Chicago Can't Claim Arts Culture While Killing It in Our Schools

I love my City, especially in the summer! This is when Chicago really gets to flex its cultural muscles. World-class restaurants, house music pioneers, hip-hop and blues royalty, street art that turns concrete into canvases. We are dripping with creative genius. You’d be hard pressed to find a block that hasn’t been touched by art in some form.

But step inside too many public schools on the South and West Sides, and you'll see the ugly contradiction behind the city’s artistic shine. Behind all that cultural glow, Black students are being systematically boxed out of meaningful arts education. According to the 2023-24 State of the Arts in CPS report by Ingenuity, only 36% of Black students attend schools rated “Excelling” in the arts. Meanwhile, their White and Asian classmates are coasting through classrooms with fully stocked art studios, full-time teaching artists, and programs that look like actual investments instead of afterthoughts.

This is about who gets to express themselves fully and who’s told to color within the lines. We are taking away one of the strongest tools many students have for academic success, emotional healing, and cultural power. 

Researchers like Dr. Christopher Emdin and Calvin Walton have been shouting this truth for years: arts access, particularly for Black boys, is not “extra.” It’s essential. It’s where healing happens. It’s where resistance grows. It’s where students see themselves reflected with dignity, power, and possibility.

Through my work in the community, I’ve seen what happens when that power is honored. One school I work with partnered with a local dance company to transform a so-called “underutilized” classroom into a full-blown dance studio. What CPS once labeled as waste, they turned into a masterpiece. But here’s the catch: when the bell rings and the building empties, that access disappears. So, where do our youth go after school to keep that spark alive?

The answer? Out-of-School Time (OST) programs. On the Far South Side, I’ve watched OST programs take the scraps CPS leaves behind and spin them into spaces of joy, resistance, and self-discovery. After the pandemic, at the organization I work for, our teens didn’t ask for more homework help or empty talks or resilience from guest speakers; they asked for healing. So WE co-created the Self Care Kickback, a space for them to decompress, create, and meet with mental health professionals without shame or red tape. That’s not a bonus. That’s survival architecture. And yet, we’re expected to keep this going with leftover change and performative praise? 

If Chicago actually cares about educational equity, it needs to stop treating OST programs like side hustles and start recognizing us as co-educators. These programs aren’t accessories to the system. We are patching the holes in the system. Essential infrastructure. Because for many Black students, arts education isn’t a dessert. It’s the main course in a system that’s been starving them of opportunity.

So if this city’s going to keep bragging about being “the greatest freaking city in the world”  it better start acting like it—by supporting and cultivating the people and places doing the work. If we believe in the transformative power of art, then let’s stop with the performance and start making real investments. Not for applause. For impact.

Let us teach with brushes, let us lead with rhyme. The arts aren't extra, it's how our kids climb. -Marcus Flenaugh