It has been a great few months organizing Learnapalooza 2011 with a team of volunteers in partnership with CommuniTeach, a website that lets you learn skillsfor free throughout the year. We currently have 17 fantastic venues and 45 teachers that have signed up to teach a mix of fantastic classes and will open up RSVPs in the next few weeks. Some of the classes you’ll be able to attend next month include:

• Bollywood dancing
• summer sandwich making
• improv comedy
• worm composting
• earring making
• and many more!

If you share our passion for free learning and teaching, we’d love to have you participate in our festival this year signing up to teach a class. Social media? Pool playing? Juggling? Public speaking? Astronomy? All that and more would be great additions to our summer festival of learning.

If you’re interested in teaching a class, please fill out the form at  http://learnapaloozachi.com/teach/ and share it with your equally skillful friends. Want to help out but not sure what you can teach? Email sarah@learnapaloozachi.com and I’ll help you brainstorm! Thanks again for all your support of the festival – we are excited to see you on June 25th!

Are you passionate about free learning?  Do you want to share your book binding or composting skills with your community?  Do you want to show off your expertise in SEO and boost your resume by teaching a community workshop?  Then sign up to be a teacher at Learnapalooza — Chicago’s free learning festival happening in Wicker Park on June 25th.

Learnapalooza invites amateur and professional teachers to host free workshops on a topic of their choosing.  Last year, over 400 community members attended 70+ free classes ranging from salsa dancing to beer tasting to community organizing.  Anyone who has something to share – and basically we all do – can offer a class.  We take care of all of the class logistics.  All we ask from our teachers is to plan and teach a fun, free class.

If you’re interested in teaching a class,  click here to fill out the teacher form.  Can’t wait until June 25th?  Sign up for Communiteach and post your free class today.

Hello everyone! We are happy to announce the date of Learnapalooza 2011.

Drum roll please…..

The second Learnapalooza will be held on June 25th in Wicker Park.

Interested in volunteering, sponsoring, teaching or hosting your own version of Learnapalooza? Let us know, we’ll be happy to help (maggie_at_Learnapaloozachi.com or sarah_at_Learnapaloozachi.com).

Thanks so much to everyone who came out for Learnapalooza last weekend. We had over 17 host venues, 60 teachers, and over 300 attendees. All and all, it was a fantastic day.

Had a good time? Got suggestions for ways we can improve the festival? Let us know in the comments section of this blog post!

Thanks again. You all rule.

Wooo hoo! Come one, come all to Wicker Park damen/milwaukee/north intersection. There will be people in blue Learnapalooza shirts to direct you to classes and answer questions.

If you’ve already signed up for classes, that’s great. If you didn’t sign up for classes, that’s ok too. Come to the class of your choice a few minutes early, and if it isn’t over capacity at start time the volunteer stationed there will add you to the list!

And come join us at Nick’s Beer Garden at 1516 N Milwaukee at 5pm after the fest for our After School Specials happy. There will be dollar off domestic bottles and well drinks for all Learnapalooza attendees, and 10% of all revenue goes towards Learnapalooza 2011! It should be a great time.

We hope to see you today!

Wow. This is really exciting.

Thanks you so much to all the the hardworking volunteers, accommodating hosts, generous donors, and awesome teachers that have contributed to help organize this amazing event.

We have closed down RSVPs for classes that have reached capacity by removing them from the bottom of the form. But many great classes still remain, such as a fun and free tap class, a combination of aerobics and swordfighting called Fit Cut (Aerobic Sword) and a great class in personal style taught by fantastic clothing label (and festival sponsor!) Crescendo.

There are still a few great kid friendly classes available, including The Musical Zoo for 1-4 year olds, Mini Menagerie, Family Zumba, Off the Barre Ballet for 5-8 year olds, and more. Bring the family and spread the word to your friends with kids.

Just wanted to quickly mention a few other great writeups we received!

Our Urban Times is a community newsletter that shares local news and happenings in the Bucktown, East Village, Noble Square, Ukrainian Village, West Town, and Wicker Park areas. They have written about Learnapalooza not once, but twice (!),  first as an event writeup, and a then to share an interview with fellow co-founder Maggie Schutz.

Gozamos is modern online magazine and community for young Latinos in Chicago that does a fantastic job covering events (like Learnapalooza) that are relevant to the full Chicago community. Check out their writeup on our event here!

Free Chicago posts about all things in Chicago that are fun and free, including Learnapalooza. They summarize us here, and you should also see the other free things going on in subsequent weekends!

Please let me know if there are any other writeups I’ve missed. Thanks again to everyone for helping spread the word about this great event!

Hi everyone!

Just wanted to take a moment to recognize some of the great press Learnapalooza has been receiving! We’ll be capturing these mentions and more on our about us page, as well as our Facebook fan page (198 fans! Help us hit 200!) and twitter account

As of 4:46 today Learnapalooza is…

• A popular event on Yelp with over 34 people interested in our event.
• On the front page of the Windy Citizen — Shoutout to Andy Angelos for adding us and everyone who has liked our page!
• Featured on the blog of Scalewell, a fantastic micro-seed fund for local entrepreneurs and supporter of our partner project CommuniTeach
• Interviewed by the super cool Alisa Hauser for the great Wicker Park e-newsletter Pipeline – you should sign up to her newsletter here!
• Listed as something free on Broke Hipster and something awesome on Chicago Now.
• The subject of great writeups by most excellent Learnapalooza hosts Dance Spa and Quimby’s (who wrote about it on their adorably named Quimblog, as well as the excellent and crafty Renegade Homemade
• And, last but not least, had a great blog writeup by Jack, a rockin’ Wicker Park resident who ran into a few members of the Learnapalooza team at Filter during our teacher meetup on Sunday.

Thanks so much to everyone for supporting our event! We’re thrilled that you are as excited about our day of free learning as well are!

Love and learning,
The Learnapalooza Team

We noticed a discrepancy between the PDF and the online RSVP form for only a few classes (“Getting money for college,” “Tai Chi”, and “Musical Zoo.”)  If you previously RSVPed for any of these classes, please look at the current schedule and double check our day.  Sorry for the confusion.

Also, we now have the previously to-be-determined Hapkido classes are now in!  There is a full slate of martial arts including Women’s self defense, Hapkido, and Aerobic Sword (how awesome does that sound?)

This should be the final lineup.  If looking at the new listings you want to change anything, simply fill out a new RSVP form and check the “edit my schedule” box at the bottom.

Thanks!  Classes are filling up fast!

We need volunteers to help us day of. Sign up today and you’ll be able to pick your top two venues (aka the classes you like the most) you want to help out at. Extra bonus you will get a cool Learnapalooza t-shirt and button.