Big City Forum Presents “Backyards, Front Porches & Other Living Spaces”
Washintongton/Adams Gallery – Los Angeles, CA
12/17/09

Big City Forum in conjunction with Washington/Adams gallery presents a panel discussion about community transformation and civic engagement. This presentation will be held during the opening reception to the exhibition “Backyards, Front Porches, and Other Living Spaces” an exhibition of art and design from LA’s new generation of teenage artists at Washington/Adams gallery. The discussion will engage the audience and participating young artists in a conversation that augments the themes of this show. Featured speakers are Ulises Diaz of Adobe LA, Karen Mack of LA Commons, Sara Harris of Youth Radio Los Angeles, and James Rojas of Latino Urban Forum and who worked with the students in this exhibition.

SARA HARRIS is an audio artist and radio journalist with ten years of experience reporting from Los Angeles and Mexico. Her work focuses on immigrants’ rights, urban geography, and environmental justice. Sara’s radio stories have been featured on Marketplace, All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Studio 360, The Next Big Thing, Living on Earth, BBC’s The World, and Mexico’s IMER national network. Sara is co-founder of the urban sound-mapping project: RadioSonideros whose works include Earth, Water, Air for The FM Ferry Experiment and The Roots of the Park for the Not a Cornfield project. Her most recent sound art collaboration with Christina Ulke: A history behind the fence; The ex-appropriation of Chavez Ravine was featured in Soundscapes at g727 in Los Angeles. Sara Harris started the Los Angeles Bureau at Youth Radio and founded the AudioPostales cross-border radio project with youth in the U.S. and Mexico. Sara is part of the 2010 M.A. class in Specialized Journalism at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and co-founder of the Mobile Youth Voices project.

ULISES DE JESUS DIAZ is an artist, designer, community and urban activist, who works to strengthen the voice of an expanding and diverse cultural community in Los Angeles. His work places an emphasis on the American West, with a particular interest in the Mexican and Chicano/a presence on the cultural and environmental landscapes of Southern California. Education has been an essential element his in his work towards a continuing and inclusive discourse on how Los Angeles has and is growing with its cultural diversity. Youth education is especially important to him through teaching with groups like The Heart Project, LA Commons, and Barrio Action Youth and Family Center; allowing early access and exposure to design, architecture/urbanism and the arts. Experience includes design projects; publications and artworks where he addresses how diverse cultures influence public open space, art and architecture in Los Angeles.

KAREN MACK, LA Commons’ Founder and Executive Director, has spent close to 20 years developing and implementing successful programs aimed at addressing important issues in the city. Following stints at California Council for the Humanities and United Way of Greater Los Angeles, she joined Community Partners in 1995 to support nonprofit entrepreneurs in turning their dreams of community service into reality. After serving in the role of Vice President, Program Development, Planning and Outreach for this organization, she left in 2001 to found LA Commons, based on her own dream of building sustainable, effective social networks in Los Angeles that cross boundaries of race, class and geography. Ms. Mack holds an MPA from Harvard University and an MBA from UCLA. She also is president of the board of Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative (LANI) and serves on the Mayor’s Advisory Committee for the Los Angeles Cultural Master Plan and the City of Los Angeles Board of Neighborhood Commissioners.

JAMES ROJAS
The opening up of the Eastside Gold Line Light Rail afforded me the opportunity to explore transportation options with East L.A. youth who re-imagined land use and accessibility in LA. In weekly workshops with twenty-four high school students, students used a medley of recycled materials, ranging from colored blocks, to bottle to design three-dimensional models of the future Eastside Gold Line community that they envision. The students broke into groups of 6 to plan a vibrant community around the Goldline Stations by considering how parks, housing, and land use impact their quality of life. In the process, they seized the meanings of urban planning, architecture, and transportation and commanded a greater understanding of how they can participate in it.

BIG CITY FORUM is an interdisciplinary project and collective network of leaders, formed to sustain efforts in the creative community that promote the civic and cultural vitality of metropolitan and urban communities. Through various formats such as gatherings, symposiums, exhibitions, and special events, Big City Forum fosters dialogue and engagement around capacity-building approaches that engender cultural growth and community transformation, Ultimately, Big City Forum functions as an “idea lab” to develop new solutions to key problems that impact contemporary urban centers.

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For more info, visit:  www.washingtonadams.com

via EM Staff, 16 December 2009 11:18am | |