Snow City Arts

Snow City Arts is an award-winning, independent nonprofit organization that educates and inspires children in hospitals through the arts. We visit Lurie Children’s four days a week to address children’s developmental and educational needs through the arts. Our team of professional artists provides one-on-one instruction in:

• Visual arts
• Theater
• Media Arts

Children typically work with individual instructors at their bedsides, but when they're well enough to leave their rooms, they can participate in workshops in the Art Room in the Family Life Center , which is a medical-free zone where creativity, experimentation and education are encouraged.

Keeping up with the Classroom

Snow City Arts, while arts-based, puts the focus on learning and uses our student workshops and evaluations to integrate state and national standards in subjects like:

• Social studies
• Math
• Science
• Fine arts
• Language arts

By integrating standards into lesson planning and assessment, we’re able to ensure that children in the hospital are learning skills that are in line with the lesson plans at their schools. At the end of each semester, with approval from parents, we send reports and art-filled portfolios to home schools to consider for credit.

Showcasing Patients’ Work

Snow City Arts provides opportunities for the artwork produced by the students to be publicly featured in temporary and permanent galleries and installations. To see Lurie Children’s very own permanent installation, visit the 12th floor hallway near the Family Life Center.

Artwork has also been featured in Snow City Arts-produced gallery shows and in exhibitions at various venues, including:

• Chicago International Children’s Film Festival
• Chicago Children’s Humanities Festival
• The Art Institute of Chicago

Patient artwork has also been recognized in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times and on every major television network. You can even view some of the movies patients have made on Skylight TV.

A Nationally Recognized Program

The White House and the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities underscored the importance of our programming in 2007 by honoring Snow City Arts with the prestigious Coming Up Taller Award. It also recognized us as one of the 15 best youth programs in the U.S. In 2008, the National Endowment for the Arts recognized us for our “outstanding arts in healthcare” programs and profiled us as a national Best Practices organization.

Philanthropy

It is a pleasure to work with Lurie Children’s to provide the highest quality arts-based learning opportunities for patients. If you’d like to learn how to become part of our mission, find out how you can get involved and help support our work.​​​​​