Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/175878
FROM LEFT: Groupon cofounder Brad Keywell created Chicago Ideas Week as a grassroots initiative in 2011. CIW now operates year-round from its headquarters in the Lightbank offices. participants in Ideas Week? Imran Khan: I started teaching at William R. Harper High School, which is considered one of the toughest schools in the country. I began to realize there was a huge gap in social and cultural understanding and connectivity, and it's hard to describe the impact of that isolation— how dramatic an effect that has on the future of our city and of so many people's lives and their understanding of what is possible. I was teaching kids who had never been in elevators, never seen the lake, never been to grocery stores. I started to really attack the problem with a couple of teachers [to expose kids to experiences in the city]. When we met everyone at Chicago Ideas Week, we were on the same wavelength: We combined our ideas and started serving about 25 kids in a single school; now, we're serving 360 kids in six schools. Teachers do great work, but Ideas Week gave us the platform where we can have the megaphone, we can tell the story, and things blew up. Patricia Cox: I was looking for inspiration and information around the things that mattered to me: urban issues, education, healthcare, culture, and interacting with the community in a meaningful way. I looked at the first lineup of Chicago Ideas Week, and I was like, "Check! Check! Check!" Every issue was being explored in multiple dimensions, which was important. I was also starting to invest in small companies— Impact Engine, Accelerator, 1871—and felt like CIW hit on all the things I was thinking about in a way that expanded it. I wanted to be part of it and see if I could help build it in some way. Leslie Bluhm: Also, the way that Brad created it is much more accessible to people than your typical ideas conference. A lot of them are unbelievable events, but because of location and cost, they're not accessible to everybody. One of the beauties of Chicago Ideas Week is it's absolutely accessible. MA: To the casual observer, there may not necessarily be an awareness of Ideas Week's mission to effect social change. How did that aspect of CIW come about? JM: After [we proved ourselves in] year one, we sat down with key partners and they challenged us to choose one issue to tackle. We were coming off a summer that had extreme levels of violence. We [decided on] an initiative around how to get guns off the streets, and we did an official partnership with the City of Chicago and Twitter, [asking the question "What if Chicago got illegal guns off its streets?]. It was the first time any campaign had been done with a tri-partnership like that. We went from nobody really realizing what the platform was and that it existed to a half a billion media impressions worth of exposure. The city of Philadelphia ended up creating the Philly Peace Plan, a campaign in reaction to What If Chicago, launched just two days after we launched. Now we're talking about [a largerscale] phase two of the gun initiative. MA: It's unique that CIW is a private venture, and yet you're working hand in hand with the public sector to make things happen. How does that dynamic work? Jimmy Odom: To me that's how it should be. It's so strange that we think we should simply elect officials and say, "Hey, you have great ideas: Go, step back, and watch this develop." What could we expect to happen other than us being disappointed with what they come back with? But, if we have a collective group of intelligent, motivated individuals who come together and say, "Not only have we elected officials, but we're going to come up with ideas, think outside the box, and not be restricted because we have no chains," real solutions can be presented much more efficiently. We should not be detached from solutions. JM: This city has no lack of people hounding them with great ideas about how to make everything better, not realizing the restrictions that exist; instead, what we look to do is say, "What are the areas in which you need our help?" BK: If we had started [CIW] with an agenda—if there had been any politics or partisanship or whatever, none of which I have any interest in being part of—CIW wouldn't be what it is. By virtue of it being a 501(c)(3)... it's hard to take issue with the quality of discourse that comes out of what we're doing. Mike McGee: The Starter League has been working with the city and the mayor specifically to show teachers web development so they can educate their kids how to code. One of the things that the mayor can't do is teach people web development. We can do that. But, he has MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM 126-131_MA_FEAT_Culture_October13.indd 129 129 9/17/13 4:59 PM