Alma Backyard Farms
Alma Backyard Farms was inspired by the voices and ideas shared by juvenile offenders and prisoners eager to transform their lives and communities by “giving back” to the communities they “took from” and were taken away from. For most people experiencing incarceration, there are few opportunities to see and interact with nature and few opportunities to provide nurture to others. Yet few are given the opportunities to learn skills and make that possible.
Alma Backyard Farms has listened to the formerly incarcerated and been inspired by their willingness to reorient their lives as caretakers of community. Recognizing that Los Angeles is a place were no life or space is wasted, Alma creates multiple opportunities for women and men who were incarcerated to give back to the health and safety of communities by growing food in and for these communities.
Rooted in restorative justice and environmental stewardship, Alma started in 2013 to implement this project of reclaiming lives, repurposing land and reimagining community. Alma proposes real solutions to the challenges of California’s overcrowded prisons and food injustice in low-income neighborhoods. Recognizing that no lives or land is to be wasted, Alma creates opportunities for the previously incarcerated to become agents of health, safety and community.
Ron Finley Project
Most widely known as the “Gangsta Gardener”, Ron Finley inadvertently started a horti-Cultural revolution when he transformed the barren parkway in front of his South Central L.A. home into an edible oasis. Ron unexpectedly became one of L.A.’s most widely known artivists.
Frustrated by his community’s lack of access to fresh, organic food, Finley started a revolution when he turned the parkway in front of his home into an edible garden in 2010. Ron’s goal was simple; bring healthy food to an area where there was none, making him see first hand how gardens build community and change peoples lives. This experience blossomed into a quest to change how we eat and to teach youth that they have the capacity to design their own lives; empowering people.
Based in LA, Ron is now working on The Ron Finley Project speaking at global conferences and in classrooms. He is, currently, on the Curatorial Team of the Destination Crenshaw project; a 1.3 mile long outdoor art and cultural experience celebrating Black Los Angeles. He is also selected as one of the national artists for the Public Art Challenge Fertile Ground Project by Bloomberg Philanthropies in Jackson, Mississippi to only name a few.
Fallen Fruit
Fallen Fruit is an art project that began in Los Angeles by creating maps of public fruit: the fruit trees growing on or over public property. The work of Fallen Fruit includes photographic portraits, experimental documentary videos, and site-specific installation artworks. Using fruit (and public spaces and public archives) as a material for interrogating the familiar, Fallen Fruit investigates interstitial urban spaces, bodies of knowledge, and new forms of citizenship. From protests to proposals for utopian shared spaces, Fallen Fruit’s work aims to reconfigure the relationship of sharing and explore understandings of what is considered both — public and private. From their work, the artists have learned that “fruit” is symbolic and that it can be many things; it’s a subject and an object at the same time it is aesthetic. Much of the work they create is linked to ideas of place and generational knowledge, and it echoes a sense of connectedness with something very primal – our capacity to share the world with others. Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration originally conceived in 2004 by David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young. Since 2013, David and Austin have continued the collaborative work.
Los Angeles Mission
Pre-pandemic LAM served nearly 500,000 meals a year from our campus in Skid Row. However, as we saw changes in those experiencing homelessness and food insecurity, we adapted our outreach. Race To Feed is a program we launched in November 2021. The goal was – and still is – to meet people at the point of their need and to prevent vulnerable Angelenos from experiencing homelessness. We partnered with civic centers, schools, and places of worship to deliver food, essential goods, and services across LA County. To date we’ve provided over 1.5 million meals through this program. Race To Feed boxes are prepared with all the ingredients to feed a family for a week. The boxes are tailored to different audiences and feature menus and recipe guides. Most RTF activations are executed with partners to offer medical screenings, emergency resources, and a host of other vital services to struggling families.
Shayna Nys Dambrot
Shana Nys Dambrot is an art critic, curator, and author based in Downtown LA. She is the Arts Editor for the L.A. Weekly, and a contributor to Flaunt, Art & Cake, and Artillery. She studied Art History at Vassar College, writes book and catalog essays, curates and juries exhibitions, is a dedicated Instagram photographer and is the author of the experimental novella Zen Psychosis (2020, Griffith Moon). She speaks at galleries, schools, and cultural institutions nationally, is an award-winning member of the LA Press Club, and a recipient of the 2022 Mozaik Future Art Writers Prize, the 2022 Rabkin Prize for Art Criticism, and the 2022 National Arts & Entertainment Journalism award for Critic of the Year.
Taiji Terasaki
Taiji Terasaki is a Japanese-American artist based in Honolulu, Hawai’i. Growing up in a family of scientists and creatives, Terasaki has immersed himself in exploring innovations in his craft, working in photography, sculpture, immersive and large-scale installations, and pioneering mediums like mist projections as canvas. Through his work, Terasaki has long considered the interconnectedness of humanity within its natural environment. In 2018, Terasaki traveled to the Palmyra Atoll for an artist residency with The Nature Conservancy. Since then, a large part of his practice has centered on the conservation efforts taking place on the atoll and the broader effects of environmental preservation. In 2022, Terasaki participated in the UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon, Portugal as a featured artist in the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s Artist-at-Sea exhibition. Through collaboration with non-profit organizations Parley for the Oceans and AltaSea’s Artist residency program, Terasaki debuted his ongoing installation project The Water Understands Civilization Well at AltaSea’s Blue Hour 3 in 2022 at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro, CA. Recipes to Nourish Communities, Terasaki’s food-focused mural centered on food sustainability and climate change engagement, debuted outside of the new headquarters of the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles (MCLA) in February of 2023. His exhibition Palmyra Reborn: Rewilding Palmyra opened at the N&A Gallery in Tokyo, Japan in February 2023.