community: Creating and Advising Nonprofits
Supporting Marwen Foundation in Education in Arts

Supporting Marwen Foundation, Inc. (“Marwen”) in providing free art instruction to under-served youth in Chicago

Founded in 1987, Marwen is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the development of Chicago’s under-served youth in grades 6-12 through free visual arts, college planning, and career preparation programs. In a typical year, more than 2,000 students—from 48 of Chicago’s 53 zip codes, and from more than 200 schools—travel to Marwen, where they work under the guidance of professional teaching artists to build high-level technical, creative, and communication skills that support their development in becoming productive, agile, and accomplished adults. Marwen offers a regular roster of college preparation courses and workshops, an intensive pre-college summer program, study trips to college campuses across the country, and unlimited individualized counseling sessions. Marwen offers art-based career planning courses and workshops, paid employment opportunities, an internship program that provides on-the-job training, and an annual career day during which students meet professionals from a broad spectrum of fields, including architecture, graphic design, fashion, and technology. Dedicated to the study of teaching and learning in the arts, Marwen offers studio-based credit courses for school teachers as well as specialized professional development for teaching artists. Rigorous evaluation of these and other programs helps Marwen to continually refine its course offerings while also making invaluable contributions to the broader field of youth arts education.

Between December, 2007 and August, 2008, DLA Piper (US)—through a long-standing relationship between a member of Marwen's Board of Directors and Harold Pomerantz, who is a partner in our real estate department—represented Marwen in its acquisition of property in Chicago, Illinois to provide additional space for Marwen’s operations. This purchase was complicated, and nine attorneys in our Chicago office worked on it. Due to the length of our representation, our attorneys gained a deep appreciation of Marwen’s work, and Marwen and our attorneys became very familiar with one another. Neither wanted the relationship to end when Marwen’s purchase was completed, and as a result, one of the attorneys involved—A.J. Jindal, who is a senior associate in our real estate department—became Marwen’s General Counsel in September, 2008. Through this relationship, DLA Piper (US) continually provides pro bono counsel to Marwen in areas such as corporate compliance and governance, tax, labor, intellectual property, and real estate.