August 2023-August 2024
O V E R V I E W
+ S U M M A R Y
This project captures the layers, light and love that was Lafayette, the school that this building was originally constructed for. Lafayette Elementary was a thriving community and school from 1893-2013 and was one of the 50 schools closed that year in Chicago Public Schools. You will not find one community member that would have chosen to close the school, but it was a larger context of the city divesting from the ecosystems that are our neighborhood school in predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods.
The central theme of this project is paying homage to the school that once was in this building, honoring that history and keeping it alive through mural, photography, audio, archived images/documents and history. This building has been ChiArts 2014, but it will always be Lafayette to thousands that came before our community. The mural starts with honoring Rousemary Vega, depicted to the right of the elevator. Rousemary Vega was a Lafayette parent at the time of the closure, alumni and prominent in the community through organizing to keep the school open. Honoring her resilience, passion and love for the community by permanently placing her back in the building when the city forcibly removed her when her family occupied room 111 in efforts to keep the school open. The mural continues to depict the central diasporas and identities of the school around the elevator – Puerto Rican, Colombian, Mexican, Pan-African, Ecuadorian, Honduran, Cuban and Polish. Moving up the stairway, you will find different generations of Lafayette community all surrounded by music notes, given the prominence of the Merit orchestra program in the last 13 years of the school. Up on the landing, you will find a depiction of the protests, all referenced from photographs of students and community from June, 19th 2013 – the day of the closure. Taking you through the “LLL” lettering you will see the start of the photography and archival portion of the project. This portion of the project is a collection of scanned photographs, documents from Lafayette community and archives across the city. You will then find a tree of images taken all in the building in the 2023-2024 school year of all different Lafayette community members. Each of these project participants were interviewed and photographed in spaces that were significant to them. Continuing up the stairs is a comprehensive timeline of Lafayette from specific key events that happened in the building to border US history to best contextualize how Lafayette was always shifting with time. Emphasizing the project’s title, Long Live Lafayette is truly to keep the life of Lafayette alive through education, saved histories, relationships and being honest about the grief and devastation of the 2013 closure.
Long Live Lafayette exposed our community to the world of stories of Lafayette and how the community still grieves the course. A central theme of the project was to utilize storytelling as a form of community building and healing. To best preserve the many stories and a 12 decade long history of Lafayette and make them accessible, LongLiveLafayette.com is a public online archive of 100s of images, articles, hours of audio stories of 27 community members, images of the mural and photographs taken by students of Lafayette community members in 2023/24
Artists that brought this project to life:
M = Mural contributions P = Photography/Archival contributions
Zadie Beaty (M)
Olive Carrasco (M)
Madison Cervantes (M)
Crystal Clemente (M P)
Nicodemus Drummond (M P)
Maya Harrison ( M P)
Cyrus Hernandez-Nunez (P)
Bryson Kellar (M)
Josie Kinane (M)
Adrian Lopez (P)
Lildamarys Lugo (M P)
Amani Manning (M P)
Maya Moore (M)
Marzeillin Morillo (M)
Teagan Murphy (M P)
Kassandra Plata (P)
Estefany Ramirez (M P)
Naillyl Romero (M)
Meela Ruta (M P)
Jacob Serrano (M)
Tevence Smith (M P)
Cailin Stallone (M P)
Victoria Toledo ( P)
Matthew Warren (M)
Devyn Wise (M)
Ms. Rebecca Baruc (M P)
Mr. Patrick Lentz (M P)
Special thanks to:
Mr. Chris Lin for website and student support
Ms. Angela Brown and Mr. Osberto Cruz (ChiArts Security Team) for supporting mural efforts and student safety
Rolando Bermejo and Lamont Watson (ChiArts Engineers) for sharing their knowledge on the structure of the building
Angelica Hernandez (from Digitizing the Barrio) for guidance and wisdom on the archival process
Mr. Arturs Weible and Mr. Andrew Ritchie for their leadership and conducting the Long Live Lafayette concert
Ms. Megan Pietz and David Maruzzella for help with vinyl install
Andrew Bauman for vinyl printing
Mr. Mark Bracken Productions lead at the Long Live Lafayette Concert
ALL of the participants of the project are open to sharing their stories and experiences
The project was made possible with work of our community as it was led by AP Photography and The Mural Class in the Visual Arts department at ChiArts. We (ChiArts) will forever be grateful for the active participation of the Lafayette Community in their openness to be part of the project. Through this active participation and utilizing practices of storytelling and preservation, the project allowed us to educate ourselves on all that was Lafayette and build intentional relationships from ChiArts to Lafayette. 2 different schools at 2 different timelines, but sharing the same building.
ABOUT the P R O J E C T (video)
Interviewees (in order): Nico Drummond, Amani Manning, Tevence Smith, Andrea Gonzales and Mr. Lentz.
Video Filmed & Edited By: Victoria Toledo
Long Live Lafayette 