Located among pristine woodlands in the Ryerson historic home in Riverwoods, Il., Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods promotes the importance of nature for nurturing personal and community wellbeing, cultivating creativity, and inspiring learning.
Category: Uncategorized
Two upcoming opportunities for artists
Submit Your Artwork to Brushwood
CALL FOR ART: At Ease In Nature
Brushwood Center invites artists in all media and of all levels with a US Military background (current service member, veteran, or their immediate family members or caregivers) to submit their work for consideration in our upcoming exhibition, “At Ease In Nature.”
In 2015, Brushwood Center began its At Ease initiative, offering programs for Veterans, Service Members and their families designed to empower their wellbeing through nature-based art, music, and photography workshops. The only program in the region offering a nature-based approach, At Ease helps build skills in creative expression and provides Veterans with access to mental health support. Through this exhibition, we will feature work created during our At Ease programs, as well as work inspired by experiences in nature from other members of this community.
Important Dates:
Submission Deadline: October 1, 2024
Notification of Acceptance: October 2, 2024
Deadline for Delivery of Artworks: October 30, 2024
Exhibition Dates: November 3 – December 1, 2024
Opening Reception: November 3, 2024, 1-3pm
Location: Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods, 21850 N. Riverwoods Rd., Riverwoods, IL 60015.
Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods is looking for Artists and Artisans to sell their work at our 8th annual Nature-Inspired Holiday Market. The market will start with a 7-day online sale, Saturday, November 30th – Friday, December 6th followed by a 2 day in person sale at Brushwood Center on Saturday & Sunday, December 7-8, 2024. Artists do not need to be present during the in-person sale (we handle everything from set-up to shipping), though volunteering is highly encouraged. Items may include but are not limited to: fine art prints or small original artwork, notecards, jewelry, accessories, personal care items, functional objects for the home or garden, decorative items, toys, artisanal food items, ornaments and holiday related decorations and items. THE MAJORITY OF YOUR WORK MUST IN SOME WAY BE RELATED TO NATURE AND/OR THE ENVIRONMENT (subject matter, materials used, function, etc.), but we encourage a wide variety of styles, media and interpretations of that theme. Please note this is a curated show, and artists will be selected upon the basis of quality of work, relationship to theme, and how their items fit with other artists and items in the show. This is an open call – feel free to share this with anyone you feel might be interested!
Behind the Scenes: Convergence: Health Equity in a Changing Climate
With Parker Nelson, Director of Public Programs and Music
During the interview for my position at Brushwood Center, I remember sharing my interest in building music programs that highlight Brushwood’s work in the environmental and community action spaces. Little did I know that within my first three years on the team, I would have the opportunity to build such a program. Not only that, but within the short time of being a part of the Brushwood family, I’ve met an abundance of artist networks that are working together to build a musical program that is unlike any other!
Convergence: Health Equity in a Changing Climate is the first performance program designed by Brushwood Center in collaboration with Chicago chamber music ensemble, Black Moon Trio. In addition to the performers, Convergence has a robust roster of collaborators that include world-premiere compositions by Marc Mellits and Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate; original illustrations and visual art by Natashna Anderson, Kelley Clink, Laura Horan, Lokosh, and Naimah Thomas; as well as the support of countless friends of Brushwood Center.
Convergence tells the story of Brushwood’s recently released Health, Equity, and Nature: A Changing Climate in Lake County. This report links localized health equity data to broader, national trends. Throughout this 90-minute performance, audiences will watch and listen to the interconnections between systemic inequities, environmental racism, and health through original music, illustration, and storytelling.
The opening of the program features an Indigenous perspective on land stewardship scored by the music of Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate. We then explore how communities can simultaneously face tremendous injustices and thrive by using Lake County as a model; highlighting both its natural beauties and systemic barriers. This presentation of quantitative data helps audiences to understand the “what”, “where”, and “why” of these issues, all accompanied by the world premiere of Black Moon by Marc Mellits.
The second half of the program is entirely dedicated to the rich qualitative, or story-telling, assets gathered while collecting health equity data. Each of the project’s visual artists have created synthesized graphic novels from real stories shared by residents of Lake County, Illinois. They explore transformative experiences in nature, recommendations for action, and more.
Convergence is remarkably unique. You’re not likely to find a program of a similar caliber at even the most prestigious of performing arts venues. It is truly a statement of Brushwood Center’s growing reach and the power of collaboration to evoke change. We give special thanks to Healing Illinois and the Illinois Arts Council Agency for supporting this work. Don’t miss your chance to see Convergence: Health Equity in a Changing Climate! The world-premiere performance takes place on June 28, 2024 at 7pm at the Gorton Center in Lake Forest, Illinois, with additional performance locations to follow. Tickets available at brushwoodcenter.org/convergence!
The Power of Partnership: Building a Hub for Healing with Clean Power Lake County
By Frank Pettis, Community Organizer in Lake County, IL
Brushwood Center and Clean Power Lake County will soon open a new shared office in Downtown Waukegan, with the goal of expanding both organizations’ impact in Northern Lake County.
My name is Frank Pettis. I’m a proud Waukeganite, I’m also proud to be a Community Organizer with Clean Power Lake County (CPLC), a community-driven nonprofit organization committed to local action to ensure clean air, clean water, and healthy soil in Lake County.
I began organizing in 2013, the same year CPLC began organizing to close the NRG coal fired power plant on Waukegan’s Lakefront. Like CPLC, I was motivated by the harm being caused to the most vulnerable members of my community.
In Chicago at the time, I began organizing to expose the school-to-prison-pipeline – a concept that highlights the systemic inequity in American education. While many schools serving middle class and affluent Americans acclimate their students for success in higher education, other schools serving low-income and racialized student populations look and feel more like the carceral system.
In New York I worked on the SaveNYCHA campaign to slow the privatization of public housing in a city experiencing its highest rates of homelessness since its founding.
My work as an organizer has always been guided by a sense of interconnectedness. The strongest of us, and the weakest, are indelibly connected. Our health depends on the health of our community. The health of our community depends on the health of hundreds, thousands of other communities. And now, my work as an organizer has led me home to Waukegan to work towards addressing inequity that has plagued my family and my community for far longer than I’ve been alive.
My grandparents were sharecroppers who migrated to Waukegan during the last wave of the Great Migration. They were drawn by jobs at manufacturing facilities and processing plants that are now superfund sites: an EPA designation for the nation’s most contaminated land. The same companies that provided them with jobs also harmed their health and disrupted their sacred relationship to nature that sustained them through hard times and government neglect.
In Lake County, being black or brown and poor has become a serious health hazard. We die younger. Data from the Health Equity and Nature: A Changing Climate in Lake County, Illinoist shows a 15-year gap in life expectancy between the residents of North Chicago and Lake Forest. I see this trend of premature death in my own family. I have lost many friends and family members to violence and preventable disease. We are struggling, yearning for deeper connections to each other and to the earth.
Partnership between CPLC and Brushwood Center sets the foundation for a culture of building together, rooted in shared values and mutual respect. In partnership with other community members we can begin remembering our sacred connections to the green and blue spaces that persevere through pollution and exploitation. Nature isn’t something way out there past the highways, on the other side of the Navy base. It’s all around us. We can search for and find healing beneath the trees that shade our neighborhoods.
Our shared space will be a hub for healing, for remembering, for empowering the members of our community to architect the solutions to our problems. It will be a space where we come together to collectively reimagine our communities and our natural spaces. Our ideas will spring from our shared understanding of the interdependence of human and environmental health and question how existing systems benefit from inequity in both. What would our lakefront be like if it was designed for public access and enjoyment instead of industrial exploitation? How might our diets be different if we could safely eat the fish from our streams and Lake Michigan? What might a clean energy future look like in a Lake County committed to health equity? Those most impacted are also most capable of affecting positive change.
This partnership can become the nucleus for a broad and united front pursuing health equity and environmental justice in Lake County. The movement for environmental justice will reflect the diversity and complexity of our communities. It will create space for those of privilege and those on the margins to learn from each other and build together. It will also work to hold our elected officials accountable to the tenets of environmental justice. Together, we will ensure that our neighbors, our communities, our natural spaces are healthier than before we came along.
Supporting Children’s Mental Health: Big Feelings and Climate Anxiety
By Eddie Flores, Youth Education Coordinator
Through my work with Brushwood Center, I see firsthand that students face a lot of unknowns, anxiety, and big fears about our world, especially climate change. The activities and resources in this year’s Nature Explorer Backpacks / Mochilas de Explorador strengthen students’ social emotional learning skills and give them tools to navigate big feelings.
Students will learn about “hidden gem” nature sites in Lake County that have healed through community care. Our goal is to give young people hope for our environmental future by showcasing examples of people coming together to care for and advocate for nature in their own communities. We are excited to highlight these places because they are lesser known but have really powerful stories! Featured locations include the Council Circle at Bowen Park, the Waukegan Dunes, and an over 100-year- old oak tree at one of our partner libraries. In addition, our Backpacks will include a parent packet with resources for adults, which will connect more families to the wonderful resources and groups around Lake County educating about environmental justice.
I myself experience feelings of climate anxiety. I see what’s happening around the world in terms of climate change, war, conflict, and injustices. I increasingly worry about what the future holds for us. As someone who lives in an environmental justice (EJ) community doing this type of work, I know how draining and tiring this work can be. It’s important to prioritize our mental health. Sharing mental health tools, resources, and techniques with youth is really important to me. We all need support systems.
Teaching about environmental justice issues and talking about the realities of what it’s like to live in these EJ communities has been personally really healing. Growing up I never received formal or informal education about the EJ issues in my community, and it’s so cool to be the person I wish I had while growing up and to bring awareness to these issues and how they affect our environment and health.
Recently, I guided students through a modeling activity exploring the impacts of pollution on water. We not only discussed the impacts to the immediate environment, but also what it meant for communities that may have contaminated air or water, the health of humans and animals, as well as the recreational beauty of nature around us. This activity and conversation is something that I would have loved to engage in during my childhood. Over the past several years I’ve been raising awareness about the environmental justice issues occurring in Northeastern Lake County through my work with Clean Power Lake County. It is rewarding to continue shining light on these issues and bringing awareness to a wider group of youth throughout Lake County.
It’s a huge honor and privilege that I get to be at the forefront, connecting with our youth who will be inheriting this land. If I can get even just a few kids to feel connected to the environment and start caring about it, then I’ll know I’ve made my impact. I feel proud to work with the next generation of leaders!
Support Health, Equity, and Nature Exploration this Summer!
Brushwood Center and our partners across Lake County are teaming up to provide 1,500 bilingual Nature Explorer Backpacks / Mochilas de Explorador as well as educational programs to youth and family members in Waukegan, North Chicago, Round Lake, Gurnee, and Highwood. You can help! Your donation to the Backpack Project provides families with tools for supporting physical and mental health, along with opportunities to explore Lake County’s parks, preserves, and other natural areas.
Donate here! $10 can provide art supplies for one Nature Explorer Backpack!
Breaking Barriers
Access to Nature in Lake County
By Megan Donahue
Imagine taking a walk in the woods on a warm spring day. The sun is shining and the breeze lightly shakes the trees that are just sending out their first bright green leaves. As you walk, you hear a trill, and see a flash of red and yellow in the air: the red-winged blackbirds are back. You find a patch of little pink and white flowers–spring beauties, or claytonia virginica if you’re feeling fancy–and stop to admire them. At every turn of the path, there’s something to notice.
What you probably don’t notice is what’s happening in your body. Afterall, you’re experiencing the bounty of spring, not thinking about your cortisol levels. But a walk in the woods is more than recreational: research has demonstrated that time spent in nature has a significant impact on your health.
Access to Nature Improves Health Outcomes
A growing body of research points to connections between time spent outside in nature and improved health.1 Lower cortisol, reduced muscle tension, improved mood 2, and better sleep are just a few of the physical and psychological benefits associated with spending time outdoors. 3 One study even found that looking out the window at nature while you recover from surgery could improve your experience. 4 Time in greenspaces is particularly beneficial to children, improving everything from vision5 to attention6.
At Brushwood Center, we’re not surprised by this data–it supports what we see every day. In so many ways, nature is good for you. Unfortunately, these benefits are not equally accessible to everyone.
Think back to that imaginary walk in the woods. Would you feel as comfortable taking it if the stream was visibly polluted? If you had to walk across a four-lane highway to get there? If you were concerned about encountering violence? If there were no signs in your language pointing you to the trail? If you’d never been in the woods before? Any of these barriers could be enough to reduce your access to nature, and consequently, the health benefits associated with it.
Where you live should not determine how long you live, but your environment can make a difference in your health outcomes and whether or not it’s even safe to be outside. Black and Latine communities in Northeastern Lake County are disproportionately exposed to industrial pollution and face the lowest life expectancy and lowest income in Lake County. These communities are also overburdened by disproportionate asthma rates, diabetes rates, and mental health stressors.
Last year, Brushwood Center’s Health, Equity, and Nature Accelerator analyzed data around health and nature access in Lake County. The report of our findings, Health, Nature, and Equity: A Changing Climate in Lake County, IL, found that on top of concerns about air and water quality, the communities most impacted by environmental injustices also face barriers to accessing Lake County’s most beautiful natural assets, due to transportation, language, infrastructure, and policy limitations. As many as 1 in 2 Black residents in Lake County have concerns about access, safety, and maintenance of nearby parks and greenspaces, nearly twice that of White residents, as indicated in Lake County Public Health’s recent Community Health Assessment and echoed in the Accelerator’s report. These issues are amplified by our changing climate, with hotter, wetter, and more extreme weather patterns exacerbating many public health concerns.
Accelerating Health Equity
Everyone deserves a healthy environment and access to the outdoors.
The Health, Equity, and Nature Accelerator builds on Brushwood Center’s ongoing community engagement, advocacy, and research initiatives, with the goal of increasing collaborative solutions between health and environmental sectors. It amplifies this impact through cross-project alignment, prioritization of community-driven practices, and communication of key results for scalability and collaboration.
One of the key recommendations of the Health, Equity and Nature report is to integrate nature-based solutions with health care systems. This includes supporting health care providers with nature-based tools and professional development and integrating nature-based tools with behavioral health and trauma recovery programs.
Brushwood Center is putting these recommendations into action with TIERRA (Transforming Internal Experiences to Resilience and Restoration using Acceptance / Transformando el Interno y las Experiencias para la Resiliencia y la Restauración utilizando Aceptación), a nature-based mental health training for Community Health Workers developed in collaboration with the Highwood Public Library and Community Center, researcher Shreya Aragula of DePaul University, Rosalind Franklin University, and a team of community advisors.
A Community Health Worker (CHW) is a frontline public health worker who is a trusted member of and/or has an unusually close understanding of the community served.
The new program is co-created with Promotoras (CHWs) at the Highwood Public Library and Community Center, and is developing in stages. Currently, Aragula and Brushwood’s Coalition Building Manager, Jess Rodriguez, are collaborating to design the nature-based mental health training intervention.
The intervention is based in cognitive behavioral therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), along with nature-based practices including forest therapy. “We’re exploring how we can implement the philosophies and the values of these practices to create a new mental health training manual,” explains Rodriguez.
Following the pilot program, TIERRA will expand to five community health care partners, who will implement the intervention and help further refine the manual. After that, the team will explore opportunities for further scalability to make these benefits more broadly accessible to Community Health Workers.
“Then the CHWs will train so that they can offer this intervention to the community. They will have understanding and tools that those practices use to have their own unique experience with mindfulness and with body-ness, to be able to share with their communities, to be able to share with themselves the idea of being rooted in nature, that this resource that we have at our fingertips can provide us with so many health benefits,” says Rodriguez.
Healthy People, Healthy Land
There isn’t one simple solution to create systemic change to address inequities at the intersection of health, climate, and nature. It will take ongoing collaboration between community and healthcare organizations, institutions and individuals, policy-makers and the people. Together, we can create a future of resilient and connected communities, both human and ecological, where all lead healthy and thriving lives.
Health, Equity, and Nature: A Changing Climate in Lake County, IL
The Accelerator’s newest report, Health, Equity, and Nature: A Changing Climate in Lake County, IL, is a tool for community members, organizations, and decision-makers to implement equitable, nature-based policy decisions to improve our communities’ health and wellbeing. This report includes key findings about access to nature, human health, and a healthy environment in Lake County, as well as actionable recommendations to empower change.
What is Forest Therapy?
Forest therapy is based on forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku, a Japanese practice whereby people immerse themselves into their natural environment. Forest bathers connect with the natural world around them as they take a guided, meditative walk, supporting improved immune function, cardiovascular and respiratory health, and reduced stress and depression. “It’s not a hike, it’s not a naturalist walk, but is more of a formalized practice of something that I would say is deeply intuitive for all humans,” says Jess Rodriguez, Brushwood Center’s Coalition Building Manager and certified Forest and Nature Therapy Guide.
Some of our favorite spots to forest bathe in Lake County? Ryerson Woods and Middlefork Savanna!
Brushwood North
Coming soon to Waukegan! Brushwood Center will launch an expanded strategy to support health and wellbeing in Northern Lake County, rooted in data and recommendations from the Health, Equity, and Nature report. Shared with Clean Power Lake County, this satellite location will help us engage more deeply with our partners and the communities most impacted by environmental injustices. Look for: expanded bilingual community outreach and programming, environmental justice and healing tours of the area, and more opportunities for youth to engage in the work of environmental justice.
