Awakenings Cohort

Make Awakenings a Home for Your Healing

We believe art can be an effective, transformative tool to help survivors heal, often in ways not readily available or financially feasible through traditional healthcare practice. Research suggests a shared, communal healing experience is essential to fighting the grief, isolation and misplaced guilt that can accompany trauma. Awakenings cohorts allow our survivors to heal together in a safe, trauma-informed environment, while building a creative community.

This residency has allowed me to take a step in my healing journey that I never had before… and I made some wonderful friends. The impact of being in a community of survivors is immeasurable.

Survivor Testimonial

Many people are gathered looking at a multimedia artwork installation, with soft pastel paints, collage, prints, and multimedia artwork

There is a multimedia art installation with a painting, framed artwork and a cabinet with a tea kettle, a person with a pink hat is crouched down looking inside the white cabinet. A tall person's wearing a red shirt back faces us as they look at artwork on a white wall with an orange pattern

A woman with blonde hair speaks into a microphone in front of a crown

A black and white multimedia paper installation is situation in the bay of two windows, the installation reads "words have power"

The picture includes a lamp lighting a black and white print of a young girl with waves in the background. The wall behind this print is painted in a mural like way with black swirls, collage, and multimedia work

Three women smile at the camera, behind them is a multimedia art installation

View pictures from our Fall 2023 Cohort Art Walkthrough

Cohort Messaging Templates (insta post size) (2)

Connect and Grow in our Cohort

As a survivor, [the cohort] has impacted my journey healing and allowed me to look at my trauma from different angles and not see revisiting it as a backstep.

Survivor Testimonial

Together, cohort members will complete a curriculum of weekly art workshops facilitated by Chicago-based teaching artists who are trained in trauma-informed practices.

Workshop activities will be accessible to all skill levels and easily replicated at home using commonly available art supplies.

Let us tell you more…

Each cohort will include 10-12 survivors.
There is a $1000 stipend for each cohort member.
Awakenings will make “open studio hours” available for cohort members to work on their projects in unstructured time.
Each cohort’s programming will be 8 weeks long (to include an introductory/closing session and six weekly workshops), and will include artmaking in a variety of modes and media, including collages, papermaking, printmaking and creative writing.
At the end of each cohort, we will host a public event celebrating the work and experiences of our survivors, and giving them the opportunity to showcase their art in our gallery space in Chicago’s Ravenswood neighborhood.
The cohort will develop an annual engagement plan, which we will use to facilitate long-term relationships between Awakenings and future cohort participants.