The Goldhirsh Foundation’s LA2050 awards $100,000 to Public Matters!Date posted: May 8, 2013 |
We just got the awesome news: $100,000 to Public Matters for Market Makeovers: NextGen Leaders! THANK YOU to all the incredible folks who voted, commented, spread the word and convinced friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, the person behind the counter at the coffee shop to vote for our project. We could not have done this without you!
We were up against some great projects in the Goldhirsh Foundation’s LA2050 competition, but managed to stay in the Top Ten for our Indicator (Health) and into the final round. They announced the winners today, 10 awards of $100,000 each, to shape + build the future of Los Angeles and Public Matters for Market Makeovers: NextGen Leaders was among them!
The $100,000 from LA2050 will fund a group of emerging adult community leaders to transform the food landscape, food behaviors and health outcomes in East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights, building on an existing infrastructure within which they’ve worked for the past three years to drive long-term sustainable change in the places they live.
Congratulations to our fellow awardees and a big shout out to all the folks who proposed projects! Los Angeles is and will be a better place because of people like you.
KCET: Artbound, 04.16.2013Date posted: April 17, 2013 |
Jeremy Liu, “The Ethics and Aesthetics of Place” KCET: Artbound, 04.16.2013
A Market Makeover is a comprehensive strategy for addressing the “grocery gap” in “food deserts,” areas that have limited access to quality, healthy food; an overabundance of fast food; and alarmingly high rates of chronic conditions related to poor diet.
Healthy food access is an important Public Matter because there may not be Enough Pie so we had better get to the Roots of Change soon. It’s an awkward sentence, but if you are interested in food access in Los Angeles, its parts are greater than the whole. Let’s break it down. While there are important organizations working to ensure healthy food access, like the wonkily named California Food Policy Council, there are some organizations who use their names to express their core identity particularly well. Organizations like Public Matters, Enough Pie and Roots of Change use metaphor anddouble entendre to communicate not only their mission, but also the value they place on meaning, intention, and interpretation. Their dual-purpose names reflect a duality that is also important in their work.
JUST HOURS LEFT: Vote Market Makeovers for LA2050 by NOON, Wednesday, April 17thDate posted: |
Time’s running short.
Public Matters has a rare opportunity to raise $100,000 for our Market Makeovers work through the Goldhirsh Foundation’s LA2050 competition. We’re up against some institutional juggernauts, but we remain hopeful (especially with your help).
We just have to remain in the Top 10 for our category (Health) to qualify; voting narrows the field; the foundation makes the final decisions. We’ve miraculously managed to stay in the Top 10 and hope to hang on until VOTING ENDS at NOON on APRIL 17th. Our LA2015 proposal has a nifty video about its impact on the young people with whom we work. Please check it out and do share.
KCET: Artbound, 03.27.2013Date posted: March 27, 2013 |
Mike Blockstein + Reanne Estrada, “Market Makeovers: Public Matters, Place + Pedagogy” KCET: Artbound, 03.27.2013
A Market Makeover is a comprehensive strategy for addressing the “grocery gap” in “food deserts,” areas that have limited access to quality, healthy food; an overabundance of fast food; and alarmingly high rates of chronic conditions related to poor diet.
The school auditorium floor is cold. Teenage bodies lay flat, struggling not to move. A few giggles escape. Thirty feet up on the catwalk, a boy rolls the video camera. Below, a couple of girls position the bodies into letters that spell out the words, one at a time: HAVE. YOU. NOTICED?
It’s only the second day of class and already the group is filming the title sequence to what will be a series of videos about the East Los Angeles Food Landscape. These videos will screen at summer outdoor movie nights, in community health meetings, at national food activism conferences, on L.A. Metro buses. But this day in 2010, at the start of their work with Market Makeovers, Mr. Buchman’s class at the East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy (ELARA) at Esteban Torres High School is focused on making people letters, introducing the very serious issue of healthy food access in a playful, unexpected way. In the process, they’re learning how to work together.
Welcome to Market Makeovers, brought to you by your friends at Public Matters.
KCET: Artbound, 10.19.2012Date posted: October 19, 2012 |
Sue Bell Yank, “Public Matters: Market Makeover Smackdown!,” KCET: Artbound, 10.19.2012
For the fourth in my series of interviews with socially-engaged contemporary artists, organizers, writers and thinkers as part of the SOCiAL: Art + People events, I sat down with artists Mike Blockstein and Reanne Estrada, co-founders and collaborators in the artist-run interdisciplinary organization called Public Matters. Public Matters is a multivalent and dynamically shifting arts organization dedicated to affecting powerful change (most recently regarding food injustice in impoverished communities) over long periods of time through youth media empowerment, collective creativity, leadership development, and physical and behavioral change. They are engaged in enormous partnerships with UCLA, USC, and various community organizations as part of a five-year NIH grant to combat cardiovascular health problems in East Los Angeles, and have effectively integrated arts and creativity into combating an enormous public health crisis in a way that very few arts organizations have. I have previously analyzed the organizational structure of Public Matters, but in this interview the artists have a chance to speak more in depth about their partnerships, their teenaged collaborators, and the role of arts in social justice.
MARKET MAKEOVER SMACKDOWN: Saturday 10.20.2012, 10:00am-1:00pmDate posted: October 16, 2012 |
Yup, more fruits + veggies are moving into corner stores in East L.A. and Boyle Heights, courtesy of the Proyecto MercadoFRESCO, a project of the UCLA-USC Center for Population Health + Health Disparities (CPHHD) that Public Matters has been working on for the past three years. As we know from Market Makeovers, the work really begins AFTER the store’s physical transformation. It’s a big job to spread the word about these now-attractive corner stores and their new, fresh + healthy inventory, perhaps an even bigger job to convince folks to swap a diet of cheap, processed food for the wonders of leafy greens.
To this end, we bring you (drumroll, please): The MARKET MAKEOVER SMACKDOWN! In collaboration with students from the School of Communication, New Media + Technology (CNMT) at Roosevelt High School and part of SOC(I)AL: ART + PEOPLE, a free public series on socially engaged art organized by LA Freewaves, it’s a fun, direct way to support the newly transformed stores. Two teams of students, representing Ramirez Meat Market and Yash la Casa Market, compete to see who can sell more fresh produce + healthy items at their store. Think cash mob for sustainable healthy food access solutions.
Show your support for the transformation of the East L.A. | Boyle Heights food landscape and your love of fresh fruits + veggies!
WHEN: Saturday, October 20, 2012, 10:00AM-1:00PM
WHERE: Ramirez Meat Market, 3618 Folsom Blvd. @ Rowan + Yash La Casa Market, 3968 Hammel @ Hazard, both in East Los Angeles
SEE YOU THERE!
Yash Chalkboard Mural: Join The East Los Angeles Squash Club!Date posted: October 12, 2012 |
Despite the lingering warm weather, fall is definitely in the air. The MercadoFRESCO stores have started featuring monthly produce specials: fresh seasonal items offered at 50% OFF. If it sounds too good to pass up, that’s what we’re hoping. October’s Special is squash – delicious!
That’s where our friends at the East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy (ELARA) at Esteban Torres High School come in. Through our MercadoFRESCO Community Liaison Clara Mejia, artistically-inclined students can work with ELARA Art Teacher Mr. Lee to collaboratively design + produce a monthly chalkboard mural on Yash La Casa Market’s Hazazrd Street wall.
Yash Garden Fall PlantingDate posted: September 29, 2012 |
Now that we’ve let the mulch rest for a couple of weeks, the time has finally come to plant! Good thing that students from The School of Communication, New Media + Technology (CNMT) at Theodore Roosevelt High School don’t mind getting their hands dirty.
With guidance from avid gardener | volunteer Jackie Illum and MercadoFRESCO Community Liaison (+ ELARA alum) Lilybeth Hernandez, the hardworking team carried out the garden plan designed by Market Makeover guru Nathan Cheng.
2012 East Los Angeles Mexican Independence Day ParadeDate posted: September 9, 2012 |
Who doesn’t love a parade?
This year, students from the School of Communication, New Media + Technology (CNMT) @ Theodore Roosevelt High School got dressed to impress in order to spread the word about Yash La Casa + Ramirez Meat Markets. Some wore their produce-fresh best and others their newly silk-screened bright orange MercadoFRESCO t-shirts while passing out flyers to community members. Joined by teacher Jorge Lopez, volunteer Brettany Shannon, Community Liaisons Andy Alvarez + Clara Mejia and Public Matters, the intrepid crew delighted thousands of locals along the parade route.
Yash Garden Remediation | Part IIDate posted: September 8, 2012 |
Though it’s technically still summer outside (though not for long), we’ve got fall planting on the brain. But hey, not so fast! We have one more thing to do before we can plant. As you may remember, we did a little garden remediation back in the spring, planting black-eyed peas to bring more nitrogen to the soil. Over the summer, MercadoFRESCO intern Lilybeth Hernandez and volunteer extraordinaire Jackie Illum, enrolled in the Masters’ Program in Urban Planning at USC and herself an avid gardener, have been tending to our remediation crop. They cut down the black-eyed peas, chopped them up and mixed them into the soil to plump up its nutrient content.
Now it’s time to mulch the garden, and our crew of CNMT students (with teacher Jorge Lopez) + ELARA grads + volunteers stepped up for a serious workout.
TOP: The Garden Mulching crew gathers.
BOTTOM: Installing wire trellises for grapes.
