Two of Chicago’s nonprofits that help the arts worked together recently in support of a Chicago band, Van Go Go, a collaborative of musicians with and without developmental disabilities, who is part of the musical arm of the Chicago-area nonprofit The Arts of Life.
The band released their album on Nov. 20, at a performance at Comfort Station in Chicago. After nine months of crowdfunding, recording, and production, Van Go Go is ready to share their blend of reggae, rock and funk with the world.
“Music is our life,” said Ted Gram-Boarini, who has been a member of the band since its inception about two years ago.
“When it was just me by myself making music, I felt that I wasn’t needed or wanted,” he said. “Being in a band, it’s helped me focus my feelings and emotions on the fact that other people care about what I’m writing,”
The band first started with their music video “Get the Dinosaurs on the Phone,” and from there decided they wanted to do something even bigger.
“The main point of our mission is to be accessible to as many groups as possible,” Arts of Life North Shore Studio Coordinator Rick Sindt said. “That’s why we have diverse types of programming, we try to create symbiotic relations with other arts groups in the community. Comfort Station keeps these conversations going, on things that are directly related to those who live in the community.”
Sindt also works at Comfort Station, which hosts art exhibitions, concerts, film, workshops, lectures and participatory events. The historic building, which used to offer trolley travelers a safe place to stop and recuperate, now aims “to present challenging and stimulating programming that is open and accessible to everyone…to create an active intersection of diverse Chicago communities and promote new connections between them,” according to the mission statement posted on their website.
This event, the bringing together of two nonprofit organizations who utilize art to bolster a community and love of life, proves to Chicago that this can be done without the label of a business.
As creative and arts organizations in Chicago continue to blossom, more and more Chicagoans take part in their local art scene. Chicago residents typically spend more at arts and culture events than do other cities in the nation.
John Sharp, Arts Coordinator at the Arts of Life and band manager for Van Go Go, sees something unique in the Arts of Life program. He holds out hope that art can and will be made accessible to everyone, despite any physical, mental, or financial disabilities.
“The arts are the only means that we can express the otherwise inexpressible,” Sharp said. “In other words, everybody wants to be heard, and when we don’t know how to say it, we can create it.”