Ashley Ajayi is an aspiring filmmaker who believes in the power of cultural production as a way to prioritize marginalized communities and progress racial justice. With a keen eye towards media representation, she is interested in what stories are told, how they are told, and who tells them. She enjoys living in Los Angeles and strives to learn more about its history every day. As an Urban Futures Lab Fellow Ashley is thrilled to develop a visual arts creative practice aimed at improving social conditions for communities of color. She is also a team member with Mapping Feminist Los Angeles, a print and web-based mapping project that outlines intersectional feminist resources throughout Los Angeles county, where she works towards knowledge sharing and community development. Ashley loves to craft, shoot, and edit short film projects that center intersectional identities and the oftentimes overlooked compounding effects of multi-systemic oppression. She graduated with a B.A. in Critical Theory and Social Justice from Occidental College.
For my Urban Futures Lab Capstone Project, I held a virtual event titled “Skate Safe Digital Resistive Space.” This event strived to amplify the resistive and countercultural ways marginalized groups (specifically skaters who identify as womxn, non-binary+Black, African, or of Color) create space for themselves, especially in......
Urban Futures Lab: Yearbook Edition – Ep 1: This is OUR Time Capsule: One Year in Review **For some context, this podcast and its episodes were conceived during the beginning of our quarantine season, and recorded in late April and early May—just a few weeks......
Urban Futures Lab: Yearbook Edition – Ep 2: What Do You Meme? – Breaking Down the UFL Experience **For some context, this podcast and its episodes were conceived during the beginning of our quarantine season, and recorded in late April and early May—just a few......
Urban Futures Lab: Yearbook Edition – Ep 3: The Rose that Grew from Concrete/The Lotus Rising from the Mud **For some context, this podcast and its episodes were conceived during the beginning of our quarantine season, and recorded in late April and early May—just a......
Public Matters is a creative civic engagement studio that forms strong partnerships through unconventional measures as a way to redress social ills. My involvement as a Fellow in the two-year long Urban Futures Lab Fellowship definitely falls under this purview. This round’s cohort, which consists......
At least one week leading up to the Fourth of July and even some days afterwards, the city resonates with the loud “BOOM” of illegal fireworks. Annually I become part of a sacred pact, an unspoken agreement amongst neighbors to stomach intrusive sounds and react......