3:00pm:
  Identity and Story-making Through Ceramics with Hull-House Educators Eddie Chong and Stefán Cuevas-Caizaguano

  • This program is designed for CPL’s Children’s Services and Teen Services Staff

April 21 

• Session 1
  12:30pm-12:45pm: Welcome and improv warm-up with Mo Phillips-Spotts

  12:45pm-2:10pm: Story-making Through Community Binding with Regin Igloria

  • This program is designed for CPL Children’s Services and Teen Services staff

• 2:10pm-2:20pm: Break

• Session 2
  2:20pm-3:30pm: Story-making Through Theater Games and Improvisation with Mo Phillips-Spotts

  • This program is designed for CPL Children’s Services staff

Workshop Details

• Virtual Tour: Identity, Art, and Public Voice for Social Change (April 7)
  Virtual tours of Hull-House use our beautiful 360-degree virtual walkthrough of the mansion through a Zoom presentation. Guests will learn about the history of the Hull-House Settlement and the life of social activist and reformer Jane Addams. This tour also explores Jane Addams’ lifelong queer relationship with Mary Rozet Smith, and how reformers at Hull-House challenged gender norms and expanded the role of women in civic life. We will discuss the many programs and initiatives launched by Hull-House, through artifacts like ceramic pieces from the Hull-House Kilns program, which tell the stories of the Mexican migrant and immigrant experience in Chicago. Finally, guests will visit the exhibit True Peace: The Presence of Justice, spotlighting the beginnings of the women’s peace movement and organizing legacy of women, women of color and queer communities of color, featuring artist-activists Monica Trinidad and Sarah-Ji.

• Identity and Story-making Through Ceramics (April 7)

  Workshop: Led by Hull-House Educators Eddie Chong and Stefán Cuevas-Caizaguano, this activity will allow youth to express themselves and explore their identity by learning about the history of the Hull-House Kilns and how young people like them expressed themselves nearly a century ago. Participants will learn about the history of immigrants who worked in the kilns and how they became famous for embracing their culture through pottery. Participants will be asked to reflect on their own identities and culture such as family history, traditions, and symbolism. Participants will then reflect that through painting their pots like artists at the Hull-House kilns. The activity will not need a kiln and can be done with air-dry clay and acrylic paints.  

  Educational Packet: Pots, Clay, Identity: Painting Pinch Pots. Expressing identity through clay - no kiln necessary! The Hull-House Kilns (1925-1935) provided a space for highly skilled Mexican immigrants to make ceramics and earn proceeds from the sale of their creations. This packet includes step-by-step instructions for making and decorating clay pots, along with prompting questions about identity and heritage. 

• Story-making Through Community Binding (April 21)

  Workshop: Led by Regin Igloria, founder of North Branch Projects, this workshop will introduce participants to beginners’ bookbinding techniques that allow for a variety of interpretations of the book form. Single-sheet folds and pamphlet stitching will be taught as initial methods for recording narratives/stories, and participants will come away with technical options to explore how stories can be shared through multiples, distribution, and sharing of work.

  Educational Packet: Public Health Zines. How can art help us talk about problems in our communities? Hull-House Residents made countless strides toward public health reform in Chicago’s 19th Ward, from establishing the city’s first public baths to introducing the first child labor legislation in the state. Using this guide, create and illustrate a zine around a public health issue in your own community.

• Theater Games, Community and Connection (April 21)

  Workshop: Led by Mo Phillips-Spotts, this workshop will demonstrate improv, theater, and group play techniques, first developed from folk and children’s games at Hull-House. The games can be played in small groups and are particularly effective with children, but can be used with mixed age groups and adults.

• Educational Packet: Theater Games for your Classroom: Origins of improv and Community Theater at Hull-House:  Engage with Hull-House’s rich history of theater arts, innovated by Progressive Educators Viola Spolin and Neva Boyd, and explore improvisation exercises as a device for storytelling and collaboration in your classroom.

Meet the StoryMaker Workshop Leaders

Teen Programs

Protest Banner Lending Library

“The Protest Banner Lending Library is a space for people to gain skills to learn to make their own banners. It’s a communal sewing space where we support each other’s voices, and a place where people can check out handmade banners to use in protests...The words and these banners have a growing history. They are made by someone, used in a protest, returned to the library, and then taken by someone else to a different protest. The banners carry the histories of the hands that hold them and the places where they have travelled." —Aram Han Sifentues

Watch Aram talk about the project and see images of families making banners at Hull-House that then spread across the country.