Ideas in and of themselves don’t always impact people, but experiences often can. And so ideas about experiences are always worth a look. Sometimes a deep, multifaceted, colorful look. This is one of those times.
When our founder Wyatt Closs took on a role to initiate creative and cultural strategies for the communications firm Spitfire, he brought with him a vision and opportunity that became Creative Resilience, a large scale pop-up art show, performance, discussion and activation space about economic justice for communities of color.
Art as an Organizing Magnet
The event took place on 7 days between October 8-16 in the heart of Los Angeles’ Arts District, transforming a 10,000-square-foot raw warehouse space into a creative gallery and community action environment.
Developing the idea with Rosemarie Molina, who was leading the organizing efforts of the People’s Project, a Los Angeles nonprofit powered by the Los Angeles Federation of Labor to produce Creative Resilience, Wyatt painted a picture in which an artful community experience could amplify the voices of BIPOC Angeleno workers, and provide popular education about the economy as well.
The whole idea was to make good use of this vibrant space with art and performances and workshops, and have it be an incredible, somewhat unorthodox organizing vehicle. And it worked. Over 3000 people signed up during the 7-day run of Creative Resilience that would become prospects for receiving vital mutual aid services, to serve as volunteers, or become donors of the People’s Project.
The event shined a light on BIPOC Angeleno workers’ experiences of pre- and post-pandemic economic hardship and their rich history of coming together through mutual aid to care for and support one another. Creative Resilience also included a Mutual Aid Expo related to the economy and work, situated among artful depictions of solidarity, workers, challenges for workers in the past and present, and an envisioning of the future of LA labor. More than 5,000 people attended the event.
The Work It Took
Curation
Education
Space
Programming
To drive the multifaceted approach of this project, Wyatt developed a production model in which four buckets of work would happen: Curation, Programming, Education, and Space. In successive blog posts over time, we will delve into each of these, but start with Curation.
Curation
The task alone of outreach to show 100 works of art by 70 artists (which really means being in contact or communicating with twice that number of artists) was not simple. Wyatt worked with Evan Cerasoli, who led the curation and outreach effort.
Developing a Curation Theory
Working with some documents from the People’s Project, Wyatt started thinking about the values underpinning their mission and then considered what those values might look like or how they might be amplified visually. He wrote out a theoretical framework about the story trying to be told that then served as the basis for the curation, as artist commitments came in and works were surveyed. There would be five galleries, that acted like chapters to the story: Times are Tough, It is Systemic, (But) When We Organize, We Can Thrive (and Have Joy), (based on) The Future We Make. One line from the text panel at the gallery entrance read:
Creative Resilience is what happens when we are making beauty out of hardship. It is irrepressible. And fly. It is that thing that allows us to make a way out of no way. This is your house. This is our time. Let us thrive in it.
With that, Wyatt, Evan and the curation team got busy on artist engagement to bring this story to life visually. And while we were pleased to have high profile artists like Shepard Fairey and Hank Willis Thomas and Favianna Rodriguez involved and contributing works, it was really gratifying to find a full range of artists from across the country in different art forms, most of whom did not know each other or had their work shown together.
