The City of West Hollywood invites the community to participate in one of several community conversations, led by AEA Consulting, to discuss a West Hollywood Art Project for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Two focus groups for Arts Organizations and Artists will take place on Friday, January 24 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. (Arts Organizations) and 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. (Artists) at the West Hollywood Library Community Meeting Room, located at 625 N. San Vicente Boulevard.
In addition, a drop-in community conversation open to all with artist Odius Ari will occur on Saturday, January 25, 2025, at the Winter Wonderland event from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at West Hollywood Park, located at 647 N. San Vicente Boulevard. All community members can also participate in the process online at engage.weho.org/olympicsart.
People who live, work, and play in West Hollywood are encouraged to participate at one of the interactive community conversations to help shape the cultural experiences West Hollywood will develop for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Participants will help co-create a concept designed to connect the community’s priorities and elevate the Olympic Games in West Hollywood to inspire an arts tradition that reflects the City’s spirit and will resonate for years to come.
The engagement sessions are guided by the theme Inventing Traditions, which is inspired by the Olympic spirit, a tradition itself reinvented over time, along with the Los Angeles region’s Olympic arts legacy, from the 1932 Cultural Olympiad to the transformative 1984 Olympic Arts Festival. These sessions, planning, and implementation will also reflect West Hollywood’s evolution as a global leader in art and culture.
The theme will enable West Hollywood to collaborate within the larger framework of the LA28 Olympic Committee while honoring its unique identity as a creative center. And, the project will offer endless possibilities for interdisciplinary artists, organizations, culinary, design, and fashion talents to contribute to a shared artistic vision and collectively define new, sustainable traditions that celebrate the City’s values and progressive spirit, ensuring a lasting cultural impact that extends well beyond the Olympic Games.
The Art Project could take the form of an arts and cultural event, experience, and/or activity. By engaging in a visioning exercise, the City will have time to develop ideas and perspectives for an experience that will spark dialogue, ignite imaginations, and leave a lasting impression on all who attend during the Games.
AEA Consulting is a leader in the planning and delivery of a wide variety of cultural and creative spaces, including cultural districts, mixed-use developments, museums and galleries, performance spaces, multi-disciplinary spaces, parks, and heritage sites. AEA Consulting will establish a plan (purpose, goals, and vision) for the West Hollywood Art Project during the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Los Angeles in coordination with the City of West Hollywood’s Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission, lead community meetings to solicit feedback and input, and provide updates to other City Commissions and Advisory Boards. The consultant will engage creators and curators in the development of the plan and will provide recommendations for the duration of the Art Project.
The AEA Consulting team is led by Laura Zucker, Senior Associate, who is a nationally recognized arts leader whose expertise spans grant making, cultural equity, cultural policy, capital project master planning, arts education, public art, cultural tourism, management, and funding strategies, and was executive director of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission (now Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture) for 25 years; and, Bella Stenvall, Research Analyst, who is invested in embedding arts and culture into the choreography of public life as a means of social change. Stenvall applies an interdisciplinary approach to strategy development, qualitative research design, and date analysis, all while integrating her own experiences as a dancer, choreographer, and creative collaborator and centering values of equity and inclusion.
The City of West Hollywood’s Arts Division delivers a broad array of arts programs including Art on the Outside (temporary public art), Arts Grants, City Poet Laureate, Drag Laureate, Free Theatre in the Parks, Human Rights Speakers Series, Library Exhibits, WeHo Pride Arts Festival, Summer Sounds + Winter Sounds, Urban Art (permanent public art), and WeHo Reads. For more information about City of West Hollywood arts programming, please visit www.weho.org/arts.
Thank you for the heads up.
Looking forward to it.