Saturday and Sunday, October 26 & 27, 2019
Each day from 1 to 5 PM
In Gladys park: At the corner of 6th Street and Gladys Avenue, LA, CA 90021
Say What! TENth Annual –can you believe it! How Time Flies! How a community vitally sustains itself! You better believe it!
The Festival for All Skid Row Artists is a two-day festival of performing and visual art with plenty of music, showcasing the diverse range of talents among Skid Row residents. Taking place in Gladys Park (corner of 6th Street and Gladys Avenue), the festival has become one of the most anticipated grassroots cultural events in Skid Row where over 100 Skid Row Artists perform or display their artwork to enthusiastic audiences. Many will be back and are preparing their acts and works of art, and thanks to extensive street outreach, many people will get on-stage for the very first time and get in the mix of the vibrant Skid Row artistic culture.
LAPD partners with Studio 526 and United Coalition East Prevention Project (UCEPP) to produce the Festival. This year, the Goethe-Institut is an additional producing partner. The Goethe-Institut is organizing the event series “Worlds of Homelessness”, including discussions, music and film screenings, that begins Tuesday October 22, at LA Poverty Department’s Skid Row History Museum & Archive (with additional sites at Sci-Arc and Navel). The project brings together local and international artists, architects, scholars and others and culminates with the 2 days of the Festival.
“Worlds of Homelessness” will open with music by the LA Playmakers and the Playmakers will close out the Festival on Sunday Afternoon. The LA Playmakers are a local band founded by Joseph Warren and Stan Watson 5yrs ago. These accomplished professional musicians have played with a number of well known jazz and pop music figures. They can play anything, R&B, Hip-Hop, Reggae, Gospel– and they do. The band members have one thing in common. They all were members of the Praise and Worship Team at Skid Row’s Central City Church of the Nazarene.
Festival attendees are invited to participate in a range of artist facilitated workshops and creativity stations. The LA City Department of City Planning will be there to gather community input on their emerging plan for downtown and Skid Row Now & 2040, will also be getting festival-goer input on their community generated plan for a Skid Row future without displacement and with housing for area residents now on the streets. LAPD’s Festival for All Skid Row Artists gives audiences a chance to hear what you usually don’t hear about Skid Row: that it is a community rich with talent!
Los Angeles Poverty Department celebrates and preserves the rich artistic heritage of Skid Row and beginning with the first Festival in 2009 has generated a registry of Skid Row artists, which now numbers more than 800.
LAPD is a theater company comprised primarily of low income and homeless people living in Los Angeles’ Skid Row. Founded in 1985, LAPD creates performances and multidisciplinary artworks that connect the experience of people living in poverty to the social forces that shape their lives and communities. LAPD’s works express the realities, hopes, dreams and rights of people who live and work in L.A.’s Skid Row.
