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Make These Ideas Happen

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Our volunteers and friends of SHoP have a lot of ideas for possible community events, but even though we have the space and resources to do it, we often lack the people and time to make them all a reality!

You can help us turn these ideas into realities! You can be our event organizer and host your event at SHoP!

Come up with the plans, and we’ll give you the space and materials to do it.

Make these ideas happen:

  • The first ever Children’s Theatre Group in Hyde Park. Rarely is there a chance for children in the Hyde Park community to actively engage in the performing arts. Create Hyde Park’s first Children’s Theatre Group! Advertise a few flyers in local elementary schools, make costumes with them, adopt a script, rehearse, and host a benefit children’s play for the community.
  • Saturday flea markets. A place for members of the community to exchange and barter their hand-crafted items, artwork, and used goods with one another. A real, local marketplace to meet local artists, craftsmen, and enthusiasts across the neighborhood.
  • Skill-Shares. Everyone with a unique skill or knowledge to share sits in several rooms across SHoP. People rotate for about 30 minutes or so each person to learn a new skill–be it how to play the guitar, a foreign language, beginning crochet lessons, or tap dancing lessons. Come away from these sessions learning new skills and hobbies.
  • Time Banks. Instead of dollars, exchange time amongst each other. You teach me, I’ll fix your car. You fix my car, I’ll paint your bedroom.
  • Children’s Workshops. We would love to have more children’s workshops and programs at SHoP! Be it in writing, the arts, science, or anything else fun, enriching, and/or educational! Host one, or several, workshops for children at SHoP. Make a one-week science camp, teach children the beginnings of a new language, give them comic-drawing lessons, or whatever you’d like!
  • Dance or Exercise classes. Host dance classes in our third floor aesthetics room. We have a lot of space and mats. You can be our instructor. Feel free to charge a small nominal fee for your members (suggested $2 per session)
  • Mystery Murder Dinner Series. Fenn House is a 100-year-old mansion. What sort of quaint, strange things happened here? Why is there a room with a one-way mirror in the basement? Why are there rooms filled with letters? And who killed Ms. Smith? Use the entire Fenn House to play out your mystery dinner. Invite members of the community and a few actors to play as guests to your mystery dinner (make it a potluck, even!). Disperse clues all around Fenn House. And figure out who did it.

Southside Hub of Production Fundraising

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Southside Hub of Production Fundraising

Information

The Southside Hub of Production exists as one of the few valuable collectives of artists, writers, film makers, craftspeople, educators, and local civic organizations who have come together to create a local cultural hub space in Hyde Park, Chicago. The cultural contribution this affords the community is incredible – people from throughout Hyde Park can come down to spread the word on their latest pieces, political campaign, or community project to ask for collaboration or just to share.

These funds go directly to paying for the overhead costs and rent that make this community sharing possible. On the second floor of the house is a thrift store for the community – one which provides cheap and warm clothes to any who walk into our doors. Filled with intriguing clothes, trinkets, and objects full of character – this shop offers durable goods that also offer a positive environmental impact.

Yet as soon as these funds dry up, a community loses a cultural hub where any idea or object could be found – real or not. In total, our costs amount to $2000 a month for rent and other costs. Since SHoP is entirely volunteer run, all donations go 100% towards the costs of this jazzy operation – not the deep pockets of some administrator. On this level, every donation truly does make a difference.

No matter your penchant – preserving the arts, providing a cheap and interesting community shop, or creating an inter-community dialogue – this cultural hub ought to appeal to the best of our passions as human beings. It is these campaigns, these small donations that often go unnoticed by the general public – that one micro donation can change the shape of an individual’s life and of an entire community.

Toward a Union of Public Artists

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Toward a union of public artists we have invited artists into our space to activate our house with public programming throughout the length of our exhibition. See below for our calendar of events programmed through the current exhibition.

The month of October will be one of exploration on the nature of artistic independence and community interdependence, dedicated to informal education and an investigation of the Public Artist.

Public Artist-one who acts, thinks, and/or learns publicly and in some way exhibits his/her performance of daily life, or entangles it with public life. The Public Artist might be one whose daily endeavors, say, seeking studio space, finding a place to live, eating dinner, raising children, seeking education for himself or her children… all become endeavors that are shared, informed by broader needs than ones own, and pursued with some degree of aesthetic or poetic sensibility.

Home Gallery and SHoP present: Form Follows Function off a short pier

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Home gallery

Each commission reflects both a practical and social wish, the fulfillment of which is tacitly bound up in the artistic process. The exhibition further explores home life as an arena that necessitates intervention and rupture from outside; domestic life is an incrementally self-imposed set of activities, habits, attitudes and rituals, born of archaic patterns, personal history; social life as an art form; the concept of home as the place most familiar, but founded upon the imaginary.

Opening: Saturday July 20th
6:00 to 10:00 pm

Closing Brunch: Sunday September 22nd

11:00 am to 3:00 pm

We look forward to seeing you here!

Ad-Hoc Playground at Elm Park from August 15th to August 18th!

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SHoP and the friends of Elm Park invite artists, musicians, performers, storytellers, educators, adults and children of all ages to participate in our first 4 day Ad-Hoc Playground. Since SHoP no longer has a physical space, we are thinking of an outdoor community center without walls with a constantly evolving, additive and participatory process of engagement with our public space. Come out, bring cardboard for a huge Fort Cardboard, make an interactive installation or project or come visit ones made by other artists. We hope to have an outdoor concert night Saturday evening and ongoing creative interventions and interactions with the park and it’s neighboring community, focusing on how we can more creatively use our public spaces for social gathering and learning sites, playscapes, living rooms, exhibition space and performance venues without big funding

History: The Ad-Hoc Playground is SHoP’s second investigation into refining a replicable model for the creative transformation of public parks, empty lots and otherwise underutilized public spaces into spontaneously un-programmed play-gardens that may foster newly enriching, but otherwise unlikely, relationships among community members and continue a conversation that meaningfully addresses the humanistic needs of the surrounding community.

ELM PARK IS OPEN: from 8:00 am to 11:00 every day.
Ad-Hoc Playground invites participation on these days:

(8/15) THURSDAY
(8/16) FRIDAY
(8/17) SATURDAY
(8/18) SUNDAY

We will also have a community board for sign ups.

SHoP

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A donation-and-volunteer run cultural community hub in Hyde Park, Chicago.

New hours to be determined
Open during all events or contact Laura Shaeffer for an appointment.

Wanted
SHoP volunteers and renters for studio and storage space. Contact for more information.

Shingle Tabbing: Sizes and Measures for Modern Roofing

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Most roofers have top have an excellent understanding of spatial dimensions and mathematics. This is where those difficult lessons in trigonometry are actually applied to some extent in a practical setting. Shingle applications rely on at least four main styles. They need to fit like a grand roofing puzzle, and any one of the below fits could be present in any roofing shingle make.

Three-Tab: A Three-tab allotment actually has only two tabs inserted, with the third being represented by the end of the shingle. They fit together like a tight puzzle, but these tabs are not always considered the most resilient to wind. They boast a decent fire rating. They are also a bit larger in measurement (in general) and require less shingles per square footage compared to other tab frames.

Multi-Tab: Multi- tab shingle types are very similar to three-tab. The main difference is that they have a minimum of three inserts, and these inserts have different depths and cuts into the tab. This gives it perhaps the highest wind resistance rating available.

No-cutout: this is rather self explanatory. It boasts no actual cuts into the tab at all. Though it would seem that this is the least resilient to wind, it is actually the most. The reason is that the shingles are laid in a way that takes fully advantage of the frame of the asphalt. They are usually the heaviest per shingle as well as having the least exposure vertically. This gives them a durable and molded form against the surface of the roof to deter wind resistance.

RoofingLaminated: Laminated asphalt roofs are also called dimensional. This is because they are the thickest and mightiest of all asphalt Roofing company types. The bottom half of the shingle is often three times thicker than the other half. This gives it a very full and realized depth per shingle.

Shingle Tabbing

A Roofing company applies shingles that fit one of these four main styles. Each one is suitable for a different roofing style approach as well as the region the home is part of. After determining the roof style, it is smart to know these properly utilized measurements and tabs that fit the best

The Tips and Tricks of Painting Professionals

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If you want to makeover your home’s interior, painting provides you with a whole new look. The problem with doing the painting yourself is in not knowing the techniques and tricks of the pros. The following will cover how professional manitoba custom home builders ensures the virtually flawless paint job. custom home builders

Clean – Clean the surface you intend to paint. Scrub off dirt, grease, and grime so you can start with a clean canvas.

Fill – Use joint compound or Spackle to fill holes in the walls. Sand the area to smooth it after filling the holes.

Sand – Walls need to be sanded down and smoothed before painting to prevent them from showing through your paint.

Primer – Use a tinted primer before applying your paint. This is a trick professional painters all the time.

Paint extender – How do the pros get that finished, smooth look without paint brush marks? These marks are called lap marks and the trick to preventing that from happening is in using a paint extender to slow the drying time.

Ceiling – Making sure you avoid getting paint on your texture ceiling requires that you scrape off the texture along the top of the wall with a screwdriver. This simple trick allows you to get a good cut-in without painting the ceiling.

Canvas drop cloths – Invest in real canvas drop cloths to prevent spills and splatters from seeping through to your carpet or bare floors. Sheets will not do the trick.

Paint one wall at a time – While you may think cutting in the corners and around the top and bottom of all the walls saves time, it will not blend well in the end. A seamless look comes from painting one whole wall at a time.

Consistent color – The tint varies between paint cans, so if you have more than one gallon of the same color paint, mix them together your into one large bucket to ensure consistent color.

Other tips include washing the paint rollers before using them to prevent fuzzy spots on your walls and do not dip your paint brush and wipe off the paint to avoid dripping. Paint your walls with a fully loaded paint brush and let the canvas drop cloths do their job. Using these professional painting company tricks and techniques to make your walls look professionally painted. Get the best from winnipeg painting companies. Stratford Price are the best Painters Winnipeg has.

The Importance of Hiring a Professional Painting Company

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As a house ages, both it’s interior and exterior surfaces reflect the trials of time. The wear and tear put upon a house through the motions of everyday life eventually become noticeable. A blemish on the wall can just as easily represent a favorable memory as an unfortunate damaging event. There always comes a time when a homeowner is ready to make a serious change and the options of either remodeling or painting can be quite the serious decision. As the much cheaper option, hiring a reputable painting company to strip surfaces, patch damage, and apply a striking new color can give a home the rejuvenation it needs.

Painting a home’s exterior is one of the simplest ways to improve curb appeal. Painting can be performed by a homeowner, but it is important to realize that there are many factors outside the average skill set that are needed to successfully complete a paint job. To start with, the correct type of paint must be chosen for the surface in question. The consistency used on wood varies Painting Pro-greatly from that of metal or vinyl siding. Colder temperatures make for faster corrosion so for example vinyl siding Winnipeg would deteriorate a lot faster than siding done in San Francisco. Painting Professionals Chipping old paint and thoroughly sanding must also be performed in order to ensure a smooth painting surface. Hiring professional painters to evaluate the situation and utilize the correct materials can be the difference between a job that lasts one year verses twenty five.

Interior painting uses many of the same techniques, but there is much less damage from the elements to deal with. More than likely, an interior room is being painted for a change in design rather than to repair damage. Utilizing the services of a professional painting company can pay off greatly when a room really needs to stand out. The painters will know what shades of paint work best with the lighting, can select the perfect roller nap and brush style to create a nice and smooth coat on the wall, and are very good at keeping the mess away from unwanted areas. To top things off, their patching and seam sealing abilities are far superior to the average homeowner. All in all, there is no better way to make over a home than employing the skills of a talented painting company.

Don’t Give Up on the Kitchen

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If you’re like me, then you’ve likely come into contact with the biggest problem that kitchens have to offer – that there isn’t enough room to do and/or store things. Many times, whoever is in the kitchen will get frustrated, either because there isn’t enough room for them to cut the veggies, or because they can’t find somewhere to store the oatmeal that they bought for making cookies. But that doesn’t mean that you have to give up on your kitchen!

Sprucing Up and Saving Space

Space is at a premium, so you need to do what you can in order to make sure that you have as much room as possible while you’re preparing food. Here are some suggestions that you can use in order to do so.

– Go through your kitchen and have a good old fashioned purge. If there are kitchen gadgets that you haven’t touched in a year or more, then it’s likely time for you to get rid of them. Sell them, give them to friends or family, or donate them to charity. Also get rid of any silverware and plates that you don’t ever use.

– Rearrange all of the cupboards in a logical fashion. The things that you use the most should be in reach. The things that you rarely use can be relocated to higher areas that you may need a stepladder to get to.

– To save on counter space, don’t leave appliances on the counter. Make sure that each appliance has a home that it can go to when you need to utilize the area. If you have something like a tabletop mixer, consider building in one of those units that allow you to hide it away and take it out as you need it.

– If you cannot build more counter space without causing an issue, then consider purchasing an island for your home. Islands can be incredibly attractive, and they can be moved to wherever you may need to use them in your kitchen. You can even get them to match your counters and other kitchen accessories, and they’re fairly inexpensive when compared to all new counters.

Don’t give up on your kitchen quite yet! While it can be really frustrating to try and make sure that everything has a home and that you have room to do what you need to do, taking the time to reorganize and rearrange can be a huge time saver and space saver.

Sprucing Up and Saving Space