Recognizing Skid Row As A Neighborhood: Skid Row Cooling Resources
@ DIVERSEAartLA – LA Arts Show, Jan. 19-23, 2022
Curated by Tom Grode.
With support from Skid Row History Museum and Archive and Urban Voice Project.
Transformative Arts — “Skid Row Museum”
The annual LA Art Show at the Convention Center in Downtown Los Angeles is the biggest international art fair on the West Coast. For 2022 it goes from Thursday January 20 to Sunday the 23rd.
Transformative Arts (Wikipedia) is the use of artistic activities, such as story-telling, painting, and music-making, to precipitate constructive individual and social change. The individual changes effected through transformative arts are commonly cognitive and emotional. This results from the way participation in a creative process and pursuit of an artistic discipline can promote a critical re-evaluation of previously held beliefs accompanied by unfamiliar feelings, which alters perception of the world, oneself, and others. The social change effected through transformative arts occurs when this altered perception manifests in new ways of interacting with others.
In this time of the new Covid outbreak, the Art Show consists of over eighty galleries from more than a dozen countries. The year before Covid appeared it was 120 galleries from 23 countries.
Within the Art Show each year is a special collaborative effort featuring Museums, Arts Nonprofits, and Community/Civic Engagement called DIVERSEartLA. The DIVERSEartLA theme for 2022 is the Environment.
And the reason for this blog is one of seven Museum exhibits within the DIVERSEartLA space is the “Skid Row Museum”. In essence, this is a Global pop up neighborhood. The Skid Row Museum exhibit is Recognizing Skid Row As A Neighborhood: Skid Row Cooling Resources.
LA Art Show 2022 Looks Forward in Art and Solutions to Pressing Global Issues
DIVERSEartLA, curated by Marisa Caichiolo, kicks off the show by inviting science and art museums to take part in eight unique projects, all with a focus on environmental advocacy. These projects include “Recognizing Skid Row As A Neighborhood: Skid Row Cooling Resources” and a poignant exhibit shedding light on the lack of clean water in Jalisco, Mexico. Taiji Terasaki, Japanese American artist based in Honolulu, Hawaii, joins the conversation with a variety of masterful artworks ranging from digital NFT compositions to woven metal tapestries. His showcase will also include an immersive live mist installation demonstrating the artist’s masterful grasp of new technology. Each work evokes timely emotions and is envisioned through the lens of environmentalism and conscious activism.
From the Skid Row Now and 2040 Facebook page: ”Recognizing Skid Row As A Neighborhood: Skid Row Cooling Resources” is one of the Cultural Museum Exhibits in the LA Arts Show taking place this coming January 20–23 in the Downtown Convention center.
Recognizing Skid Row As A Neighborhood is the name of the powerpoint slide that the Department of City Planning (DTLA 2040) used in their September 2021 presentation to the Los Angeles Planning Commissioners to summarize their plan when it comes to the future of Skid Row. City Planning used their language in translating Skid Row community input and from that came up with 20 positive recommendations for Skid Row as a neighborhood. Regular updates here as the LA Art Show happens.
Go to laartshow.com and click on DIVERSEartLA to learn more.”
Birthed out of the brutal heat waves of September 2020, Skid Row Cooling Resources (SRCR) is an emergency public health response to the reality of Skid Row as a unique Urban Heat Island within the larger Heat Island of Downtown Los Angeles. SRCR successfully rolled out services on the streets of Skid Row this past summer.
Just as the Skid Row Now and 2040 Facebook page will have updates as the LA Art Show takes place from January 20 to 23, this blog Transformative Arts — Skid Row will also have updates.
The Skid Row History Museum & Archive & The Urban Voices Project, Los Angeles Present
Recognizing Skid Row As A Neighborhood: Skid Row Cooling Resources
Curated by Tom Grode
Recognizing Skid Row As A Neighborhood is how DTLA 2040 (Department of City Planning) formally presented Skid Row this year to Los Angeles City Hall as part of updating the Downtown Community Plan. Skid Row is a dynamic, primarily African American, residential neighborhood – not a problem to be fixed. A resident of a downtown Los Angeles neighborhood adjacent to Skid Row, curator Tom Grode is deeply engaged with Skid Row as a powerful arts community, in particular a part of the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) and Urban Voices Project.
