Community Calendar

What was life like before, during, and after the American Revolution? Join us for an interactive program that begins with a screening reel from The American Revolution, a documentary by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt, offering a compelling overview of the nation’s founding and its global impact.

Then step into history as a virtual volunteer transcriber for the Library of Congress through the By the People program. Work directly with real historical documents from colonial America through the early Republic and help bring to light the everyday experiences and voices of those who lived through this transformative era. Your contributions will make these materials more accessible to researchers and the public, joining a nationwide effort that has already surpassed one million transcribed pages.

This program is free and open to the public. Recommended for youth ages 13 and up and adults. Participants should bring a laptop or tablet with a charging cord. The program will run approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes.

There is no road quite like Route 66, and no state that embodies its spirit quite like Oklahoma. Home to more surviving miles of the Mother Road than any other state, Oklahoma is where the legend of America's most iconic highway truly comes alive.

Join us for this centennial celebration of Route 66, tracing the history, landmarks, and stories that made the road a symbol of freedom, adventure, and the open American spirit. From the glowing neon signs of Tulsa to the beloved Blue Whale, the storied Lucille's Service Station, and the legendary Cal's Café in Erick, this documentary uncovers the people and places that shaped a highway, and a nation's imagination. This free program is open to the public. It is approximately 27 minutes, not rated and made possible by PBS.

Celebrate the anniversary of the 1969 Moon Landing with a morning of stories, art, and science the whole family will love. The program begins with a reading of Max Goes to the Moon by Jeffrey Bennett, a delightful story that blends imagination with real scientific facts about space exploration and our nearest neighbor in the sky. Afterward, families will create their own Moon Masterpiece to take home, then take part in an engaging NASA-inspired science activity that demonstrates how lunar craters are formed.

Fun, hands-on, and endlessly fascinating, this program is designed to spark curiosity, encourage creativity, and celebrate one of humanity's greatest adventures. This free program is open to the public and designed for families with children ages 6 and up. All materials will be provided.

Have you ever wished you could travel back in time and uncover the history of the very ground beneath your feet? That's exactly what WTTW host Geoffrey Baer does in Chicago Time Machine, peeling back layers of fascinating stories from all over Chicagoland, going back as far as 14,000 years. From a notorious vice district south of the Loop, where crooked ward bosses went by names like Bathhouse John and Hinky Dink, to Wicker Park at the end of the Ice Age when prehistoric giant beavers roamed freely, this is Chicago history like you have never quite seen it. Along the way, Baer uncovers a World War II aircraft engine plant that now houses a mall and makes Tootsie Rolls, a decommissioned limestone quarry retrofitted as a neighborhood fishing pond, and a quiet River North alley where four notorious executions took place in 1887. Every corner of this city has a story, and most of them are stranger than fiction.

This free program is open to the public. It is approximately 1 hour and 22 minutes, not rated and made possible through PBS.

Celebrate the anniversary of the 1969 Moon Landing with an afternoon of stories, art, and science the whole family will love. The program begins with a reading of Max Goes to the Moon by Jeffrey Bennett, a delightful story that blends imagination with real scientific facts about space exploration and our nearest neighbor in the sky. Afterward, families will create their own Moon Masterpiece to take home, then take part in an engaging NASA-inspired science activity that demonstrates how lunar craters are formed.

Fun, hands-on, and endlessly fascinating, this program is designed to spark curiosity, encourage creativity, and celebrate one of humanity's greatest adventures. This free program is open to the public and designed for families with children ages 6 and up. All materials will be provided.

Curb cuts, building ramps, and braille on elevator buttons may seem like ordinary features of everyday life today, but they were hard won. This powerful documentary tells the emotional and dramatic story of the decades-long fight for equality and accessibility that culminated in the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.

Told through the voices of key participants and witnesses, the film highlights the determined men and women who literally put their bodies on the line to make their voices heard, and who changed the lives of all Americans in the process. A testament to the power of coalition building, bipartisan cooperation, and the enduring strength of ordinary people, the passage of the ADA stands as one of the great civil rights achievements in American history and a shining example of democracy at its best. This free program is open to the public. It is approximately 52 minutes, rated PG, and made possible through Kanopy.

Long before written language, ancient peoples carved their stories into stone, tracking stars, recording history, and preserving culture for generations to come. In this hands-on program, participants will explore that tradition through a short documentary featuring Indigenous Pueblo community members sharing the meaning and legacy of their ancestors' rock art.

Inspired by this powerful tradition of visual storytelling, participants will then create their own petroglyph using air-dry clay, wooden carving tools, and paint, taking home a small but meaningful piece of art all their own. This free program is open to the public and recommended for ages 8 and up. All materials will be provided.

What does it mean to be American? Join us for a hybrid community book club exploring that question through the lens of the American Revolution. The evening opens with a preview screening from Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt's PBS documentary The American Revolution, followed by an informal group discussion.

This month's featured title is Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph Ellis. In 1790, the United States was more a fragile hope than a functioning reality. Over the decade that followed, the Founding Fathers, reexamined here as Founding Brothers, worked to transform the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the framework of the Constitution into the practical workings of a new government. Ellis brings that pivotal decade to life through six compelling episodes: the deadly duel between Hamilton and Burr, Washington's precedent-setting Farewell Address, the debate over where to place the nation's capital, Franklin's bold attempt to force Congress to confront slavery, and the remarkable late-life correspondence between Jefferson and Adams.

This free program runs approximately 60 minutes and is open to the public. It will be held both in-person at the Granville Branch and virtually via Zoom. Copies of Founding Brothers are available at the Granville Branch. To register for Zoom, visit: https://t.ly/DwWjH

In this fun and easy craft activity, participants will color, cut, and assemble their very own triceratops headband to wear home. Choose your favorite colors, add your own creative touch, and walk out the door as the coolest dinosaur in the room. This free program is open to the public and perfect for ages 5 and up. All materials will be provided.

Before Selma, there was Freedom Summer, a 10-week voter registration campaign that would change America forever. In 1964, when civil rights activists devised a daring plan to force change, Black Mississippians had already endured nearly 100 years of Jim Crow. From mid-June through August, hundreds of volunteers descended on Mississippi, turning the nation's attention to the legalized injustice occurring across the South. The summer was a complex mixture of vision, political maneuvering, bigotry, brutality, and bravery, and although that protest permanently changed America, voting issues persist to this day.

This free public program runs approximately 56 minutes and is made possible through PBS.