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UCLA Luskin Students Host First In-Person Event at Golden Age Park

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Students affiliated with the UCLA (Un)Common Public Space group hosted more than 100 attendees on Feb. 26 to celebrate Golden Age Park, a pocket park in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles that incorporates ideas championed by Urban Planning Professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris. The Saturday afternoon event included food, games and music provided by 45 members of the Heart of Los Angeles’ Intergenerational Orchestra. Five members of a Shakespeare troupe also performed an excerpt from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Gus Wendel MURP ’17, a doctoral student in urban planning at UCLA, said the (Un)Common Public Space group was formed in 2021 as a collective of community members, students, researchers, performers and public space activists with the goal of activating public spaces in different neighborhoods using research, performance and community-based events. Usage of Golden Age Park, which opened in 2019, had been hindered by its relative newness and by the COVID-19 pandemic. A primary purpose of the event was to build local awareness of the park’s presence and to promote its intergenerational appeal. “By creating opportunities for people of all ages to share time, space and experiences, intergenerational public spaces support engagement, learning and understanding across generations,” Wendel said. In addition to students in UCLA Luskin’s urban planning program, organizers and supporters included the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, UCLA cityLAB, the Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA), the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust (LANLT) and St. Barnabas Senior Services (SBSS). The UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative provided additional support, as did the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation.

Urban Planning doctoral student Gus Wendel welcomes the crowd on hand to celebrate Golden Age Park in Westlake.

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Golden Age Park celebration

 

Long-Forgotten Footage Sparks Dialogue on Black Music as History

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Two members of the creative team behind the award-winning documentary “Summer of Soul (… Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)” shared personal reflections about their role in bringing long-forgotten footage of 1969’s Harlem Cultural Festival to light during a Feb. 28 online dialogue with a UCLA audience. Joseph Patel, one of the film’s producers, and art director consultant Frank William Miller Jr. said they were floored when they first learned about the festival, which brought legends of musical history to a Harlem park half a century ago. Over six weekends, a series of free events showcased B.B. King, Mahalia Jackson alongside Mavis Staples, Nina Simone, Sly & the Family Stone, Gladys Knight & the Pips, The 5th Dimension and a 19-year-old Stevie Wonder, among many others. That so few remembered this cultural phenomenon was a sign of Black erasure, Patel said. He said the film’s director, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, spoke about how “Black history is often not regarded as part of the American history and why that was important to rectify with this film. … We didn’t want to just do a concert film, we wanted to tell a larger story.” Assistant Professor Lee Ann S. Wang and doctoral student Taylor Reed of UCLA Luskin Social Welfare moderated the conversation, which was also sponsored by the School’s urban planning, public policy and undergraduate programs, the Diversity, Disparities and Difference (D3) Initiative, and Social Welfare’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee. “Summer of Soul” has won several awards since its premier at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival and is nominated for this year’s Academy Award for best documentary feature.

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Monkkonen on COVID-19 and the L.A. Arts Scene

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Paavo Monkkonen, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the impact of gentrification and pandemic on the eclectic arts and music scene in Highland Park. The COVID-19 lockdown has devastated the northeast Los Angeles neighborhood and widened the divide between old-school and upstart artists. “You see a correlation between gentrifiers maintaining their income and lower-income people losing it,” Monkkonen said. SB1410, a pending state bill offering landlords tax breaks for forgiving rent, might help keep tenants of all sorts in place, he said. But real estate speculation and further gentrification remain real possibilities, he said. “There’s a big concern that mom-and-pop landlords will decide they don’t want to deal with tenants who can’t pay, and sell their buildings,” Monkkonen said. “Times of crisis are good times to buy, and a lot of these distressed properties are bought up by private equity.”

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