Bronzeville’s The Forum Gets $1 Million Grant to Build Arts and Culture Hub in Historic Building
In Chicago, the community of Bronzerville (near south side) has just been granted $1 million to make an addition to The Forum. This addition has been presented to the historic forum by the Andrew M. Mellon Foundation, and will allow The Forum to create a Arts and Culture Hub. In its prime days, The Forum hosted black movement meetings, as it was the center for black life culture in Chicago over 100 years ago.
This story relates to our client the Curtin Mansion and Eagle Iron Works because the Curtin properties would very much be positively impacted by having large grants to improve the grounds. This story relates to PR strategy because the community did not want to see The Forum decline completely, and they recognized the building as a historically valuable building to the city of Chicago. We can assume that the audiences for this story are community members, specifically near the south side part of the city, caretakers of the historic building, and stakeholders of the grant. Stakeholders include donors and investors, as well as audience members mentioned previously that are in some way impacted by this grant, as well as the building process.
When reading the news of this grant, we can determine that this is a positive success story of the community reaching their achievements of fixing up The Forum, making it a more modern place for visitors to enjoy while keeping its historical significance in mind. From analyzing those involved with taking care and running The Forum as a brand, we identify that they are driven individuals who care about the historical value in which our country holds. We can also see that they are a group who know the importance of not only telling stories of our country’s history, but specifically black history.
In concerns to our Curtin Mansion and Eagle Iron Works project, we can use The Forum’s grant success to drive such ambition for our client. If the Curtin properties looked into more grants for their properties, they might be able to jump start a more stable number of seasonal events that could happen annually. By investing money into what they offer, they could make tour experiences feel more real and immersive. In doing this, Curtin properties would likely draw in a larger volume of visitors or even donors in the future.