Ms. Erin R. Harkey

What Can We Do...Now? Cultural Asset Mapping in Los Angeles County

Posted by Ms. Erin R. Harkey, Nov 07, 2011 0 comments


Ms. Erin R. Harkey

The Los Angeles County Arts Commission was recently awarded a grant through the National Endowment for the Arts’ Our Town initiative to produce a cultural asset map in the unincorporated community of Willowbrook, CA.

Located just south of Watts and west of Compton, Project Willowbrook: Cultivating a Healthy Community through Arts and Culture will capitalize on the county’s over $600 million investment in health services and infrastructure. This includes the Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Medical Center Campus Master Plan and the Wilmington Streetscape Plan that will link the campus to the nearby Rosa Parks Metro Station.

The arts commission and primary project partner LA Commons will use community engagement activities to identify artists, organizations, programs, and artworks, with the understanding that “art” and “culture” should capture both the formal and informal ways that people engage, this information will be compiled in a final report. The report will provide recommendations on long-term, sustainable strategies that will integrate art into development and achieve overall community objectives.

The first phase of the process involves conversations with key stakeholders across sectors. From these conversations, we have begun to think broadly about Willowbrook’s creative potential. We see this asset mapping process not just as an academic exercise, but as a community endeavor that can have immediate and lasting, positive results.

Here are a few things that we are particularly excited about:

The MLK Temporary Walkway Mural will use the existing construction fencing around the MLK Campus as tool to identify and engage local artists living and working in Willowbrook and adjacent communities. As an ongoing activity, the selected artists will work together and partner with community organizations to complete the mural. The final result will examine the health and societal benefits of arts and culture.

Through the arts commission’s Civic Art Program, the MLK Medical Center will be the site of a $1 million civic art allocation. This allocation includes the development of an artist-designed healing garden, the commissioning of portable works by local artists, and a monumental sculpture for the hospital entrance. The selected artists will engage the local community throughout the design process.

A lead artist will act as the “cultural warehouse” for the information gathered during the asset mapping process. Based on this information, the lead artist will create an overlay for the existing MLK Medical Center Campus and streetscape plans. This overlay will identify existing and potential sites for programming. As a final art product, these sites will be activated through temporary projects and/or performances by local groups.

Always cool, the cultural activities in Watts have presented an opportunity to collaborate across agencies and jurisdictions to increase connectivity, and to maximize resources and impact. The Department of Cultural Affairs for the City of Los Angeles was also a recipient of an Our Town grant.

Partnering with Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Watts Community Labor Action Committee (WLCAC), their project will improve pedestrian access to the Watts Towers. In addition, local organizations like the Watts House Project and Watts Village Theater Company are finding innovative ways to engage community by integrating art into infrastructure and community development.

That being said, we have more questions than answers about where this process will go.

We struggle with the challenge of creating a sense of place in a community where identity is intertwined with better known Watts and Compton. Given the complex challenges that those connections imply, the transient nature of this type of cultural investment has limitations. Heavy on our minds is the reality that community is always there, but our time is somewhat restricted. What can we do...now?

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