HomeWorks: Bronzeville

The project focuses on a housing cluster where each property will include both living and work space for artists to support entrepreneurship culture and youth development in Bronzeville. HomeWorks: Bronzeville works primarily with local artists who have family and other strong ties to the community and who identify as creative small business owners.

Since their founding in 2016, HomeWorks: Bronzeville has rehabilitated residential and commercial properties, enhanced green public spaces, engaged neighbors and visitors, and encouraged sustainable growth for artists in the Bronzeville District. A motivator for HomeWorks as it works on rehabbing foreclosed properties is the connection to land, particularly in conversations around people who have lived on the land over generations, and how it relates to real estate development.

HomeWorks: Bronzeville chooses to rehabilitate properties and support small businesses in the Harambee neighborhood portion of the district. Their focus area wraps around the re-emergence of America’s Black Holocaust Museum, within the Griot Building of the Garfield Avenue School redevelopment by Maures Development Group, which opened in 2017. The museum is an anchor institution in the community at a different location. The passing of the museum’s founder Dr. James Cameron in 2006 combined with the country’s economic downturn forced their doors closed. The redeveloped building now provides a new home for this cultural institution as well as 30 affordable apartments and community space.

Bronzeville includes multi-generational and multicultural communities with a constant flux of new people, artists and creatives, businesses, and community leaders. HomeWorks: Bronzeville’s work is informed by historic and intentional disinvestment in communities of color, and seeks to create resources and assets that benefit and empower everyone in Bronzeville.