Public Matters

Public Matters Email Update May, 2010

2010-05-25T16:55:39Z


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Greetings! It's been a long time since we've shared news on Public Matters. Wonderful things are happening! Awards: Public Matters is proud to announce that we are part of two major awards - National Institutes of Health (NIH) The NIH recently awarded a 5-year grant to establish the Center for Population Health and Health Disparities, a collaboration between the UCLA School of Public Health and the Keck Medical School at the University of Southern California that addresses cardiovascular health in East L.A. NIH funds enable Public Matters to expand our market makeover work, increasing access to healthy food by engaging local youth in the hands-on transformation of local stores and the creation of an innovative social marketing campaign while developing a cadre of community health advocates. MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning (DML) Award We are also part of our second DML award. Our proposal, “MetroVoice: About/In/By Los Angeles,” won the “Best in Class: Youth Partners” award! A joint venture with L.A. Freewaves, UCLA Center for REMAP, Echo Park Film Center and Public Matters, MetroVoice will place youth-created media and GPS-enabled banner text from our neighborhood-based projects onto the L.A. Metro buses, reaching a potential audience of 7 million people per week. For more, check out this video and link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NikP5yPi9vk Vote for Us (please)! Public Matters has been nominated for a Grant for Change award from the NAU clothing company. If we get the most votes, we'll receive a $10,000 award for our market makeovers work. Please vote for us at http://www.nau.com/collective/grant-for-change/public-matters-1280.html. New Market Makeovers Project in East L.A. With the support of the Office of L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina, we've launched a new market makeover project in East L.A. in partnership with Los Angeles Communities Advocating for Unity, Social Justice, and Action (LA CAUSA) YouthBuild and Nathan Cheng Consulting. Working with LA CAUSA youth aged 16-24, we'll transform two corner markets from public health blights into community health resources in one of Los Angeles' worst food deserts. We're building a team of community health advocates, training them in health, nutrition, social marketing and healthy food retail while integrating green building practices into the market makeover process. Pdub Productions Harana Project PDUB Productions, our ongoing media and civic engagement project about L.A.'s Historic Filipinotown with youth from the Pilipino Workers Center and partners HyperCities and UCLA Center for REMAP, hits a high note with an intergenerational project involving elders from the Silver Lake Adult Day Health Care Center. Using music as a vehicle for cultural and narrative exchange, elders taught PDUB youth the art of the harana (traditional Filipino serenades). Following a highly successful joint performance in March, PDUB youth are now creating their own contemporary rock n' roll harana, complete with music video. It's sure to be a hit, so stay tuned for details! In the meantime, check out an interview featuring PDUB Productions' student Xochilt Sanchez, Public Matters' Creative Director Reanne Estrada, Silver Lake Adult Day Health Care Center Program Director, Mila Anguluan-Coger, and Harana Mentor, Pedro Estrada on KPFK's program Experience Talks: http://archive.kpfk.org/parchive/mp3/kpfk_100410_083030experiencetalks.MP3. Public Matters in the News: Hungry for more updates on a more regular basis? Please visit our blog. Here are a couple of recent posts highlighting our work: Our East L.A. Market Makeover project scores some publicity, thanks to Rhonda Winter at Ecolocalizer: http://ecolocalizer.com/2010/05/12/greening-food-deserts-in-east-los-angeles/ A nice shot-out from Mia Lehrer and the folks at GOOD: http://www.good.is/post/five-innovative-urban-gardening-programs-in-los-angeles/

Marketmakeovers.org Launches

2009-11-03T12:26:41Z


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Greening The Food Desert, One Corner Store at A Time Join us as www.marketmakeovers.org launches at the California Endowment, 1000 N. Alameda St. Los Angeles, Tuesday Nov. 17 at 6 pm. Also includes a screening of the documentary Food, Inc. For details and to rsvp: http://tcenews.calendow.org/pr/tce/Food-Inc.aspx. The event is likely to fill up fast, so rsvp right away! Marketmakeovers.org: Healthy Food Access Never Tasted This Good! Three years in the making! Featuring over 100 videos! The latest developments, useful information, expert tips and youth-driven media content about improving healthy food access in food deserts. MarketMakeovers.org is a dynamic online resource about the process of making over small corner stores to carry healthier food choices. It features the work of South L.A. Healthy Eating Active Community Initiative (HEAC), local high school students, and Public Matters, using the conversions of corner stores in South L.A. as case studies. MarketMakeovers.org combines pragmatic information and creative, innovative strategies in multiple presentation formats: Downloadable, user-friendly how-to’s of market makeovers Innovative youth-generated videos about South L.A.’s food desert MarketMakeovers.org is an evolving guide: A repository of information, best practices and lessons learned A forum for exchange A springboard for advancing work in this burgeoning field. Why Market Makeovers? Market makeovers address healthy food access in low-income, resource-poor communities suffering from epidemic rates of obesity and diabetes by transforming existing corner markets in areas where junk food abounds and supermarkets and groceries are scarce. So Much Content We Needed 3 Channels! MMTV (Market Makeover TV): In MMTV 411 with Nathan Cheng, our resident market makeover expert steps through the market makeover process, accompanied by a treasure trove of downloadable wisdom from South LA and market makeovers across the country. N3 (Neighborhood Network News): All the truth that’s fit to digest about the food desert, featuring the time-travelling series There’s No Time Like the Present and the hard-hitting NNN Media Fix. YUMTV (A Different Kind of Food for Thought): Nutrition knowledge and kitchen know-how served with attitude, featuring the reality show competition So You Think You Can Cook? and the always informative Do You Mind Reading What Your Eating? GUESTS GALORE: Learn from the experts and change makers. Including NPR’s The Kitchen Sisters, corner store conversion guru Hannah Burton Laurison, UCLA Public Health Professor Dr. Alex Ortega, PolicyLink Assoicate Director Mary Lee, and West Oakland Youth Standing Empowered. More to come! FreshBite: Now it’s your turn. Marketmakeovers.org is designed to facilitate dialogue and exchange about healthy food access issues. Create an account, share your thoughts, insights, photos and videos! C’mon, do it! News: Links to hot topics and articles on healthy food access. Thanks to our fabulous site designers SMBLZ and to The California Endowment for funding the project, to the amazing South L.A. HEAC Youth Ambassadors and HEAC Team, project interns Arianna Taboada and Eddie North-Hager, Nathan Cheng and everyone else who has helped make this project happen.

Public Matters Mobile Hi Fi Immigrant's Guides launch Sept. 26

2009-09-16T19:30:45Z

Hi Folks,

Pls. join us and also help me spread the word about an exciting upcoming event.

On Sat. Sept. 26 we are launching a series of four Mobile Media Guides to Los Angeles' Historic Filipinotown. This is the culmination of our first year of Pdub Productions, our collaboration with The Pilipino Workers Center, HyperCities, Remap L.A, USC, local youth and community members. And we have quite the event to wrap it up.

There are free walking tours btwn. 1-6 and then a big Barrio Fiesta fundraising party that evening at the Pilipino Workers Center, 153 Glendale Blvd.

Tour-goers will use GPS-enabled Nokia tablets to access audio, photos and maps that bring to life immigrant perspectives and time periods. Each guide features one central figure of the period but is augmented by many other personal stories of life in Historic Filipinotown or Los Angeles during the time period: a Filipino �Fountain Pen Boy� (1898-1945), a Filipino Farm Worker (1945-1965), a Latina Teen (1965- 2002), and a Filipina Caregiver (2002-present).

Highlights of the day include:

* High-tech meets history: Free Mobile Hi Fi Immigrant Guides Walking Tours from 1-6 pm

* A jeepney returns to the U.S.: The world premiere of the Pilipino Workers Center Jeepney. It will be our largest piece of "mobile media" and actually will be tricked out to play the guides.

* Celebrity Jeepney Tours: including led by L.A. City Council President Eric Garcetti, comedian Jo Koy and perhaps some surprises!

* A Barrio Fiesta fundraiser: from 6:30-9:30 including food, performances, music, an outdoor screening of the youth videos from the project, a raffle, and more.

* Illustrations of jeepney parts by Emmy-winning animator and Simpsons Assistant Director Jess Espanola. Proceeds will keep the jeepney running!

* Jeepney T-Shirts

* Pdub Productions Youth Media Screening: at the Barrio Fiesta

Attached is the event invite. Pls. send it around!

To make reservations and purchase tickets and for the most complete and up-to-date event into, visit our event blog: www.hypercities.com/pdub.

Even if you can't make it, please consider making a donation, buying a ticket for someone else, or simply passing on the info.

And...if that's not enough, for those of you who crave yummy reasonably priced food (who doesn't?), The Good Girl Dinette is donating all of their tips next Wed. Sept. 23 to the project. They were recently named as one of "L.A.'s 99 Essential Restaurants" by Jonathon Gold. 110 N. Ave. 56 in Highland Park. http://www.goodgirlfoods.com/. Dine, tip often, and tip well!

all the best,
Mike

ps. In case you haven't checked it out, we have a new blog! Too many things to post.

--
Mike Blockstein
Principal, Public Matters LLC
1439 Elevado St.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
323.953.0691
http://www.publicmattersgroup.com
http://publicmattersgroup.wordpress.com

Public Matters work with South L.A. HEAC in the news!

2009-03-16T19:50:34Z


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Hello Everyone, It's been a busy time for Public Matters. So busy in fact that we've been a bit lax about sharing all the great things that we've got going on. However, these two stories are too good to keep to ourselves. Today's L.A. Times ran a feature on our ongoing work with the South L.A. Healthy Eating Active Communities Initiative, focused on market makeovers. And the AP has been running a story on Selma Lozoya, one of the HEAC students. We're delighted that our students are becoming quite the media darlings. Helping to facilitate their development as youth leaders and community health advocates has been an incredible thing.
Happy reading: Nurturing South L.A., one market at a time - LA Times, March 16, 2009 Urban areas struggle to find grocers - Associated Press, December, 2008
Two other items of note:
You'll see that we are about to launch a new site marketmakeovers.org. Look for updates soon. The site should be live by the end of April, not March as indicated in the L.A. Times article. If you're in Chicago, come and find out about our work in Historic Filipinotown through Pdub Productions, our collaboration with local youth, The Pilipino Workers Center, Hypercities and Remap L.A. We'll be showcasing our work as part of the MacArthur Foundation showcase of Digital Media and Learning award winners on April 16-17. For more info, see: http://www.dmlcompetition.net/PublicShowcase+Exhibits.pdf
Best regards, The Public Matters Team
Public Matters provides expertise in cultural + visual production, new media, project design + implementation, community building, and leadership development. Interested in working with us?

Watch this video + Fall Public Matters News

2008-09-10T20:58:06Z


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	NOW PLAYING ON CURRENT TV! HEAC Where Do I Get my 5? video Forget the South Beach Diet! A dose of The South Central Diet is just what the doctor (and public health advocates) ordered. Current TV is now broadcasting a retooled version of Meet Me at Third & Fairfax, from the Healthy Eating Active Communities (HEAC) Where Do I Get My 5? DVD. Renamed The South Central Diet, the video follows HEAC student Lae Schmidt's trek across the food desert of South Los Angeles in search of healthy food. Current TV is broadcasting the video on its cable tv channel as well as on their website. Let's keep it in rotation and keep the important issue of healthy food access in the public eye. WATCH THE VIDEO NOW and VOTE A THUMBS UP. Comments in support of the work are also most welcome.


	HEAC Market Makeovers GREENING THE FOOD DESERT - ONE CORNER STORE AT A TIME This summer, Public Matters completed its second summer program with the Healthy Eating Active Communities (HEAC) Youth Ambassadors at The Accelerated School in South Los Angeles. Building on last year's transformation of Coronado Market, this year's work focuses on the creation of an online Market Makeover Toolkit, using as case studies the transformation of two additional markets, Los Compadres and El Azteca, each located across the street from The Accelerated School. Public Matters' collaboration with HEAC youth on the Market Makeover Toolkit continues to integrate youth media and civic engagement in innovative and unexpected ways to achieve HEAC's broader aims: increasing South L.A.'s healthy food options, leadership development, and community building. A far cry from conventional documentary and youth media projects, the collaboration yielded some truly ingenious material, with video production divided into three "channels": N3 (Neighborhood Network News), YUMTV and MMTV (Market Makeover TV). N3 offers "media fixes" to counteract widely held but often inaccurate perceptions about South Los Angeles; it provides historical, political and socio-economic contexts for how the area came to be a food desert. YUMTV offers a different kind of food for thought in the form of a reality show competition that challenges contestants to prepare a healthy meal for a family of four, using ingredients from a local corner store with a budget of $10; it's Iron Chef meets Amazing Race, with a little Jeopardy thrown in. MMTV chronicles the market makeover process, step-by-step, and offers insight into the business of running a corner store through profiles of the stores, storeowners and customers. More to come soon. Stay Tuned. Out in the world: Where Do I Get My FIVE? SCREENINGS + PANELS Public Matters' work with the HEAC Youth Ambassadors continues to bring attention to issues of healthy food access, demonstrating how youth-driven media and youth leadership can effectively bring change to communities. September 18, 2008: YOUTH ISSUES 2008: TRANSFORMING SERVICES, TRANSFORMING COMMUNITIES, ADOLESCENT HEALTH CONFERENCE, The California Endowment, Los Angeles, CA Through October 25, 2008: FOOD FIGHT: YOUTH ADVOCATES TRANSFORM LOCAL FOOD ENVIRONMENTS, Big Sur Educational Gallery of The California Endowment, Los Angeles, CA October 31, 2008 - January 11, 2009: THE GATHERERS: GREENING OUR URBAN SPHERES, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA

	Launching PDub Productions Just in time for the start of the academic school year, Public Matters and Pilipino Workers Center (PWC) have launched PDub Productions, a youth media and civic engagement program in Los Angeles' Historic Filipinotown, in collaboration with UCLA partners Hypercities and ReMap LA. Public Matters will work with immigrant youth from local high schools to explore, produce and publicly display media-based content about Historic Filipinotown's history, culture and significance. Through PDub Productions, youth participants will become Historic Filipinotown Neighborhood Experts, tapping into the expertise of UCLA professors and community stakeholders alike. PWC youth will also work with UCLA students, who will provide valuable research assistance about the neighborhood as well as the Filipino immigrant and Filipino American community in Los Angeles. In spring of 2009, a Tactical Sound Garden will incorporate the work of PDub Productions youth in a locative media tour of Historic Filipinotown's significant sites. Ultimately, the work created through PDub Productions will culminate in a street-level multimedia installation that will be part of PWC's new building. Funding for PDub Productions provided in part by The MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Award, The Stuart Foundation and The Dwight Stuart Youth Fund.

Public Matters provides expertise in cultural + visual production, new media, project design + implementation, community building, and leadership development. Interested in working with us?

Public Matters Spring Update

2008-04-18T02:16:46Z


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	April 22, 2008 (3:00-4:30PM EST / Noon-1:30pm PST) Neighborhood Narratives: Telling a Community's Story & Setting the Stage for Change Grassroots Grantmakers Topical Conference Call with Public Matters Mike Blockstein, Principal, will share Public Matters' work with communities in creating Neighborhood Narratives - innovative, artistic, place-based projects that build creative, civic and social capital in communities. He'll explain how to tap into the power of Neighborhood Narratives by integrating them with broader civic processes, advocacy efforts and community initiatives. Join the call! www.grassrootsgrantmakers.org/page10826.cfm

NEWS
	Public Matters included in MacArthur Foundation Digital Media + Learning Award through hypercities project In an upcoming project, Public Matters will develop a sustainable youth media and civic engagement program in Los Angeles' Historic Filipinotown with UCLA partners Hypercities and ReMap LA and Pilipino Workers Center (PWC). Working with local immigrant youth, the project will explore and publicly display media-based content about Historic Filipinotown's history, culture and significance, culminating with the creation of a street-level multimedia installation that will be part of PWC's new building. Based on digital models of real cities, "HyperCities" is a web-based learning platform that connects geographical locations with stories of the people who currently live there and those who have lived there in the past. Public Matters, the sole community conduit for HyperCities Los Angeles, will work with PWC youth and students from UCLA and USC to map Historic Filipinotown through GIS and peer-to-peer learning environments. Additional support for the project has been provided by the Stuart Foundation.

	Out in the world: Where Do I Get My FIVE? Youth presentations + Screenings Public Matters' work with the Healthy Eating Active Communities (HEAC) Youth Ambassadors at The Accelerated School moves beyond conventional documentary and youth media projects. The integration of youth media and civic engagement continues to achieve the project's broader aims: increasing South L.A.'s healthy food options, leadership development, and community building. UPCOMING: May 2, 2008, Center to Eliminate Health Disparities, UCLA School of Public Health RECENT: 2008 PolicyLink Regional Equity Summit, New Orleans, LA Neighborworks America Community Leadership Institute, Boston, MA Student testimony on Fast Food Moratorium, Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Commission, Los Angeles, CA Various screenings for students, parents and teachers, The Accelerated School, Los Angeles, CA Community Planning School Workshop, Los Angeles, CA Kaiser Permanente community Action plan retreat, DeKalb County, GA Premiere Screening, Tom Bradley Tower, City Hall, Los Angeles, CA

Now Available!
	Where Do I Get My FIVE? DVDs South L.A. is a "food desert," with few supermarkets and a lot of land in between them. Restaurant signs dot the landscape, but you can drive for miles without seeing a healthy place to eat. Junk food ads targeted at youth and people of color surround you. Most residents buy food and beverages from local corner stores, which are well stocked with junk food. Rates of obesity and diabetes are alarmingly high. Where Do I Get My Five? portrays five distinct stories about the challenges of healthy food access in South L.A. Student-written, shot and acted, these videos are more than simple documentaries, they are part of an integrated project that lead to direct community change: the makeover of a local corner store to carry more fresh produce, an on-going partnership with the local City Council, and highly visible student leaders. DVD Contents: 5 Videos on Healthy Food Access in South Los Angeles + bonus video Project + Curriculum Information South Los Angeles, Student + Organizational Profiles Policy + Action Steps that can be taken to improve healthy food access GET YOUR COPY TODAY! CONTACT Aurora Flores: aflores@accelerated.org