Imagine Chicago is about vision, creativity and inspiring citizens to make positive change. It is about investing in one’s community. It is about building relationships with others across the social, economic, racial, ethnic and generational divides that so often keep us apart. It is about building communities through these relationships, transforming not only individuals but also the neighborhoods, towns, and cities in which we live and grow.

This is a profoundly hopeful mission, and indeed, if one word characterizes Imagine Chicago’s work, it is "hope." Across its varied projects and programs, Imagine Chicago insists on asking unconditionally positive questions to jog individuals out of more conventional, problem-focused mindsets, reawaken their belief that positive change can happen, energize people’s commitment to creating what they envision in the places they call home.

While this overarching frame guides all of Imagine Chicago’s work, the groundwork was laid in one of Imagine Chicago’s most successful projects: intergenerational interviewing. A decade ago, Imagine Chicago launched a process whereby urban adolescents met, interviewed, and conversed with a wide range of adults who were recognized as providing the city’s "civic glue." Guided by adult mentors, these young people asked probing, expansive, and intentionally positive questions about Chicago’s history, culture, resources, and possibilities for change.

These interviews were influenced by an approach called "appreciative inquiry." Part research method and part philosophical orientation, appreciative inquiry was developed by David Cooperrider and his colleagues at Case Western Reserve University. It has been an effective lever for motivating change within the non-profit and for-profit sector. Imagine Chicago applied this tool to larger public spaces like neighborhoods and cities. Over a period of many months, the organization orchestrated powerful, one-on-one conversations between adolescents and adults about the city’s past and about visions of its future. Both youth and adult participants later described these conversations as "energizing," "rejuvenating," and "transforming." The stories conveyed in these small group interviews were shared in a series of civic forums where Chicago citizens convened and began devising projects to bring about positive change in specific neighborhoods and public institutions. Inspired by this earlier work, similar "Imagine" processes have taken place in specific neighborhoods of Chicago and in towns and cities around North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia.

While much in Imagine Chicago’s approach is new, it springs from very fertile ground. In addition to the "appreciative inquiry" approach already mentioned, intergenerational interviewing shares important principles with the fields of youth and community development, and civic dialogue. Briefly describing key tenets of these fields may clarify Imagine Chicago’s particular contribution, though broad strokes inevitably do disservice to the complexity of the fields surveyed.

Intergenerational interviewing and youth development. Intergenerational interviewing sees young people as important assets for the communities in which they reside. By seeing urban adolescents as contributors to the public good rather than "problems to be fixed," Imagine Chicago upholds a central tenet of the youth development field. Concisely put, youth development specialists argue that to be "fully prepared," adolescents must acquire a broad set of "competencies" across cognitive, emotional, physical, civic, social, cultural, and vocational realms. Youth-serving organizations must partner with other institutions (schools, community groups, families, and so forth) to provide the "inputs" necessary for adolescents to acquire these competencies. These inputs include things like access to basic care and services; high quality instruction and training; opportunities to develop caring relationships and social and strategic networks; and challenging, age-appropriate opportunities for meaningful involvement in community life.

By conceiving of young people’s contribution to civic life as critical to their own personal development, Imagine Chicago’s work falls on the end of the youth development spectrum chiefly concerned with youth civic engagement. Youth civic engagement programs differ considerably. Some stress involvement in voting and other forms of political participation; others emphasize voluntary service in community institutions and causes; still others urge youth to redress social and civic inequity. Yet a common belief underlies these strategic differences: to strengthen young people as well as communities, young people must regard themselves as civic actors and be equipped to carry out meaningful, sustained, civic work.

Intergenerational interviewing entails strengthening young people’s skills, dispositions, and civic capacities. Adolescents are trained in how to conceptualize and conduct interviews, listen respectfully, gather and analyze data, utilize social networks, and participate in community conversations. By definition, this work must be done in partnership with adults. By interviewing adults who have rich histories with the life of the city, young people become inspired to imagine their own life in the city in new ways. Thus, instead of linking their future success to "growing up and getting out" of the neighborhood, young people become inspired to invest in the places where they have been raised and commit to making these places better. Adults, in turn, feel motivated by young people’s hope, energy, and vision. Building relationships between adults and young people fuels a shared commitment to a particular geographic place. This contribution links Imagine Chicago with another important field: asset-based community development.

This aspect of Imagine Chicago’s work resonates with positive visioning processes utilized since the 1970s in cities as diverse as Roanoke, Virginia; Savannah, Georgia; Houston, Texas; and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Lodged within city planning processes, these large-scale public processes have involved diverse citizens across a host of communities and sectors. Neither "top down" nor "bottom up", but rather "center out," city-wide visioning processes have also involved strategic planning for the policy and resource change deemed necessary.

Visioning processes share an asset-based approach to community building that drives change work in primarily low-income communities across the United States. Through "community mapping" and other stock-taking processes, neighborhood residents survey existing services, broadly identify resources (human, physical, financial, and so on), and strategically organize for expansion and improvement of services offered. Traditionally, this work has been neighborhood-based, adult-led, and focused on improving material resources and services. Increasingly, however, "hybrid" organizations linking youth and community development have urged the meaningful inclusion of young people in community change efforts. This newer arm of the community-building field also calls for broadening the types of community resources surveyed, and identifying a host of less tangible assets communities may build upon to enrich the lives of their members.

Imagine Chicago joins these efforts by its emphasis on intergenerational partnership and its focused appreciation of the cultural, historical, and spiritual resources citizens can draw upon. More uniquely, perhaps, Imagine Chicago highlights the importance of public conversation to fuel the imagination, creativity, and hope that will motivate citywide efforts. In this respect, intergenerational interviewing calls to mind a third burgeoning field: civic dialogue.

Intergenerational interviewing and civic dialogue. Imagine Chicago’s work reflects a belief that citizen voice is an essential part of shaping public life. Indeed, imagination-spurring civic exercises are conceived as part and parcel of the democratic process. Intergenerational interviewing is one among many vehicles for engendering public dialogue on important civic issues. Imagine Chicago’s particular process begins with discussion among a small group of individuals, but it eventually leads toward more public forums where larger groups of people come together to talk, reflect, and organize for change.

Over the past decade, as theorists and practitioners have lamented declining public involvement in civic life, a host of organizations have sought to orchestrate responsibly facilitated forums where citizens come together to reflect, discuss, and debate matters affecting the public good. Differences in content, style, and end goal abound. Some efforts facilitate public discussion of contentious moral issues, like abortion. Others address issues that continue to divide American society, like race relations. Still others address policy problems on the local, regional, or national level. Some public forums are face-to-face, while others use new technologies like the Internet to extend conversation beyond geographic boundaries. Some direct dialogue toward concrete action for change; others see dialogue itself as a worthy democratic product.

Imagine Chicago’s intergenerational interviewing process affirms the power of citizen dialogue. Its emphasis on building relationships across traditional divides helps young and old learn from each other. In so doing, Imagine Chicago enlarges the community of citizens who are inspired to act on behalf of the public good.