Public Media Institute’s primary headquarters, Co-Prosperity, is an experimental cultural center located in the neighborhood of Bridgeport. “Co-Pro” hosts exhibitions, screenings, presentations, installations, festivals, meetings, and performance programs in its 5,000+ square foot gallery. Each year, Co-Prosperity is home to 80 – 100 events and exhibitions and serves over 25,000 attendees.
The visual art exhibitions and programming in the space has since 2018 been run by a group of majority-BIPOC artists from all over Chicago; they call themselves Co-Prosperity Programming Council (Co-Pro ProCo). This administratively-autonomous body works to evaluate and produce proposals for politically urgent and artistically excellent programming in the gallery. Meeting monthly, they review all exhibition and project proposals on a rolling basis, and plan exhibitions 1-2 years in advance. The ProCo also works with those proposing exhibitions and programming to ensure a range of perspectives and support as they work to build their show or event. They call this process the “buddy system”, and it has been working to grow community connections and extend the council’s strengths, insights, and resources to each project.
For more information on previous and future exhibitions, go to coprosperity.org.
Co-Prosperity Programming Council: Alex Kostiw, Anthony D. Stepter, Bobby Luck, Chris Cloud, Chris Collins, Courtney Mackedanz, Claire Pentecost, David Nasca, Denny Mwaura, Felicia Holman, Frank Peralta, Jesse Malmed, Josh Rios, Josh Cook, Kelly Kaczynski, Kikù Hibino, Lise Haller Baggesen, Manal Kara, Mark Jeffery, Maryam Taghavi, Naomi Hawksley, Nicole Marroquin, Nolan Jimbo, Oscar Solis, Ruby Que, Rose Hernandez, Salem Collo-Julin, Toni Kunst, William Estrada, Scott Campbell, Yi Cao, Zachary Nicol