EMBER with Victor Saad

Thank you to everyone who joined us at the event in May. Let’s give a round of applause to the venue, speaker, and local sponsors for their contributions to the success of the event. 👏

Our ability to host these events relies heavily on the support of our sponsors. We are currently seeking sponsors to help cover the costs of breakfast, activities, and operational expenses for the year 2024 and beyond. Our team consists entirely of volunteers who are dedicated to fostering the creative community in Chicago. 💛

Get in touch with us at chicago@creativemornings.com or send us a DM on our Instagram to start a conversation. We value hearing from all of you! Please share this message with your employers to help us in building the creative community together.

🎤 Next Speaker: Eric Williams

Eric Williams is the founder of The Silver Room, a hub for art, retail, and community events in Hyde Park, Chicago. Since 1997, he has been instrumental in transforming Chicago communities through various events like music series and festivals. In 2019, he established the Silver Room Foundation to support creative entrepreneurs on the South Side. Additionally, he opened the Bronzeville Winery, a community-focused establishment in the historic Southside neighborhood. Eric, with a degree in Finance from the University of Illinois at Chicago, was a 2018 Loeb Fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Design.

🗓️ Friday, May 17th at 8:30-10am

📍 ⭐ In Person Only ⭐ at the Den Theatre

🎵 DJ Mike Caliber

🎟️ Free Registration Opens Friday, May 10th at 9AM. Mark your calendars! Tickets go first come, first served! Limited!

✋ High fives and humble gratitude to our local sponsors: Big Shoulders Coffee | Busy Beaver Button Co. | DJ Mike Caliber

Need a clue of who’s our April’s speaker? Have no fear!

Lady Ve'Lush: Born and raised in Chicago; since birth she was destined to grace the stage. She is THE Chicago Showgirl. Currently work as a full time chemist and moonlight as burlesque performer, Cosplayer, and aspiring Broadway actress. She has dabbled into many forms of entertainment and even learned to make her own costumes. Theatre has always been her passion and she plans to grace as many stages as possible.

Tickets open TODAY to hear Lady Ve'Lush’s talk on the topic Spicy. Mark your calendars!

🎤 Next Speaker: Lady Ve'Lush, @lady_velush

Meet Chloe Mimms (aka Lady Ve'Lush), the Chicago Showdoll and your favorite plush-sized Doll Lady. She’s renowned for her wicked performances and dance routines, captivating audiences with her spicy and creative content that never fails to leave them in awe.

With accolades such as being the 2nd Runner Up on Miss Royal Tease in 2022 and winning the Miss Awkward Arousal for RTOB Cosplay Award in 2023, Lady Ve'Lush has established herself as a force to be reckoned with in the entertainment industry. Support her by following her Instagram.

🗓️ Friday, April 19th at 8:30-10am

🔞 This is an 18+ NSFW event, as a warning b/c there’ll be a performance and might have a little nudity (aka too spicy). 🥵

📍 ⭐ In Person Only ⭐ at TBA

🎵 DJ Mike Caliber, @djmikecaliber

🎟️ Free Registration Opens Friday, February 12th at 9AM. Mark your calendars! Tickets go first come, first served! Limited!

✋ High fives and humble gratitude to our local sponsors: @bigshoulderscoffee | @busybeaverbuttonco | DJ Mike Caliber

Thank you for joining us for Lane Alexander’s talk! Tag us @chicago_cm and use the hashtag #CMChi. Share your magic and takeaways on your socials.

See our inspiring quotes from this month’s speaker on the theme Perspective.

🎤 Next Speaker: Lane Alexander

Lane Alexander, CHRP Founding Director, is a master teacher, performer, choreographer, producer, advocate, and community organizer.

Over the last 34 years, he has led CHRP to become the first year-round presenting institution in the U.S. dedicated to American tap and contemporary percussive arts including CHRP’s education center/business incubator, the Mayfair Arts Center, the City-wide percussive dance festival, Stomping Grounds, the oldest and most comprehensive festival of American tap, Rhythm World, free arts education programs in Chicago Public Schools, We ALL Got Rhythm, and its resident ensemble, Stone Soup Rhythms. 

🗓️ Friday, March 22nd at 8-10am

🏢 ⭐ In-Person Only ⭐ at Mayfair Arts Center - CHICAGO HUMAN RHYTHM PROJECT (CHRP)

🎵 DJ Mike Caliber

🎟️ Free Registration Opens on Friday, March 15th at 9AM. Mark your calendars! Tickets go first come, first served. Limited!

👏 High fives and humble gratitude to our local sponsors: Chicago Human Rhythm Project | Big Shoulders Coffee | Busy Beaver Button Co. | 

Three cheers to our digital illustrator 🖍️ Katya Balakina (📸 @xrenobl) for turning our Feburary’s event into magnificent visual notes 📝 

Check out this graphic recording about Jill Lyons’s talk on the theme Native 🍃

Thank you all for attending Jill’s talk last month on the theme Native.

On February, we delved into the many meanings of NATIVE with Jill Lyons. In true storyteller fashion, Jill Lyons took the Chicago audience through a journey of what it means to belong to a place, to remember where we come from and to honor those who came before, especially our parents and ancestors who often made difficult choices so that we can all be here today. 

Lyon’s also reminded the audience of the man who founded Chicago, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Just imagine that in the late 1700’s, a black man from Haiti moves to an area on the Chicago river to become a trader,  marries a local Potawatamie woman and speaks several native languages, in addition to European colonial languages. The city of Chicago inherits Jean Baptiste Du Sable’s adventurous and inclusive spirit. 

We could not speak on the theme NATIVE without honoring the indigenous First Nations tribes who inhabit this land and continue to teach us the wisdom of living in harmony with the earth. An especially fascinating portion of Lyon’s talk focused on how famed Psychologist, Abraham Maslow, of the ubiquitous Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid, spent six weeks with the Blackfoot/Siksika tribe in Canada and and he basically stole their idea, but sadly, inverted it for the capitalist/industrial society he returned to. In the Blackfoot/Siksika community, everything begins with self-actualization! They believe it is only after this, that a person can go on to achieve the things they need and want. 

James Vukelich Kaagegaabaw, linguist and author of The Seven Generations and The Seven Grandfather Teachings
Fun Fact - Jill Lyons father is Gregory Bibb, a famed Chicago musician who led the 1970s group The Prophets of Soul and he was honored by Mayor Harold Washington as “one of Chicago’s most talented composers/musicians” and marked February 20th as Gregory Bibb Day!

🎤 Next Speaker: Jill Lyons

Jill Lyons is a strategic creative operations leader and award-winning executive producer and writer. For a decade, Jill was part of the legendary team at Harpo Studios, where she wrote and produced dynamic on and off-air promos, integrated marketing and branded entertainment content for OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, The Dr. Oz Show and The Oprah Winfrey Show. Jill’s a futurist and a thought leader who routinely speaks on DEI, organizational design & change management, creativity & productivity. Jill also writes, produces and (occasionally) performs comedy for the stage and screen, and her work has been featured on secondcitynetwork.com, The Second City, The Den Theatre, and Stage 773.

🗓️ Friday, February 23rd at 8:30-10am

📍 ⭐ In Person Only ⭐ at the Guild Row - 3130 N. Rockwell St., Chicago, 60613

🎵 DJ Mike Caliber

🎟️ Free Registration Opens Friday, February 16th at 9AM. Mark your calendars! Tickets go first come, first served! Limited!

✋ High fives and humble gratitude to our local sponsors: Guild Row | Big Shoulders Coffee | Busy Beaver Button Co. | DJ Mike Caliber

Got an interesting story to share with our Chicago creative community? Our CM/Chicago team is starting to plan for 2024 events, and we are looking for potential speakers who can relate to the monthly themes.

Nominate yourself or someone you know who would be a great speaker. Visit our CreativeMornings site to check out past speakers’ talks as examples that relate to the monthly themes and overall flow. 

📨 Link: https://buff.ly/3SrPAe7

We’ll reach out to you for a potential fit on the monthly theme and schedule a time to chat with you.

Check our past photos from our Flickr.

Pics:

Dare w/ Nneka Carrie Ude

Monumental w/ Khalid Ibrahim

Free w/ LOGIK

Stress w/ Beverly Kim