WALK the TALK open workshops

Tuesday and Thursday: 7-9 pm and Saturday 2-5 pm

@ 800 6th Street: at the corner E. 6 Street and Stanford.

Feb. - April: WALK the TALK performance: community conversation events, and a peripatetic performance, with brass band, that will travel through the neighborhood celebrating the achievements of 36 community builders.

Public Artworks / Community Portrait Gallery

Based on input from the community and with the support of the LA Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) Los Angeles Poverty department is creating a public artwork featuring 36 portraits of Skid Row community makers and visionaries, designed by Mr. Brainwash.

WALK THE TALK builds upon our work over the past years. During the project "UTOPIA / dystopia", we created events that engaged community brain-power to identify initiatives and people who had made positive contributions to the neighborhood. We invited some of the most widely recognized social visionaries from the neighborhood, and they were asked to speak about other people and initiatives that they valued. The input led to the installation, “Skid Row History Museum,” at The Box Gallery, which included more performance and public conversation events, to solicit further community input.

COLD WAR a performance project, developed over 3 years by the PeerGrouP and Los Angeles Poverty Department

Feb. 13-25: residency PeerGouP in Los Angeles

July 15- Aug. 15: residency LAPD in Drente, The Netherlands

The finished piece will be presented as part of the Noorderzon Festival in Groningen, the Netherlands, from16-26 August 2012.

The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Cultural Exchange International initiative has supported two phases of this collaboration between LAPD and the Netherlands-based PeerGrouP . Both groups create theater work that engages with current social issues, but the communities they work with are very different: PeerGrouP builds projects in rural locations in Drente and L.A. Poverty Department builds projects in the heart of Skid Row, downtown LA.

October: annual Festival for All Skid Row Artists in Gladys Park

The ‘Festival for All Skid Row Artists’ wants to bring together the artists of Skid Row and to collect the data necessary to make the Case forual Skid Row Culture. We set up a booth where all Skid Row artists can register and we take pictures of their work and film and record their performances. We are creating a database with the artists contact information and information about where and how they are making their art that will be made available to the Skid Row community. And all artists will receive our menacing cool Skid Row Artist sunglasses.

With the festival we present the culture that exists on Skid Row to emphasize the necessity for cultural resources. In January 2010 John Malpede (Los Angeles Poverty Department) and Maria Rosario Jackson (Urban Institute) presented the study, initiated by the Americans for the Arts: "Making The Case For Skid Row Culture". The paper, a result of interviews of focus group meetings with community residents and organizational representatives, found that culture in Skid Row comes from the ground up and is often initiated by residents and resident driven initiatives. The pdf is available on our website and on the website of Americans for the Arts: www.artsusa.org/animatingdemocracy/pdf/reading_room/LAPD.pdf

BIGGEST RECOVERY COMMUNITY ANYWHERE

Fall 2012: begin work process, anticipated performance of finished work: May 2013

LAPD will start a new performance project that highlights the fact that Skid Row is one of the most significant recovery neighborhoods in the country.

Fall 2012 - 2013: STATE OF INCARCERATION Installation / Performance:

Los Angeles Poverty Department’s Examination of the Personal and Social Costs of Incarceration in the U.S. will travel to:

VSA Arts of New Mexico, North Fourth Art Center Albuquerque, NM.

Tucson-PIMA Arts Council, Arizona

The Queens Museum, NY, NY.

Pascal Rambert’s ‘Micro History of World Economics, danced’: Spring 2013 LAPD’s 3^rd collaboration with Pascal with 5 French performers and 45 from LA and LAPD.

Agentes y Activos in Nicaragua

LAPD is planning a 6 week residency in Matagalpa and Managua with Nicaraguan Teatro MOVITEP SF of ‘Agentes y Activos’: our performance about drug trafficking.