SHoP (Southside Hub of Production) is a community centered project that encourages local culture making and is a space where broad ideas on pedagogy, performance, and innovative experimentation meet with traditional iterations on similar subjects. Through a range of alternative artistic practices, contemporary and folk art installations, small economy building, community music, woodsmithing and poetry performances, potlucks, and a consistent form of generosity and neighborly exchange, SHoP has become an important social center in Chicago. The Southside Hub of Production has served as a neighborhood hub to gather and exchange resources and expertise, install artworks and provide space for local groups to use. It is an open place to speculate on what a publicly engaging enterprise can offer the residents and in return, help to imagine better examples of resourceful living, communal artistry and a higher quality of life. (Jim Duignan)
SHoP is a collective of artists, writers, film makers, craftspeople, educators, and local civic organizations who have come together to create a local cultural hub space in Hyde Park, Chicago. SHOP’s main aim is to engage creatively with the neighborhood and encourage local cultural activity. The goal is to foster collaboration and cooperation of all kinds in the neighborhood. SHoP is for productive creativity as well as for slow culture, leisure time, and meaningful social engagement.
SHoP features multiple spaces for exhibits that lend themselves to relational and community thought, rentable storage spaces and studio spaces, an assisted woodworking shop, time bank, a space for movement and bodywork (for, example, yoga and meditation classes), the Hyde Park Kunstverein community museum, a Red Flags family salon and non-sports pub, a kids art-making room on the 2nd floor, a thrift store, a dozen rooms for public meetings and more.
Southside Hub of Production 
To SHoP:
Hello, my name is Matthew Reeves, an architecture student at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, UT.
I had a question about the East Pilsen Area.
In my final studio semester this summer, we are researching the Cermak Corridor. I am proposing designs for 2130 S Grove St, East of the river, adjacent to a historic bridge district.
What amenities would you suggest be located here? I am open to suggestions, and would like to produce a meaningful final project, something that is beautiful and thoughtful for the community. If you recommend another, more crucial site, I would appreciate that as well.
Also: what would you recommend for an ideal, dream community craftshop, if I were to design it for you?
Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing back from you.
Best,
Matthew