Ragdale is located 30 miles north of Chicago and was designed in 1897 by renowned Arts and Crafts architect Howard Van Doren Shaw as a summer retreat for his creative family. The Shaw family included two architects, two poets, a sculptor, a painter, a weaver, and a cartoonist and they often welcomed artistic peers, including Carl Sandburg and Vachel Lindsay, to join them at Ragdale. In 1976, the poet, teacher, and social activist Alice Judson Ryerson Hayes transformed her family’s summer retreat into an inclusive nonprofit space for artists of all disciplines. The Ragdale Foundation has since served more than 4,000 creative professionals from around the world who have examined, created, and presented their work at Ragdale.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n