CHICAGO

Grantmakers in the Arts welcomes you to Chicago for the 2024 GIA Annual Conference, City of Big Shoulders and Bigger Ideas! Join GIA members and allies in the heart of the Windy City, where collaboration meets innovation, and community leads together. Inspired by the vibrant tapestry of Chicago's neighborhoods and the city's rich history of partnership between artists, communities, philanthropy, and culture, this year's conference aims to delve deep into the transformative power of connection, creativity, and collective action. As major struggles face local and global communities, we take this opportunity to gather to amplify the role of arts in our communities, in our politics, in our future-making. Against this backdrop, Chicago's diverse communities and legacy of activism provide grounding from which to explore emergent themes of advocacy and resilience, artists as agents of change, and renewed ways of organizing. 

Join us October 6-9 to dive deep into the city’s cultural ecosystem, immersing ourselves in Chicago’s neighborhoods and institutions, learn from working artists and grassroots organizing, fostering connections with fellow collaborators, co-conspirators, and changemakers, and illuminate the intersections of culture, creativity, and social change.