Chicago: Civic and Mindful

Chicago Community Staff

Heidi Reitmaier talks about Chicago pride.

To me, Chicago is a place that really cares about the people and itself and it’s incredibly proud. But not proud in a boisterous way, or not proud with an arrogance, but proud with a deep and thoughtful concern, a kind of mindfulness of what it means to live in a place and in a city. It's highly politicized, which, for me, is very important and again, incredibly committed to a network and incredibly committed to connecting people together to make it a stronger place. So I think a sense of what it might mean to be a truly civic city is what I discovered in Chicago, which also means there is an enormous network of artists here who work and engage in the city and engage with audiences in different ways. So that sense of social practice has been foundational, and the MCA has been part of that history.

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