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As we wind down for the season and prepare for a r

As we wind down for the season and prepare for a rest, we reflect on all we shared together in 2024. It’s been a year of deep work for Active Cultures, and we are so grateful to you for being part of it all.

2024 saw the continuation of our artist-led projects connecting us to land and to each other. We gathered for ECOTONES, a series of eco-feminist programs co-presented with our friends at The Brick. We hosted Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodriguez to germinate mycelial networks among ecological art practices in LA and beyond. And after a long, perennial conversation with Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien, we welcomed them to LA this fall for three rich weeks of workshops, community programs, celebration and a symposium centering the Philippine liberation movement.

This year, we also laid the foundation for our future. Through our first-ever strategic planning process, we have set clear goals that foreground our support for artists, expanded partnerships, and growing our capacity to do this work with intention and care. We can’t wait to share exciting news about our next chapter with you in the new year.

Your support makes this all possible. As you reflect on your own year, we hope you’ll consider supporting AC with an end-of-year gift. Every contribution from our community sustains our programs, care for our team, and the ability to provide artists with the support they need to expand their rhizomatic practices. Thank you for all you do, for being at the table with us, and we hope you have a warm and restful holiday!

With love and gratitude,
The AC Team

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Active Cultures’ programs this year have been made possible through the generous support of its Board of Directors; the Gatherers Annual Fund; the Los Angeles Visual Arts (LAVA) Coalition; the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture as part of Creative Recovery LA, an initiative funded by the American Rescue Plan; the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture; and the California Arts Council.

For our third ECOTONES program, we spent a magical

For our third ECOTONES program, we spent a magical afternoon under the Peppercorn Tree at Audubon Center at Debs Park with artist, activist, and urban farmer Leslie Labowitz Starus! 🌱

A pioneer in urban farming and sprouting, Leslie led children and their families through hands-on craft-making and tastings of green superfoods. Guests made and shared hummus and salads while learning how to sprout seeds and explore the power of urban agriculture as a tool for creativity and sustainability.

Leslie’s work spans over 30 years through SPROUTIME, a social art project that grew from a garden-sized sprout farm in the late 1970s into an organic farm and small business distributing products across Southern California. Her dedication to nourishing communities through food and art continues to inspire.

Effusive thanks to Leslie, the Audubon Center at Debs Park, and The Brick for their partnership—and to everyone who joined us! Our gratitude to Meech Boakye and Paige Emery for their programs at the start of this series which they also tended with such care. Stay tuned for the final ECOTONES program with colectivo amasijo in the spring.

✨ Supported by Kim and Keith Allen-Niesen, The Maurice Marciano Family Foundation, and Olivia Marciano.

🌿 @leslieartlab @audubon_debspark @thebrick_la @ghostyboi @paigeemery_ @colectivo_amasijo

This fall, artist Meech Boakye invited us to engag

This fall, artist Meech Boakye invited us to engage in watering, a communal hydration ritual for collective healing. The evening centered on Jumana Manna’s Foragers (2022), a powerful film that examines the restricted practice of foraging wild plants in occupied Palestine, while Meech drew parallels to postbellum U.S. property laws and the systemic erasure of Indigenous traditions. Together, we reflected on how ecological conservation can be used as a tool for displacement.

The gathering began with a collective libation and continued with a thoughtful menu celebrating local foraging and agriculture: rosemary whipped butter with bread, herby green salads with a foraged mugwort vinaigrette, summer fruits with bee pollen, and herbal tea infused with rose hips, pomegranate leaves and other wild aromatics. Each guest left with a special gift grown and foraged in Meech’s home city of Portland.

Special thanks to Arlington Garden for serving as a foraging site for Meech’s work.

With gratitude to Meech, Jumana, and The Brick for this second ECOTONES program—and to everyone who joined us—we’re thrilled to announce the series will continue into Spring 2025, expanding our explorations of eco-feminisms through art, food, and ecological care.

✨ Photos by @ginaclyne

🌿 Supported by Kim and Keith Allen-Niesen, The Maurice Marciano Family Foundation, and Olivia Marciano.

@ghostyboi @jumanamanna @thebrick_la @arlingtonpasadena

We’re reaching out with an update about colectiv

We’re reaching out with an update about colectivo amasijo: offering, a program originally scheduled for this coming Saturday, December 7 at The Brick. Due to unexpected changes, we have collectively decided to reschedule the program to the new year.

We and the artists are so disappointed to miss you all this month, especially as the artists have been gathering so many wonderful ingredients and gifts for this project. Both AC and The Brick remain committed to presenting this program in the best possible way and will share the new date and details with you as soon as they are confirmed.

Thank you for your support of this programming and of our work together as sister organizations. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at ac@active-cultures.org. We look forward to seeing you in the New Year!

Warmly,

Active Cultures and The Brick

This fall, artists Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien, work

This fall, artists Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien, working closely with GABRIELA LA and artist Carol Anne McChrystal, hosted a community papermaking workshop series in Historic Filipinotown.

In collaboration with GABRIELA LA and other organizers of the Housing for Juanita campaign/Filipino Housing Network, the workshop series unfolded in three sessions: discussions on forced migration, a foraging tour of Historic Filipinotown, and local outreach with community organizers. The series culminated in participants transforming foraged materials from HiFi into unique handmade papers, creating a tactile record of migrant Filipino lives in the neighborhood.

Through these sessions, participants explored the intersection of labor, double displacement in the Philippine diaspora, and the ongoing struggle for genuine land reform in the Philippines. These handmade papers will become printed materials in support of the ongoing work of the Filipino Housing Network, advocating for the rights of the Filipino community in Historic Filipinotown. By engaging in papermaking, the artists draw inspiration from practices in collective organizing and the historical struggles for liberation. We look forward to continuing to develop printed materials that will amplify the issues of local migrant Filipinos through the work of the Filipino Housing Network.

We are grateful to all who participated, and especially to these incredible partner organizations, including our friend and workshop host Minh Phan, for guiding the series with such care.

@carolannemcchrystal @gabrielalosangeles @housingforjuanita @t_j_shin @mignardisesla @porridgeandpuffs #enzocamachoamilien

Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien: Langit Lupa (Heaven and Earth) is supported in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency. Learn more at www.arts.ca.gov @calartscouncil. Langit Lupa’s public programming is also made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien: Langit Lupa (Heaven and Earth) is organized by Active Cultures with support of artist TJ Shin as Project Manager.

Photos by @activeculturesla and @john_zafra_haas

On November 9 and 10, AC was honored to host the L

On November 9 and 10, AC was honored to host the Los Angeles premiere of Langit Lupa (Heaven and Earth), a new documentary film by Berlin and New York-based artists Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien. The film explores themes of dispossession, survival, and resistance, with a focus on the Philippines, particularly the island of Negros, known for its sugarcane production and the exploitation of land and labor.

A huge thank you to the artists and Xenia Tupas, a longtime journalist, human rights activist, and movement elder whose personal history is deeply connected to the film’s story. Xenia grew up on Negros Island, the site of the 1985 people’s strike for land redistribution and peasant’s rights, and has fought alongside plantation workers for over four decades.

On Sunday, the artists alongside scholars Josen Masangkay Diaz, Joy Sales, and Lucy MSP Burns, whose work on the Philippines liberation struggle highlights the global connections between labor, migration, and resistance, gathered for a symposium to expand on the film’s focus on land and labor exploitation in Negros, touching on historical agricultural protests in the Philippines and their echoes in California, as well as the growing authoritarianism in the Philippines under continuing US colonial influence.

We appreciate all who joined us and a special thanks to our speakers, Xenia Tupas, Josen Masangkay Diaz, Joy Sales, Lucy MSP Burns, and to their amazing students.

@t_j_shin @2220arts @neverforgetamlm @josen.diaz #joysales @gabrielalosangeles

Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien: Langit Lupa (Heaven and Earth) is supported in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency. Learn more at www.arts.ca.gov @calartscouncil. Langit Lupa’s public programming is also made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien: Langit Lupa (Heaven and Earth) is organized by Active Cultures with support of artist TJ Shin as Project Manager.

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