Workforce Development

Chicago Workers’ Collaborative, photo courtesy Jasmin Cardenas.

The Chicago Workers’ Collaborative (CWC) is focused on organizing to improve conditions and policies for low-wage workers. Its mission is to “promote the creation of stable, living wage jobs with racial and gender equity for temporary staffing workers.” Theatre activist Jasmin Cardenas first connected with the CWC through the Lookinglass Theatre, which in 2016 mounted a play about workers’ conditions. After the show closed, Jasmin began independently offering Theatre of the Oppressed workshops to CWC members, with the goal of seeing if Theatre of the Oppressed techniques could help CWC strengthen its organizing. Initial programing showed that CWC members were able to build confidence and leadership skills, process trauma, and raise awareness for worker abuse. In 2018, the team received a grant through the Center for Performance and Civic Practice’s Catalyst Initiative to continue their work, and the group named itself the “Workers Resistance Theater” (a longer case study from that grant is available here).

Requests from worker-organizers continued to increase given the numerous positive benefits the program was having on them individually and as a collective body. Pieces of theater are now integrated into protests, performances in parks and other cultural sites around Chicago, and worker meetings. This theatrical technique has become a valuable organizing tool within this labor organization where Jasmin continues to partner as an independent artist. Worker leaders in the theater group have now worked with other worker groups in the Chicagoland area training them to use Theatre of the Oppressed as an organizing tool in their own organizations. 

Photo courtesy Clark Davis WV Public Broadcasting.

Coalfield Development is a non-profit organization in West Virginia that aims to end the intergenerational cycle of poverty in Appalachia through a holistic model of economic and workforce development. Coalfield Development provides professional, academic, and personal training for chronically unemployed community members, and simultaneously oversees a family of social enterprises in fields such as solar energy, sustainable construction, mine-land reclamation, agriculture, and artisan trades. These social enterprises generate desirable jobs for their program participants as well as revenue to support the organization’s operations. Coalfield Development’s social enterprise training program offers a 33-6-3 workforce development model which places an emphasis on the holistic needs of each worker. As part of this program, “crew members” agree to a 2.5-year contract culminating in an Associate’s Degree, and includes 33 hours of paid work, 6 credit hours of higher education, and 3 hours of personal development mentorship each week. 

Photo courtesy Southwest Folklife Alliance

VozFrontera is an initiative for youth engagement, leadership, and local arts incubation in Nogales, Arizona, a border town where many youth leave after high school because they have trouble connecting with employment opportunities locally. Through documentary arts mentoring and artist- and scholar-in-residence programs, as well as startup entrepreneurship training for local youth, VozFrontera furthers the mission “to build more equitable and vibrant communities by celebrating the everyday expressions of culture, heritage, and diversity in the Greater Southwest.” Founded by the Southwest Folklife Alliance (SFA) following an iterative community engagement process and local needs assessment, VozFrontera operates within the community of Nogales through a series of projects and initiatives in partnership with SFA, the University of Arizona, and other local organizations and individuals. While conducting the local needs assessment, SFA heard from residents and leaders that they want to build stronger connections between older and younger generations and for local youth to gain skills and access to economic opportunities in Nogales.

Now, VozFrontera regularly connects participants with artists, entrepreneurs, and leaders from a variety of industries, providing mentorship that expands and strengthens local youth’s social networks and empowers them to become Nogales’ next generation of leaders.

Photo courtsey Juxtaposition Arts

Juxtaposition Arts (JXTA) is a youth-powered social enterprise and community-rooted art and design center based in North Minneapolis. The organization was founded in 1995 by Roger and DeAnna Cummings and Peyton Russell to address conventional schools’ failure to engage Black, Indienous, and people of color (BIPOC) youth meaningfully, and to provide participants with the tools necessary to develop their creativity into viable career paths. Twenty-five years later, what started as an after-school program has now evolved into a multi-faceted cultural institution that employs over 70 young artist and designers and 30 teaching professionals, and supports hundreds of young people across Minneapolis and beyond to develop the skills, connections, and confidence they need to become leaders in the creative industries. With an emphasis on hands-on learning and self-determination, JXTA provides free after-school and summer training programs for youth ages 8-21, and year-round paid apprenticeships in six revenue-earning production studios called JXTA labs that allow for young adults ages 14-21 to work side-by-side professionals in graphic design, textiles and screen printing, ceramics, public art, environmental design, urban planning, and community engagement. JXTA labs earned over $500k in 2019 and are on track to beat that in 2020.  The organization also offers apprentices the opportunity to participate in a concurrent college and career pathways program that offers additional mentorship, workshops, internships, and field trips as a way to deepen skill building and pipelines to college and careers.