For immediate release
19 October 2009
New Ideas Need Old Buildings: Downtown L.A. Art Walk announces its fresh direction
INFO: http://www.downtownartwalk.com/mission or (213) 784-2598.
LOS ANGELES- The Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk, held on the second Thursday of the month year round, is the great success stories of the neighborhood's revival. Launched in 2004 by a small group of true believers in what was then the western edge of Skid Row, the event now draws upwards of 10,000 art enthusiasts, and includes live music, a thriving bar and restaurant scene, literary events, impromptu performances, and of course art on view in dozens of galleries.
Five years on, the Art Walk has become a non-profit organization with a board of directors, led by independent social historian Richard Schave (Esotouric, 1947project, On Bunker Hill), dedicated to making Downtown Los Angeles even more of a cultural destination for great art, good company and exciting urban experiences.
So what's next for the Art Walk? While the question has been hotly debated in the local press and blogging community, the Art Walk's volunteer management team has been burning the midnight oil crafting their Mission and Case Statements, the formal documents which spell out the role the organization plans to take in the Downtown community, and the specific programs and policies Art Walk will enact over the next few years—ideas that are in clean sync with the Obama administration's urban revitalization policies for the National Endowment for the Arts.
At the core of the Art Walk board's vision is a promise to harness Art Walk's extraordinary once-a-month momentum to craft long-term policies for economic stabilization, job creation and the promotion of positive public space, all while preserving the dynamic balance of local history and culture.
Art Walk Director Richard Schave formed his ideas for the non-profit's Mission and Case Statement while adapting his wife Kim Cooper's blog on the social and criminal history of Bunker Hill into a bus and walking tour about L.A.'s shameful legacy of failed public space Downtown. Richard has applied the concepts explored in his tour ("The Lowdown on Downtown-The Secret History of L.A.") to the Art Walk's future, providing a means by which the city's streets and byways can be transformed into spaces which inspire lingering, encourage interactivity and provide streams of financial support to the creative producers who take risks bringing art to the people. Schave believes L.A.'s history of failed public space contains all the lessons needed for creating successful public space that improves the lives of residents beyond measure. On his free monthly walking tours of Art Walk, Richard explains how by understanding the mistakes made by city planners in the past, L.A.'s future can be much brighter.
Art Walk's unprecedented popularity demands new policies addressing growth and scalability--including improved maps and handouts, social media tools and transportation options to keep visitors from clumping at core intersections and help them find the art and events that most interest them. In addition to launching its own original arts and culture programming, the Art Walk has mounted a coordinated campaign to increase the visibility for the many cultural programs already participating in Art Walk, attract new creative blood, and help Art Walk visitors better understand what's available to them as they navigate Art Walk's large and confusing footprint, which spreads far beyond 5th & Main Streets and throughout Downtown. Part of this campaign is helping to move performing artists into the transitional spaces between populated zones, thus activating dark sections of the Art Walk route and making visitors feel more safe and engaged while providing venues to host a greater number of independent artists.
Art Walk's new official programs include The Living Museum blog celebrating the fascinating people whose presence defines the event. Hugely popular free walking tours are hosted by extraordinary characters whose personal passions for and knowledge of Downtown Los Angeles are shared freely with hundreds of monthyl visitors in tours reflecting their unique expertise. Guides include Mike the PoeT, Crimebo the Clown, poet-broker Ed Rosenthal, Art Walk Director Richard Schave, professional tour guide Anne Block, locals Boris Mayzels and Jeremy Kasten, representatives of the L.A. Historic Theatre Foundation, and food blogger Javier Cabral in a curated guide to the mobile food truck phenomenon.
Art Walk also hosts a series of provocative conversational Salons on aspects of literature, spirituality, history and culture, and has been working with independent curators to transform the landmark Spring Arcade Building into a locus for experimental music, performance and live art projections. Coming soon: an ambitious program of lectures on Downtown's social history and creative responses to urbanism worldwide.
The Art Walk is also dedicated to providing ways for Downtown's art galleries to connect with the thousands of people who visit the Art Walk website to plan their monthly experience. Any time an individual gallery page is updated, it automatically sends information to Art Walk's popular Twitter feed. Promoters of free Happenings have been invited to post announcements on Art Walk's newly redesigned website. And that new website, built on the open source content management system Drupal for optimal machine readability, is now the #1 hit, worldwide, for "Art Walk" in Google searches.
Coming soon: a mobile phone app to enable Art Walk visitors to connect with their friends and favorite artists, and a monthly event wrap up survey on Facebook, Friday Findings, in which visitors are polled on what galleries, happenings and experiences they found most exciting – sure to be a powerful marketing tool for any artist or art space that makes an impression.
Although developed independently, the Art Walk's new direction has much in common with the vision recently shared by Rocco Landesman, the incoming chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, with the New York Times. Landesman believes artists are the necessary catalyst for revitalizing historic Downtowns—something Art Walk has demonstrated since 2004, and states clearly in its Case Statment. Landesman promises financial assistance for artists seeking to settle in Downtown areas, pointing out that "when you bring artists into a town, it changes the character, attracts economic development, makes it more attractive to live in and renews the economics of that town. There are ways to draw artists into the center of things that will attract other people." Art Walk management intends to draw on the resources of the Federal Government, through Community Development Block Grants (CDBGs), to help make Downtown L.A, more affordable to the artists who are the prime movers in urban revitalization, and help spread the Art Walk energy out over the rest of the month and all of the city.
For more on the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk's new Mission and Case Statements, or to download them in PDF format, visit http://www.downtownartwalk.com/mission
Journalists are encouraged to learn all about the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk on the free monthly public walking tours or to schedule a private tour or interview with DLAAW Director Richard Schave. Contact Kim at downtownartwalkATgmailDOTcom, (213) 784-2598.
