BKMA is honored to be in community with the Space Share Lab. We have learned so much about community from their founder Toni Anderson and the amazing neighbors who have traversed this space in so many capacities.

Over the last 20 months the Space Share Lab has allowed BKMA to use their space to share food, baby supplies, household items and generally to activate community care and gatherings with our beautiful neighbors on the Southside of Chicago. 

This grant is one way we hope to give back a little and to support all the amazing programming and people who will pass through the Space Share Lab. We hope these funds can allow for more healing, creativity, community building and whatever our siblings at the Space Share Lab deem to be important to better our communities here in Bronzeville and beyond as the Space Share Lab launches their new programming!

SPACE SHARE LAB LAUNCH:  

Currently, there are 12 active Space Share Members ranging from GreenCorp, Chicago’s green jobs training  and placement organization, to birth workers and community first response teams – all dedicated to doing  funded and fee-based trainings in a community-based location. Currently, we are preparing the space for an  official launch with a full range of calendar offerings for the new year.  

We are in the midst of upgrading and enhancing the space to create the physical infrastructure necessary to allow  a dynamic range of activities and healing experiences. Funding will support costs of materials and labor to  operationalize space as well as supplies that can be financially burdensome to invest for emerging practitioners. 

The website, www.spacesharelab.com will feature a Community Calendar of offerings as the space as well as a  Space Share Member page featuring description and contact details for each member, creating an  interdependent design that doesn’t center a monolithic non-profit as center. My hope is to activate several  core Resident Community Practitioners, local healers and organizers who can be fully funded to offer classes  and workshops so cost doesn’t prohibit community members from receiving deep care but still allows for  work to be financially supported without burden falling squarely to practitioner, space holder or seeker. The  Resident Community Practitioners will be designed as follows;  

• Open Call to Community Practitioners are opened to Emerging Adults & Adults via online space  share membership application. Funding will provide Sliding Scale Scholarships to Space Share  Members and fund stipends for facilitated circles and coursework. Stipends will be used to activate  the following specific areas of healing practice;  

• Memory Work & Restorative Narratives – Circles & Retreats Designed to Recall and Reframe  Narratives & Historical Traumas 

• Art Centered Healing – Workshops & Events Centering Performing & Visual Art as Healing  Method  

• Movement Therapies – Workshops & Events Focused on Somatic Healing  

• Youth-Led & Centered Practice & Development – Training & Group Practice for Reframing  Leadership for Whole Humyns  

• First Response Collectives - Groups Providing Products & Services to Community in  Crisis/Acute Need 

• MasterClass Coursework – Deep-Dive Development Coursework (Novel Writing, Financial  Planning, Reiki Master Training, Equity & Race Training, Yoga Teacher Training, other  Certifications)