https://linktr.ee/axislabchicago

Axis Lab, Asia on Argyle, Chicago, IL (2026)

08/03/2026

Last Summer Meditation Study & Practice Workshop: “Nourishing our Fires” on August 6, 6-8pm taught by Dr. Patricia Nguyen (co-designer of the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial)

This final meditation study and creative workshop will focus on the theme of nourishing our fires. We will read excerpts of Rima-Vesely-Flad’s The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde and reflect on their legacies as critical Black q***r writers and their teachings on how to live in this world.

Proceeds support the Chicago Torture Justice Center & Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Foundation!

06/25/2026

“Breathing Fire: Meditation Study & Practice Workshops”
Taught by Dr. Patricia Nguyen
This workshop series is inspired by the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial titled, “Breath, Form, and Freedom” (co-designed by the instructor) and CTJC’s “politicized healing” framework. Sessions include meditation, readings on Buddhism, and creative expression prompts to offer grounding and healing in a time of uncertainty & upheaval.

JULY 9th, JULY 23rd, & JULY 30th
RSVP LINK IN BIO (LIMITED CAPACITY)

FREE FOR TORTURE SURVIVORS & SLIDING SCALE ($10-$50) DONATION TO SUPPORT THE CHICAGO TORTURE JUSTICE REPAIR FUND
DONATION: Survivor Repair Fund https://www.chicagotorturejustice.org/repairfund

WORKSHOP 1: “Calming the Fires of War & Engaged Buddhism”
JULY 9th | 6-8pm
This meditation study & creative workshop will focus on the theme of peace through an anti-war approach. Participants will read excerpts of exchanges between Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, who MLK Jr. later nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. As war escalates, we take a moment to reflect on meditation during times of war and its implications for social change.

WORKSHOP 2: “Fires of Love & Rage”
JULY 23rd | 6-8pm
This meditation study and creative workshop focuses on the themes of love, anger, and rage. We will read excerpts of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Anger: Wisdom for Cooking the Flames and Lama Rod Owen’s Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger. How do we tend to our bodies in this moment where there is so much to be enraged about? How do we care for ourselves and each other?

WORKSHOP 3: “Nourishing our Fires”
JULY 30th | 6-8pm
This final meditation study and creative workshop will focus on the theme of nourishing our fires. We will read excerpts of Rima-Vesely-Flad’s The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde and reflect on their legacies as critical Black q***r writers and their teachings on how to live in this world.

06/10/2026

FEATURED SPEAKER: TAM VAN NGUYEN
“INTERGENERATIONAL DIALOGUES & MUTUAL AID”

Tam Van Nguyen has been a community leader and organizer in the Vietnamese and Asian American community in Chicago for over 40 years and counting. He’s worked on a range of issues including community development, civic engagement, immigration and citizenship, employment training, senior care services, financial literary, and occupational health and wellness. Mr. Nguyen has worked with the Vietnamese Association of Illinois, Chinese Mutual Aid Association, and served on the Asian American Advisory Board under Mayor Richard M. Daley and as board member of the Uptown Chamber of Commerce and Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce. His work has earned him several notable awards: The American Institute for Public Service Jefferson Award from NBC, City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development’s (DPD) “Community Development Advisory Committee Award,” and Illinois State Treasurer “Asian Pacific American Advisory Council Award.”

“ART + CULTURE + CITY”— FREE COURSE (NON-CREDIT)—
Offered through Northwestern University’s Center for Civic Engagement x Axis Lab, taught by Dr. Patricia Nguyen.

06/07/2026

FEATURED SPEAKER: AURORA TOSHIKO KING + FREE SPIRIT MEDIA (RSVP BY JUNE 26)

Before Free Spirit Community Arts + Media, Free Spirit Media grew out of a collaboration in 2000 with friends and teaching artists Jeff McCarter and Jesse Miller at Street Level Media in collaboration with a founding group of young people from the West Side of Chicago. Beginning as a single filmmaking class focused on basketball broadcasting, Free Spirit, officially established in May 2001, steadily grew into a multi-site media arts education organization partnering with hundreds of youth over its first decade.

Formative partnerships included a pilot telecast with Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV) at the Garfield Park Golden Dome, which led to the launch of the HoopsHIGH youth sports broadcasting program at Westinghouse Career Academy in the winter of 2000-2001. McCarter and Miller were then joined by Rafie Fields, a Westinghouse and Columbia College Chicago alum, and together, they developed Free Spirit’s first cohort of 15 young filmmakers. The success and investment made by young people through the HoopsHIGH program led to the expansion of programs, specifically into the realms of journalism, photography, and documentary and narrative filmmaking.

Following profound environmental shifts in 2020—the COVID-19 pandemic, the global impact of the extrajudicial murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and subsequent racial justice reckonings—Free Spirit underwent its own period of transition beginning with an executive leadership change. This led to an intentional organizational transformation designed to honor Free Spirit’s historical commitment to young artists while forging an intentional path forward with a recommitment to youth agency, organizational equity, and creative intergenerational community.

06/05/2026

FEATURED PANEL: “JUSTICE: ART OF STORYTELLING” W/ AISLINN PULLEY, MARIA GASPAR, AND LISA CACHO (FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC)

This panel is in collaboration with the Chicago Torture Justice Center, which is part of a historic reparations in the U.S. that addresses racially motivated law enforcement, addressing state violence and torture through the framework of “politicized healing.” We will hear from CTJC’s executive director, Aislinn Pulley and the powerful work she has done with the center, Black Lives Matter-Chicago, and We Charge Genocide.

Celebrating Lisa Cacho’s newly released book, Complex Innocence: Defending Defiant Victims of Police Killings and the beautiful cover art from interdiscplinary artist, Maria Gaspar’s “Unblinking Eyes, Watching.” Gaspar’s artwork featured on the cover is is a composite of high resolution images of the north-end wall of Cook County Jail printed at 1:1 scale on a 40’ x 26’ wall. Located within Gaspar’s childhood neighborhood of Little Village, the jail is the nation’s largest single-site detention facility and spans 96 acres at the center of the city. (Bios of panelists are in the RSVP link.)

ART + CULTURE + CITY— FREE COURSE—
Offered through Northwestern University’s Center for Civic Engagement x Axis Lab, taught by Dr. Patricia Nguyen

06/03/2026

FEATURED SPEAKER: FAWN POCHEL & FIRST NATIONS GARDEN (RSVP with the link the bio by June 28th)

Fawn E. Pochel (they/she), a gender-q***r urban Native, was born and raised in Chicago the way of the Sixty’s Scoop - their father a scoopie and survivor of Canadian Day Schools from The Key First Nation.

Fawn has over a decade of community organizing and advocacy experience centering on raising awareness of Native Peoples living in Chicago. Fawn has worked closely with communities across the city to incorporate land-based pedagogies and Indigenous worldview into curricula and policy while working towards dismantling systems of white supremacy.

Fawn is currently the Community-Engagement and Development Specialist for Grow Your Own- Illinois focusing on statewide initiatives to support in the recruitment, retainment and development of community connected individuals throughout their licesurance process to become educators in hard to staff areas and subjects to strengthen Illinois teacher workforce.

Fawn was formerly the Programs Director for Northeastern Illinois University’s (NEIU) Angelina Pedroso Center for Diversity. In their position they focus on the development and empowerment of LGBTQ+ and Native/Indigenous students while advocating for institutional awareness and policies to support NEIU’s fluctuating status as an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution.

Fawn is also the co-founder of the First Nations Garden located in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood and prides themselves on being an Auntie.

ART + CULTURE + CITY— FREE COURSE—
Offered through Northwestern University’s Center for Civic Engagement x Axis Lab, taught by Dr. Patricia Nguyen

05/30/2026

FEATURED SPEAKER: DR. CHARLENE CARRUTHERS (Zoom- RSVP by June 21)
“The Chicago Model,” from Dr. Carruther’s from Unapologetic: A Black, Q***r, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements. Join us in a conversation with the brilliant Dr. Carruthers about her foundational activism in Chicago and beyond, including her beautiful work as a filmmaker.

Charlene A. Carruthers, PhD (she/her) is a writer, filmmaker, community organizer, and Black Studies scholar. A practitioner of telling more complete stories, her work interrogates historical conjunctures of Black freedom-making post-emancipation and decolonial revolution, Black/Native/Indigenous relationalities, Black governance, and Black feminist abolitionist geographies. She is a 2020 Marguerite Casey Presidential Freedom Scholar and Mellon Interdisciplinary Cluster Fellow in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Her work spans more than 15 years of community organizing across racial, gender and economic justice movements. Charlene wrote and directed The Funnel, a short film, which received the Q***r Black Voices Award at the 35th Annual aGLIFF Prism Film Festival.

As the founding national director of BYP100 (Black Youth Project 100), she worked alongside hundreds of young Black activists to build a member-led organization dedicated to creating justice and freedom for all Black people. Her work has been covered in several publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Chicago Reader, The Nation, Ebony and Essence Magazines. She has appeared on CNN, Democracy Now!, BBC and MSNBC. The Chicago native has also written for theRoot.com, CRISIS Magazine, Teen Vogue, Truthout, Colorlines and the Boston Review. She is recognized as one of the top 10 most influential African Americans by The Root 100, one of Ebony Magazine’s “Woke 100,” an Emerging Power Player in Chicago Magazine and is the 2017 recipient of the YWCA’s Dr. Dorothy I. Height Award.

ART + CULTURE + CITY— FREE COURSE—
Offered through Northwestern University’s Center for Civic Engagement x Axis Lab, taught by Dr. Patricia Nguyen

05/29/2026

FEATURED SPEAKER: DR. CHARLENE CARRUTHERS (online talk! RSVP with the link the bio by June 21st)
“The Chicago Model,” from Dr. Carruther’s from Unapologetic: A Black, Q***r, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements. Join us in a conversation with the brilliant Dr. Carruthers about her foundational activism in Chicago and beyond, including her beautiful work as a filmmaker.

Charlene A. Carruthers, PhD (she/her) is a writer, filmmaker, community organizer, and Black Studies scholar. A practitioner of telling more complete stories, her work interrogates historical conjunctures of Black freedom-making post-emancipation and decolonial revolution, Black/Native/Indigenous relationalities, Black governance, and Black feminist abolitionist geographies. She is a 2020 Marguerite Casey Presidential Freedom Scholar and Mellon Interdisciplinary Cluster Fellow in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Her work spans more than 15 years of community organizing across racial, gender and economic justice movements. Charlene wrote and directed The Funnel, a short film, which received the Q***r Black Voices Award at the 35th Annual aGLIFF Prism Film Festival.

As the founding national director of BYP100 (Black Youth Project 100), she worked alongside hundreds of young Black activists to build a member-led organization dedicated to creating justice and freedom for all Black people. Her work has been covered in several publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Chicago Reader, The Nation, Ebony and Essence Magazines. She has appeared on CNN, Democracy Now!, BBC and MSNBC. The Chicago native has also written for theRoot.com, CRISIS Magazine, Teen Vogue, Truthout, Colorlines and the Boston Review. She is recognized as one of the top 10 most influential African Americans by The Root 100, one of Ebony Magazine’s “Woke 100,” an Emerging Power Player in Chicago Magazine and is the 2017 recipient of the YWCA’s Dr. Dorothy I. Height Award.

ART + CULTURE + CITY— FREE COURSE—
Offered through Northwestern University’s Center for Civic Engagement x Axis Lab, taught by Dr. Patricia Nguyen

Axis Lab

08/03/2026

06/25/2026

06/10/2026

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