Join Monument Lab staff for an informational webinar deep diving into the open call process for The Rekia Boyd Monument Project. This session will cover project goals, community engagement strategies, and the selection criteria while offering the opportunity to ask questions.
The session will be hosted on Thursday, July 10th, 2025, at 6:00
p.m. EST (5:00 p.m. CST).This project is led by A Long Walk Home (ALWH), an arts organization that empowers young people to end violence against girls and women, that is building an enduring monument to honor Rekia Boyd and Black Girlhood within Chicago’s Douglass Park in the North Lawndale neighborhood.
The Rekia Boyd Monument Project follows a decade of public art activations in and around Douglass Park by ALWH’s Girl/Friends Leadership Institute.
Together, A Long Walk Home and Monument Lab pose a central question: How do we build a monument that commemorates Rekia Boyd's legacy and celebrates Black girlhood?
The monument will be commissioned through an open call process for artists to collaboratively envision a public artwork and young women as citizen-artists in the process of building the monument. Interested artists are invited to review the project dossier, submit short question responses regarding their interest in the project, work samples, a CV, and contact information for two references through an online form by Thursday, July 31, 2025, 5:00 p.m. EST (4:00 p.m. CST).
The Rekia Boyd Monument Project is led by A Long Walk Home, in partnership with the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), Chicago Parks District, and Monument Lab, and is a part of the Chicago Monuments Project, which is supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.