LOS ANGELES– Join the Los Angeles Poverty Department on February 2, 2018, 7pm at the Movie Nights at the Skid Row History Museum and Archive, 250 S. Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Civic Art and Public Safety: Four Stories from South Los Angeles film screening and conversation with the Filmmakers Director Mark Escribano and Producer Sara Daleiden and a staff representative from LA Public Library, Central Library or Little Tokyo branch and a community member for the Skid Row Parks Committee. The film and the conversation will focus on projects that explore the social power of art to amplify the use of shared public spaces. Trailer link: LACAC YouTube link This program is supported by California Humanities through an Humanities for All Quick Grant to the project Public Safety for Real. Los Angeles Poverty Department was founded in 1985 by director-performer-activist John Malpede. LAPD was the first performance group in the nation made up principally of homeless people, and the first arts program of any kind for homeless people in Los Angeles.
Skid Row Los Angeles is the poorest area in the city, with the largest concentration of homeless people of any neighborhood in the US. At the time of its founding, homelessness in Skid Row was thought of as a “beans and blankets” issue. Poor and homeless people in the neighborhood were warehoused in shelters, fed in soup lines and there was little belief and no means for assisting people to rise out of this condition. LAPD, as the first arts organization on Skid Row, was active in a conversation and a movement with advocates, residents and social service professionals, that changed the paradigm by putting forward the idea that Skid Row could be improved, by embracing and nourishing the powers of the people who live there.
