Jenna Pollack (MUPP, MA) is a community-engaged researcher, dance professional, cultural organizer, urban planner, and educator. She specializes in progressive community economic development and cultural planning, and is committed to the integration of creative, communal, and civic infrastructure.
From mid-2024 through mid-2025, CDHP has the honor of serving as organizational host for Jenna Pollack’s Equity Fellowship with Chicago United for Equity (CUE [hyperlink]). Extending Jenna full access to CDHP’s archives supports the research she has been conducting that both elucidate and problematize our local sector’s relationship to urban planning, policy, gentrification and displacement, and community self-determination. ​
In 2025, Jenna, CDHP, Newberry Library, and Chicago History Museum are developing live co-presented panel discussions springing from Jenna’s research addressing the causality between public policy and affordable space for dance in Chicago, individually and collectively.
In addition, we are proud to introduce Jenna as the dedicated convener of CDHP’s Advisory Council development process, which will utilize the CUE Racial Equity Impact Assessment framework. Getting underway in early 2025, this inaugural group will steer CDHP through its next phase of growth, challenge, and service.
Our Partnership
Expanding Our Reach
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Get To Know Jenna Pollock
Jenna Pollock (she/her) is the Principal of Solidarity Works LLC where she collaborates on solidarity economy and creative projects focused on community economic development, research, policy, and media production. Jenna serves on the Archiving Advisory Board for the Chicago Black Social Culture Map, and on the Board of Directors for Links Hall and Springboard Danse. She was a 2024-25 Fellow with Chicago United for Equity, and a 2024 Cooperative Leaders & Scholars Fellow with the Cooperative Development Foundation.
Her recent research includes the chapter "Locating Power: Sammy Dyer School of the Theatre and Urban Renewal" in Dancing on the Third Coast: Chicago Dance Histories (University of Illinois Press, 2026).
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Jenna is a former dance professor and current cat mom. She loves live performance, non-fiction, and rabble-rousing.​
Other Community Partners
