an artistic paradise for lost and wayward children

Founded one strange night in a Logan Square apartment by Stephanie Lane Sutton, Nate Olison, Kevin Kern and Jasmine Neosh, the West Side School for the Desperate is an attempt at creating a home for the artistically and spiritually orphaned– those firebrand, restless, twenty-who-gives-a-fuck year olds who find themselves disheartened by the shallowness and lack of passion that seems to pervade so much of the creative community. We are makers and destroyers: writers, musicians, filmmakers and artists of all kinds who don’t just want to make art, but want to make good art, and who want you to make good art too.  We are not a commune, nor a magazine, nor a venue, nor a blog—we are a home for all the wayward and lost, caught up in the whirlwind of youthful abandon, seeking to reconstruct and annihilate the world around them.