What do you think of when you think about home?
For 13-year-old Jorge, a student in Wheeling, Illinois, the answer to that question is: the world’s largest fast-food franchise.
Why?
According to Jorge, it’s about friendship, not French fries: “When I was at McDonald’s, I met a girl named Vanessa. I was 10 years old. I’m 13 now, and she is still my best friend. Everything is great about her! She feels like home to me, and that is why McDonald’s is the place that feels like home. We still go to that McDonald’s to eat, hang out, and be together.”
For other Chicagoans, “home” is a dance studio, or a family member’s former workplace, or a familiar view.
Sparking connections by sharing stories of home, wherever that might be, is the core idea behind the Chicago HomeStories project, which launches today.
Out of Eden Walk
For Paul Salopek, a Chicago journalist and National Geographic Fellow who is walking across the Earth in the footsteps of the first humans who left Africa during the Stone Age, home is wherever the sunsets find him on his global storytelling trail. Readers are often fascinated (or confused or inspired) by the idea that the journey itself is now his home.
Using Paul’s “Out of Eden Walk” project as a template, we tested this idea of “at homeness” in a neighborhood civic walking program in Chicago in 2017. We heard from local residents who participated that home can hold far deeper (and surprising) meanings than just four walls and a roof. And in Chicago, we learned how in one of America’s most diverse yet divided cities, we don’t know each other well—we are distant neighbors—partly because we so rarely invite each other into that special, private, vulnerable space: home.
Hence, the birth of HomeStories: a safe, accessible online space that empowers citizens who want to share stories with each other—across the real or imagined boundaries—about a deeper, more personal, more powerfully intimate Chicago.
Screenshot of Chicago HomeStories
Courtesy Chicago HomeStories/ESRI
With generous support from the Robert R. McCormick Foundation and pro-bono map customization by Esri, the world’s largest GIS software producer, we have created an immersive, online mapping platform where Chicagoans from any of the city’s neighborhoods and suburbs are welcome to write stories and post photos about their geo-tagged experiences of “home.” We hope that the broadest spectrum of Chicago citizens will be inspired to participate.
So far, we’ve prototyped Chicago HomeStories with selected community members and educators, who have already posted more than a hundred personal waypoints in the city.
Now, we invite anyone who has experienced “home” in Chicago to contribute. Add your voice at www.homestoryproject.org.
Screenshot of Chicago HomeStories
Courtesy Chicago HomeStories/ESRI
In the process, you’ll help pioneer the first truly citizen-drawn map of Chicago’s immense diversity, one story of home at a time.
If you like, you can personalize your submission by adding a photo of yourself, and you can answer the same three basic questions about human identity that Paul Salopek asks the first person he meets every hundred miles along his world trek: “Who are you?” “Where are you from?” “Where are you going?” Or, if you prefer, you can interview someone else (with his or her permission), guided by questions on the HomeStories submission form. Bear with us: Posts will be curated to adhere to community standards, so there may be a 48-hour delay before your story appears.
Home, the old saying goes, is where the heart is.
Open a door. Show us yours, in the vast, many-chambered heart called Chicago.
Julia Payne is the program director for the Out of Eden Walk nonprofit. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Screenshot of Chicago HomeStories
Courtesy Chicago HomeStories/ESRI
In the process, you’ll help pioneer the first truly citizen-drawn map of Chicago’s immense diversity, one story of home at a time.
If you like, you can personalize your submission by adding a photo of yourself, and you can answer the same three basic questions about human identity that Paul Salopek asks the first person he meets every hundred miles along his world trek: “Who are you?” “Where are you from?” “Where are you going?” Or, if you prefer, you can interview someone else (with his or her permission), guided by questions on the HomeStories submission form. Bear with us: Posts will be curated to adhere to community standards, so there may be a 48-hour delay before your story appears.
Home, the old saying goes, is where the heart is.
Open a door. Show us yours, in the vast, many-chambered heart called Chicago.
Julia Payne is the program director for the Out of Eden Walk nonprofit. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
