The Alliance for California Traditional Arts is pleased to begin work on the Promise Zone Arts project, a two-year cultural asset mapping program that will celebrate the cultural treasures of the Los Angeles Promise Zone. The federally-designated LA Promise Zone is a collective impact, anti-poverty initiative that provides resources and leadership to public, non-profit, and community-based organizations working in Central Los Angeles. Promise Zone Arts seeks to illuminate the value of neighborhood cultural assets—the people, places, and things that residents find culturally, historically, and aesthetically meaningful—and make them visible as essential in making our communities more sustainable and livable.
Working with our partners LA Commons, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles Promise Zone Office and Youth Policy Institute, ACTA will facilitate ethnographic research with residents through a participatory process of community engagement activities to identify cultural assets that contribute to the area’s dynamic cultural fabric. The project will begin in the southern part of the LA Promise Zone neighborhoods of Westlake, Koreatown, and Pico-Union, then expand to the northern neighborhoods of Hollywood and East Hollywood in 2018. Cultural treasures celebrations will be held to share the stories, videos, online storybank and power of neighborhood arts and culture.
Please stay tuned as we share stories and videos from the cultural treasures of the LA Promise Zone! If you are based in these neighborhoods and would like to get involved contact Beto González at ACTA – we are recruiting documentary teams and task force members who are rooted in the LA Promise Zone.