West Hollywood, which already has one of the most active public arts and culture programs of a city its size, is putting together a plan to guide its efforts for the next five to ten years.
WeHo Arts: The Plan has three primary goals:
— Celebrate the city’s distinctive artistic and cultural identities.
— Identify and commemorate West Hollywood’s support and advancement of the arts.
— Articulate a vision for the future that will ensure art and culture have a place in West Hollywood.
The plan will guide both the city’s Arts and Economic Development division and its Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission in their work. Andrew Campbell, the city’s arts and cultural affairs administrator, is working with staff, a consultant and members of the commission to engage the community in developing the plan through formal and informal conversations, surveys and artist-led activities.
A team of social practice artists – Alyse Emdur and Rosten Woo – will work with them from June through December to create activities and experiences through which West Hollywood community members may contribute to the plan.
Emdur and Woo were selected through an open request for qualifications by a special subcommittee of the arts commission. Emdur is an LA-based photographer whose book, “Prison Landscapes” (2013), contains 100 photographs of prison inmate’s presenting themselves in front of the idealized landscapes of painted visiting-room backdrops, posing with their visitors and pretending, for a moment, that they are elsewhere. Her work has been exhibited in Printed Matter and the Lambent Foundation in New York; the University of Texas Visual Arts Center in Austin, Tex; the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, Penn; the Lab in San Francisco, Calif.; La Montagne Gallery in Boston, Mass., and internationally in Tel Aviv, London, Oslo, Paris and Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands.
Woo is an LA-based designer, writer and teacher who was co-founder and former executive director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy, a New York-based non-profit that used art and design to foster civic participation. His work has been exhibited at Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial, the Venice Architecture Biennale, Netherlands Architectural Institute, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Lower East Side Tenement Museum and various piers, public housing developments, tugboats, shopping malls,and parks in New York and Los Angeles. His first book, “Street Value,” was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2010. He teaches art and design at the California Institute of the Arts, Pomona College, and Art Center College of Design.
Residents can get involved online to take the plan’s quick survey. The new West Hollywood Artist Registry and the plan’s email address (arts@weho.org) are also listed there.
Opportunities to participate in the plan in-person will be announced in coming weeks. Sign up for the plan’s email list at bit.do/wehoartsblast. Opportunities to participate in the plan in-person – including arts and culture pop-ups, “Living Room” discussion sessions, and the “WeHo Talks” series – will be announced in coming weeks.
Photo of Social Practice Artist Team Alyse Emdur and Rosten Woo by Michael Parker
