CITY OF INGLEWOOD Parks, Recreation and Community Services

DATE: April 21, 2021

TO: Arts Commission

FROM: Parks, Recreation and Community Services Department

SUBJECT: Receive and File: Rogers Park Artist in Residence - NEA AEAC Grant Update

RECOMMENDATION: It is recommended that the Arts Commission receive and file the update on the City’s National Endowment for the Arts - Arts Engagement in American Communities grant award and Rogers Park Artist in Residence Project.

BACKGROUND: The City of Inglewood applied for a National Endowment for the Arts / Arts Engagement in American Communities grant in January 2020. The matching-fund grant was awarded June 2020 for an Artist in Residence project. The project has a 12-month term which began November 1, 2020.

Four artists joined the City’s grant application. The proposal by fei Hernandez was selected in late November 2020 to start the residency in March to be completed by September 2021, with an evaluation period. The City was to provide a $10,000 artist honorarium, up to $2,000 to reimburse costs of project supplies, and access to a public studio space in Rogers Park for twelve to sixteen weeks.

With the closure of public facilities in December 2020 due to COVID-19 and the “safer at home” order, programming at City facilities was suspended and staff tasked to work remotely. As such, the City could not provide studio space for the artist. Hernandez received permission to begin the contract work of refined planning and outreach using their personal space but was frustrated by the lack of studio support.

On March 30, 2021 artist féi hernandez informed staff they were withdrawing from the contract, citing lack of studio space, frustration with municipal legal terms, and discomfort with the power imbalance of realizing their residency as a contract for creative services.

DISCUSSION: Rogers Park Community Center is scheduled to reopen on June 15, 2021 with regular programming beginning the following weeks. The facility spaces are fully scheduled for the summer; RPAiR cannot go forward immediately, but will resume in September, 2021. The City requested and has received a grant period extension from the National Endowment for the Arts to complete the residency by February 2022.

One W. Manchester Boulevard • Inglewood, CA • 90301 • Phone (310) 412-8750 • Fax (310) 330-5750 • www.cityofinglewood.org The project alternate is MonaLisa Whitaker. Her proposal, Memories of Moments for Inglewood, is for online workshops for residents of all ages, resulting in image-making that becomes a crowd-sourced map and photo collage to be a permanent addition to the Public Art Collection to be displayed in the Community Center. The City intends to contract Ms. Whitaker and begin the residency September 2021. The project will be completed by February 2022.

FISCAL IMPACT: Funding in the amount of $12,000 is available in account code 055-070-7010-44870 (Public Art Fund, Contract Services) with a $10,000 reimbursement from the National Endowment for the Arts | Arts Engagement in American Communities matching fund contract.

ATTACHMENTS: Attachment No. 1: RPAiR NEA Grant narrative and extension

PREPARED/PRESENTED BY: Sabrina Barnes, Director Helen Lessick, Public Art Consultant

Inglewood (CA): Project Narrative

Details of Project Narrative: Rogers Park Artist in Residence (R-PAiR)

Major Project Activities: Rogers Park Artist in Residence (R-PAiR) is a creative initiative placing a professional artist in Inglewood‘s Rogers Park Community Center to promote personal creativity and community awareness of the city’s cultural resources. The project will engage community members through creative outreach and promote awareness of civic life as a creative resource. The Center holds an unstaffed art studio, community room, lecture stage and indoor sports areas.

Key Partnering Individuals: The City approached four noted Inglewood artists to gauge interest in a paid, five- month, artist’s residency to realize a short-term project in the Community Center. These artists address the figure, the individual and social justice in their creative work and reflect the City’s diverse African-American, Latinx and Caucasian American communities. Each invited semi-finalist has worked with diverse communities in informal groups or formalized classes.

Inglewood artists féi hernandez, Gina Lamb, Sidney Tuggerson Jr. and MonaLisa Whitaker lend their support to our application. féi hernandez grew up undocumented in Inglewood, raised by a single parent. They are a writer, visual artist and 8th-grade creative writing and art teacher identifying as trans non-binary. Gina Lamb is a media artist and activist addressing race, gender identity, sexual orientation, class, and immigrant issues in her work. She directs the Media Arts for Social Justice program at Pitzer College. Sidney Tuggerson Jr. is a painter exploring abstracted form and perspective on canvas and paper. A tireless artist, community arts educator and military veteran, his work is in public and private art collections. MonaLisa Whitaker is a media artist using photography, text and social activism in her work. She is active in arts and organized labor and was Executive Director of the non-profit Inglewood Cultural Arts.

Schedule: R-PAiR is an eleven-month municipal project framing the five-month artist residency. Upon notification, the artists will tour the Community Center with the facility manager and art consultant to re-view it as a creative site. Each artist will be paid a modest honorarium to develop a one page narrative proposal identifying a theme, topic or medium for residency within the timeframe and supply budget. A selection panel comprised of a City representative, local Park user, and professional artist will review the proposals and recommend one artist for contracting.

The City hosts the site tour, convenes the proposal review panel, and convenes the Arts Commission for review and action. The schedule provides one month each to finalize artist selection, contract and schedule theartist in the facility. Prior to the artist residency, staff will coordinate the project with facility staff and promote the residency in three phases to local audiences. The artist and audiences will be surveyed at the residency’s end to assess project impact. A final staff report will be made to the City and the NEA. The civic schedule is: • City Month One: Site tour with Community Center Manager and Public Art consultant; artists have two weeks to develop and submit a notional proposal for the residency. • City Month Two: Selection panel reviews and ranks proposals, recommending one. • City Month Three: IAC review and recommendation, Artist contracting to work on site. • City Month Four: Artist on site with City’s project support and outreach. • City Month Five – Nine: Artist project on site, City publicity and marketing of final event • City Month Ten: Final public presentation, artist’s final report and assessments • City Month Eleven: City final report and project close out.

One Artist in Residence will work in the Community Center during regular hours for five months. The artist will have scheduled access to the Center’s resources, including the art studio’s work tables and kiln, the large Community room and stage, dance studio and other resources as requested, including the community using the facility. The residency asks artists to expand their palette and work with the Center’s diverse resources, audiences and community members. • Artist Month One: Artist on site, refining proposal for art work and public event(s); • Artist Month Two: Artist on site, with scheduled availability to audiences or participants; • Artist Months Three & Four: Project work to final public event structure and publicity support; • Artist’s Month Five: Artist’s public event /exhibition/display and assessment.

Target Population: One Artist in Residence will create individual or participatory artworks on site, then exhibit, project or perform new artworks in the facility. Rogers Park Community Center serves the residents of Inglewood, a community that is 48% Latino and 43% African American and 5% Caucasian. Homeownership is reported as 38%. Our artists will directly engage our underserved communities presenting to the diverse facility users the paid work and creative thinking of a local artist. The project is an artist-centered effort; our targeted population will access the artist working with the site and audiences through the frame of a residency.

Working in and with the public, the R-PAiR artist will be a civic worker modelling creativity as community resource, expanding individual innovation to social context, and sharing art in public. The project aims to inspire our artists and attract new facility visitors. The intellectual and creative benefits of an artist as civic resource and entrepreneur are our anticipated outcomes.

Promotion/Marketing: R-PAiR will promote the project through the City’s social media staff, Park department and public art program web sites, social media outreach, print fliers, newsletters, and articles in local papers. The project will be publicized in print on through media at three stages of resident artist’s selection, artist’s midpoint activities, and artist’s final public event. City publicity resources are the Community Information Guide, a quarterly bilingual publication going to 25,000 Inglewood residences; Voice of Experience, the monthly Senior Center newsletter printed in an edition 5,000, and target outreach via e-newsletter distributed by the City’s five City Council Offices. For the final event the City will use our Social Escalation Promotion reaching over 32,000, and engage local print/social media managed by for-profit mediums -Eye on Inglewood and Inglewood Today.

One anticipated project outcome is recognition of the value of local creativity in civic life. R-PAiR will enhance community center programming by contracting a local professional artist to creatively engage with civic resources and share the outcomes of that creativity. R-PAiR will provide program enhancement by placing a professional working artist within a municipal asset. This artist will create in the Community Center, serve as a role model and professional resource for the enrichment of the audiences and inspire the efforts of center staff and participants. ###