Chicago is not the violent and rudderless place that the news, pop culture or President Donald Trump makes it out to be, some of the city’s top cultural figures said Thursday at a city tourism event.
At the invitation of Choose Chicago, the city’s official tourism bureau, visual artist Theaster Gates, Plain White T’s lead singer Tom Higgenson and actor, producer and Steppenwolf co-artistic director Glenn Davis made the case that Chicago is the place to be for creatives.
“There are moments when people want to stigmatize the city, and I have to say, ‘Oh, you just don’t know the beautiful things there,” said Gates, an internationally acclaimed visual artist who was born and raised on the West Side.
Although he came from a family that didn’t have much, they were always proud, Gates told a room of about 100 marketing and communications professionals from cultural and business groups.
“A big part of my practice is the demonstration that there are great things happening all over the city,” Gates said. “It requires people who really love [and] have a pride of place. … There’s a real correlation between my love of Black things and my love of Chicago.”
Thursday’s event, planned months before any talk of the National Guard coming to Chicago began, was intended to be a discussion about elevating the city’s narrative as a global hub for arts and culture.
But with hundreds of federal agents expected to carry out early-morning immigration operations, the need to portray Chicago in a more positive light nationally feels more urgent, some said.
“Our tourism numbers are looking good regardless of what’s happening in the world,” Lisa Nucci, Choose Chicago’s chief marketing officer, told a reporter Thursday.
About 41% of the visitors coming to the city cite the culture as the reason for their visit, according to survey data collected by the tourism group.
“This narrative about Chicago will continue, and the National Guard and ICE coming in is just yet another example about how we need to be ready to go and to promote Chicago to combat that polarizing narrative,” Nucci said.
Thursday’s panel was hosted at the Driehaus Museum and moderated by Poetry Foundation President Michelle T. Boone. Each of the featured artists hails from Chicago.
For Higgenson, who was born in suburban Villa Park, playing in a basement band with his high school friends and attending shows every weekend at venues like Metro, Double Door and Fireside Bowl were important steps in his development as a musician. He said he didn’t come from a well-off family.
“As a kid that loved music, there was always just so much to do,” he said. “[I’ve] kind of been around the world at this point, but … there’s not too many places like Chicago.”
While he never played in the school band, Higgenson said having music education as a part of his school’s curriculum was key to making a career in music a real possibility.
“One of the things that I’m always kind of p – – – – – off about or advocating [for] is music in schools,” he said, especially as music programs across the country are getting slashed. “Music is, I feel, just as much of a core thing and has as much benefit to you as any subject.”
Davis, who is a member of the Broadway cast of the Tony Award-winning Steppenwolf play “Purpose,” recalled a conversation from his childhood in which he told his grandfather he wanted to be an actor. At the time, his grandfather worked as director of real estate for Cook County.
“I don’t know anything about that world,” Davis recalls his grandfather telling him, “but I do know the Steppenwolf.”
Shortly after that conversation, he went to the Steppenwolf for an introduction to theater and saw his first show, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
“I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do,’” Davis told the audience. “I want to take the art that we do here, I want to take it around the world, and I want people to know and think of Chicago as a center of culture.
”The arts, since the beginning of time, are a reflection of what goes on in society,” Davis told a reporter.
“We have to respond with our art. We have to put on stage what we think is valuable and good,” he said. “But it’s also a reflection of our values, our morality, our ethics, our civic duty to say, ‘Hey, this is how we feel about what’s happening currently in in the world, in our city, in our country.’ “
Hours after the event, Choose Chicago launched “All for the Love of Chicago,” a social media campaign that aims to highlight unfiltered stories by everyday Chicagoans. The tourism group hopes residents will share them on Instagram and TikTok.
“This gives an opportunity for us to tell the story that only we can,” Nucci said. “And I think there’s never been a better time than today.”