Chicago Black Social Culture Map (CBSCM) Announces: SHOWING UP: AN ODE TO BLACK MUTUAL AID, PARTIES, AND PLEASURE
Date/Time
Date(s) - 05/18/2024
2:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Location
First Church of the Brethren
Categories
MAY 18th, 2024, The Chicago Black Social Culture Map (CBSCM) project is proud to present the inaugural
event of our highly anticipated new season, “Showing Up: An Ode to Black Mutual Aid, Parties, and Pleasure”. This
event will feature artistic performances, engaging panel discussions, on-site archiving and conclude with a vibrant dance
party led by Chicago’s own, world-renowned DJ DUANE POWELL, all taking place at the historic First Church of the
Brethren, where Dr. Martin Luther King’s completed residency during the Chicago Freedom Movement.
In January 2024, Honey Pot Performance (HPP) – a Chicago-based performing arts nonprofit – began a new space
partnership with First Church. This collaboration represented an opportunity to deepen HPP’s evolving artistic practice of
long-form, community engaged performance and cultural archivism on Chicago’s Westside through extended
initiatives like the Chicago Black Social Culture Map.
Our May 18th program honors the resilience of Chicago’s Black social communities ability to “show up” and support each
other through celebrations, gatherings, and mutual aid networks. We also recognize the profound role that Black social
dance, culture, pleasure, and joy have in fostering community, sustainability, and growth. The event will showcase
legendary Black social clubs from the 80s and 90s including First Fridays, 601 Productions, and PG Productions, to
contemporary initiatives like Party Noire, the pop up project Dirty Laundry, and Chicago’s roller skating community.
Archival media will also be featured as a constant complement to each program in multiple ways to create immersive
environments, such as backdrops to performances, and as part of panels to be unpacked live with experts. Our program
partner, Media Burn, will share special videos from their archive that highlight themes presented in this year’s
CBSCM programs!
Chicago Black Social Culture Map archiving stations will be accessible throughout the event, inviting the community to
contribute their social-life artifacts to be digitally scanned and photographed. We welcome any tangible memories,
including vintage photos, flyers, fashionable attire, and other ephemera that holds significance to Chicago’s rich Black
social culture history. Attendees are encouraged to register and sign up for an archiving appointment here. Additional program dates will take
place at First Church with a 2-day festival on November 16-17, 2024 celebrating 10 years of the Chicago Black Social
Culture Map initiative. We look forward to your presence!
**Scheduled Events**
❖ 2:15pm: Welcome
❖ 2:30 – 3pm: Excerpt from Aaliyah Cristina’s Praise Mother project
❖ 3:15 – 4:15pm: Panel 1: 80s/90s Black Social Clubs
Moderator: Pam Taylor (PG Productions)
Panelists: Howard Brookins, Jr (601 Productions), Curtis McDaniels (601 Productions), Earl Caldwell (First Fridays)
❖4:20-5:20pm: Panel 2: Critical Collectives: Building Community, Embracing Pleasure
Moderator: Special Guest
Panelists: Sylvia and Augie Emuwa (Dirty Laundry), Dr. Nick Alder (Party Noire)
❖ 5:30-7pm: Dance Party with DJ Duane Powell
❖ 2:00-7pm: Community Archiving Day with CBSCM – Bring your flyers, fashion, photos, stories, and other artifacts
representing Chicago’s social culture. Our team will be on site to digitize artifacts, record oral histories, and
demonstrate how to use and add entries to the Chicago Black Social Culture Map site. ❖ Special Performance: Poet and Founder of Front Porch Arts Center, Keli Stewart!
About Honey Pot Performance
Honey Pot Performance is a creative collaborative chronicling Afro-feminist and Black diasporic subjectivities amidst the
pressures of contemporary global life. Honey Pot Performance enlists modes of creative expressivity to examine the
nuances of human relationships including the ways we negotiate identity, belonging and difference in our lives and cultural
memberships. For more on Honey Pot Performance– visit honeypotperformance.org. Chicago Black Social Culture Map–A Honey Pot Performance Initiative
A collaboration between Honey Pot Performance, the Modern Dance Music Research and Archiving Foundation, Actively
Archiving, and a team of local cultural historians and cultural producers, the Chicago Black Social Map exists to preserve
Chicago’s black social cultural lineage – past, present, and future – through an experience that is both fun and informative.
The Chicago Black Social Culture Map (CBSCM) archive is designed by Honey Pot Performance (HPP) to reach a wide
demographic, from the casually curious to academic experts. The archive documents the lived experiences of Black
Chicagoans from the Great Migration through the rise of House music, giving this chronically under-documented
constituency an opportunity to see their stories and histories represented as written record and archive. The act of
creating and sharing the CBSCM archive not only serves to insert this important segment of American history into the
official canon, but also engages those whom the archive represents, inviting them to actively help to build and shape this
historical record, and increasing their agency from passive audience into participant and history-maker.
For press inquiries, contact
Abra Johnson, Marketing Director, Chicago Black Social Culture Map
amj@honeypotperformance.org
312.420.6397