Request 025 — 1/25/2026

It’s FOIA-palooza 2026!

It’s Sunday, happy foiaday!

For the majority of the folks in the U.S., I hope you’re safe, warm and in possession of lots of hot cocoa and blankets. (For everyone else with mild temps, I hope you… ahh! Are also having a good temperate time!)

Tomorrow will be our fourth weekly update — not to be confused with the monthly update, which will go out on the last day of the month.

I’ll round up all the deets about requests then — for tonight, let’s grab some documents related to Lollapalooza, Chicago’s premiere summer music festival.

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For the uninitiated, Lollapalooza is a summer music festival in downtown Chicago held during the first weekend of August. It was started as a tour event for Jane’s Addiction, and has become decidedly not that in the decades since.

Like a true suburbanite, I’ve gone to Lollapalooza… quite a few times. I think I hit ten (?) times and haven’t been back since. (I’ve lost my taste for dealing with day-drunk underage teenagers in basketball jerseys and overpriced add-ons that provide you with a sliver of access to a shady place to sit.)

It’s not all that bad. Lolla is great, and it’s arguably great for Chicago — it brings in hundreds of millions of dollars of money every year, attracts global talent, and continues to make the city a destination for music and culture.

The City of Chicago does extensive coordinating with the organizers of the festival in order to make it happen, and has for the many years that it’s been around. At the municipal level, the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events are the primary point people for programming, permitting and everything in between.

DCASE makes their FOIA logs public, which is awesome! Most City of Chicago agencies do, and they’re typically available through the data portal (albeit some aren’t always the most up to date).

With this request, I have a few questions in mind. First: landscaping costs must be obscene after you have a couple hundred thousand folks trampling through the grass. This is something that I’d have to request specifically from the Chicago Park District, which owns and operates Grant Park, where Lolla is held.

Second: What does into the planning, year over year, with Lolla? Requesting for bids, MOUs and other details from DCASE could maybe give insight into that, including the permits required for Lolla organizers to file for the event. (Which every event is required to file, regardless of size!)

Third is a little more inside baseball. Every year, Lollapalooza puts on multiple nights of aftershows following the festival at different venues around the city. They’re a great way to see a full set of an artist, especially if you 1. don’t want to pay for a full ticket for the festival or 2. want a more traditional concert experience. (Last year, I saw Cage the Elephant and Foster the People, both of whom ruled.)

One thing that gets shared about Lolla (by Lolla) is the community impact and the different programs it supports within the city. A program that catches my attention every year is the Lollapalooza Arts Education Fund, which is a 2.2 million dollar gift to Chicago Public Schools arts programs across the city. It’s a program designed for schools “with little or no arts programming” and will disburse $440k every year for five years across one to three year grants to these schools.

Aftershows, specifically, have a promise nestled in email promos and press releases: a dollar from each ticket purchased goes toward the fund.

I’m really curious what the application of those funds look like, especially as the future of CPS arts education seems to be in flux.

Okie dokie, here are the records we’re going to grab:

• From DCASE: deets about Lolla 2026, plus info about the community impact programs they support and a records retention schedule

• From CPS: deets about the Lollapalooza Arts Education Fund

• From Chicago Park District: deets about gardening and landscaping after Lolla 2025, plus about the Grant Park pickleball court project

So! DCASE first:

- All documents, MOUs, memos, releases or reports regarding Lollapalooza 2026, in a digitized format (like a .pdf). Please include all applicable information, including permitting, bids, contracting details.

- Permits filed for Lollapalooza 2025, in a digitized format. Please include all attachments or information included with the permit.

- Any documents, memos, reports, MOUs or other agreements regarding the Lollapalooza Arts Education Fund, the Lollapalooza & Sueños Job Fair, and TIP Fest. 

- The most recent records retention schedule for DCASE, which includes a list of documents kept by the agency and for how long each record is retained. Please release this in a .pdf if possible.

Aaaaaand let’s grab docs from Chicago Public Schools for the Lollapalooza Arts Education Fund:

- Documents, memos, MOUs, agreements, releases, disbursements, or reports related to the Lollapalooza Arts Education Fund (https://www.ingenuity-inc.org/creative-schools-fund/lolla-arts-ed-fund/), including proof of disbursement of funds to schools or school programs. Please search for documents between 1/1/2021 and present (1/25/2026). Please release documents as a .pdf or other digital format if possible.

And, because it’s mentioned, let’s grab records from Chicago Park District on the pickleball court redevelopment that they donated money to as well:

 - All invoices, documents, MOUs, memos, contracting information, bidding information, releases or reports regarding Lollapalooza 2025 and 2026, including landscaping and gardening, in a digitized format (like a .pdf). Please include all applicable information, including permitting, bids, contracting details.

- All invoices, payments, donations, documents, MOUs, memos, contracting information, bidding information, releases or reports regarding the "Grant Park Tennis and Pickleball Court Project" supported by Lollapalooza. Please release information in a digitized format, like a .xlsx or .pdf, if possible.

- The most recent records retention schedule for the Chicago Park District, which includes a list of documents kept by the agency and for how long each record is retained. Please release this in a .pdf if possible.

Because it’s Sunday, these will be filed first thing Monday morning, when they’ll actually be processed. (Yes, yes, I know this is all about filing every day, etc, but what is a weekend if not a non-business day that gets in the way of our FOIA filing and creates unnecessary “did you know that you filed this not on a business day” emails?)

Alrighty. I’m making some more cocoa and then hitting the hay. Tomorrow’s a big foiaday, with lots of fun updates to share!

Take care, and stay warm!

Cam