The primary goal of Marrow—a nonprofit community space in St. Johns that focuses on arts, education, and activism—is to offer “a hub for youth to grow and strengthen, so they can go out into their communities and provide support, education, and mutual aid, like blood cells from marrow.” Originally born in the shed behind radical community center and music venue Anarres Infoshop (which is currently without a brick-and-mortar location), Marrow has shared a building on North Lombard with offices and a yoga studio since early 2017.
“I had been working for an unschooling program—a sect of homeschooling where the idea is that humans are naturally curious, that we’ll learn the things we need to learn and [that] school is sort of an outdated concept,” explains Daylynn Lambi, who founded Marrow in 2015 after that program lost funding. “I went to grad school for community arts education, so this was always the goal. My thesis looked at why traditional education isn’t actually engaging for most youth.”