CELEBRATING THE CONCLUSION OF OUT AND ABOUT UPTOWN'S COAST

This spring, ICA completed Out and About Uptown’s Coast, a public educational series offered from May 2017 through April 2018, supported by an Illinois Coastal Management Program (ICMP) grant administered by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) with funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The series focused on increasing awareness, access, and stewardship of the coastal zone in Uptown.

Garden Walk 2017

In total, ICA partnered with 18 local experts across nine sessions that collectively drew in 219 participants. Each session topic highlighted a unique connection to the coastal zone, including Historic Preservation, Mental Wellness, Green Infrastructure, and more. The multidisciplinary sessions featured local experts sharing historical and present-day content expertise on the session topic during ‘classroom’ time, followed by an experiential learning component such as a guided coastal tour. One highlight of the series was surveying participants to track their understanding of various coastal issues. Most notably, participants reported increased understanding of ways to provide stewardship to the coast.
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To complete the project, ICA staff produced a toolkit on the process used to design and implement the series, that include outlines of process of curating topics and partnerships, educational content shared by partners, insights from survey data, and more. The hope for the toolkit is to enable others to be able to create transformational education series tailored for the communities they work with. ​