PROJECT DESCRIPTION
For almost two decades, Public Matters has been cultivating Good Mischief.
Good Mischief integrates social practice, education, and communication strategies into tools and actions that make civic participation less “soul-suck” and more “conspiratorial joy.”
This past year, in City Terrace, Good Mischief took the form of a “toolkit”: A Good Mischief Toolkit for Neighborhood Self-Determination.
A Good Mischief Toolkit for Neighborhood Self-Determination, led by Public Matters in close collaboration with Visión City Terrace (VCT), a volunteer-based community group, is a multifaceted social practice public artwork aimed at building VCT’s capacity for self-advocacy around environmental justice—air quality, noise pollution, and basic service requests—in East LA’s City Terrace neighborhood.
City Terrace faces a significantly higher burden of environmental injustice compared to the rest of Los Angeles County; cancer risk alone from air pollution in City Terrace is worse than 97% of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties. Unfortunately, these health issues have become commonplace for many in the community. There’s a pervasive sense of resignation and the belief that the status quo cannot be changed. Despite this, many people love City Terrace; their families have lived there for generations. They feel a deep connection to the area. Visión City Terrace envisions a better future—the future they deserve. Good Mischief aims to empower them and their community to shape their own destiny.
ACTIVATIONS
Work closely with Visión City Terrace to identify, design, and implement project goals
Build and strengthen relationships between residents, stakeholders, community based organizations, anchor institutions, and local businesses to foster meaningful collaborations and greater capacity for collective self-determination
Increase public awareness and standing of VCT
Create unexpected public art installations, immersive interactive activities, and educational resources that provoke and delight. Design and implement relevant, responsive, and sensorial engagement tools for individuals of all ages
Love and community pride for City Terrace run deep. Located in the unincorporated area of East LA within Los Angeles County, City Terrace is a tight-knit neighborhood where many families have lived for generations. Its hilly terrain, amazing views, narrow winding streets, small family-owned businesses, memorable murals, and strong sense of place and identity give City Terrace its distinctive neighborhood feel. Residents of City Terrace are family-centered, and their history of activism and Chicanx heritage deeply influence the vibrant cultural and aesthetic expressions found throughout the neighborhood. The area features some of East LA’s most iconic murals, created by prominent artists including Willie Herrón, Paul Botello, and Jose Luis Gonzalez. The community identifies itself as resilient and resourceful underdogs, driven by a strong sense of duty to their neighbors. This spirit stems from limited financial resources, perceived governmental neglect, and chronic environmental and racial injustices.
The 10 Freeway bisects City Terrace without a soundwall to mitigate the noise. The southern part is primarily residential, while the northern part combines light and heavy industry adjacent to homes. There are three elementary schools close to the freeways, train tracks, and industry. Multiple recycling centers, autobody shops, trash services, and manufacturing bring air and noise pollution. The sickly sweet flavors of the Monster Energy Drink factory mingle with the stench of trash.
StoryMap: “Why We Stay & Fight: A City Terrace Love Story”
City Terrace stinks.
Its residents deserve better.
For decades, community members have endured noxious smells from the industrial zone abutting residential areas, air and noise pollution from the 10 freeway, a lack of greenspace and tree canopy, and chronically unmet service requests for basic maintenance like trash pickup.
Why We Stay & Fight is a call to action and a declaration of radical love for a neighborhood and the people who call it home. The StoryMap, which serves as an online resource and digital record, frames the narrative with love, emphasizing the community’s strengths in addressing environmental injustices. It informs neighbors, public agencies, and elected officials about neighborhood conditions, makes the case for urgency, and offers hope through local change agents and collective action.
PARTNERS
Visión City Terrace (VCT), the primary community partner, works with Public Matters on all aspects of Good Mischief to amplify community needs, priorities, and values. VCT is a community group of neighbors dedicated to environmental justice and resource equity for City Terrace and the surrounding East Los Angeles area. VCT advocates for more resources, investments, and solutions that address the pollution they face as a result of decades of neglect and environmental racism. Through community engagement, VCT empowers their community to decide for themselves what it is they need to thrive and care for each other. Visión City Terrace leads with the deep love rooted in their community.
The USC Urban Trees Initiative brings together USC faculty, staff, and student researchers to help the City and County of Los Angeles and local nonprofits grow an equitable and resilient urban forest to address a warming climate. City Terrace, near USC’s Keck Medical Center, is one of the initiative’s priority communities. The multidisciplinary university effort has previously worked with both Public Matters and VCT to convene community conversations. For Good Mischief, USC Trees provides technical assistance and scientific expertise, informing the environmental education framework, measuring and decoding air quality during educational activations, and advising on relevant content for Good Mischief’s public art components.
The Institute for Art and Olfaction initiates and supports experimental projects with scent in partnership with institutions and community groups and by raising visibility for independent, artisan, experimental, and artistic practices with scent. The Institute helps plan and implement a “smell stories” listening and learning workshop. It researches and creates fragrances, such as “the Scent of No-Pollution,” that accompany public art projects and educational workshops intended to stimulate local dialogue about environmental hazards.
ENGAGEMENT
Public Matters collaborated with Vision City Terrace to mobilize residents around environmental justice concerns such as air quality and noise pollution in their community. By combining creative advocacy strategies with art practice to confront and address environmental injustices directly, Good Mischief goes beyond environmental activism.
Playful, critical, and tongue-in-cheek efforts cultivate a collective sense of belonging, ownership, and empowerment among residents, reaffirming their role as stewards of their community’s health and environment. Mobilizing the community to advocate for change not only addresses immediate environmental threats but also establishes a lasting legacy of resilience and solidarity in City Terrace.
Public Matters worked very closely with VCT throughout the course of Good Mischief to make sure that the work held true to their lived experience and their priorities. They were the place experts, and by extension, they were also the experts of the people.
Public Matters listened. It cannot be overstated how far too many communities feel marginalized, dismissed, unseen, and unheard. Good Mischief’s remote and in-person meetings, tours led by community members through their spaces, workshops, gatherings, and immersive and educational activities centered the community and re-sensitized residents to issues like air and noise pollution, which revealed the negative consequences of their continued resignation and inaction. Armed with this type of understanding, residents recognized the need for and the actual possibility of change and moved from apathy to inclination to becoming active participants, spreading awareness, deepening their knowledge, and joining VCT in their efforts in planning, mobilization, and recruitment.
Public Matters brought strategy, ingenuity, ideas for engagement, different ways for VCT to act and communicate with their neighbors and public organizations and government officials, artistic and technical expertise, and resources to develop tools that they can use in their ongoing work.
City Terrace Love Notes: A Heartfelt Connection united VCT with 375 residents of all ages over a shared love for their neighborhood around Valentine’s Day, while also sparking VCT to launch a messaging campaign aimed at rallying residents against a heavy polluter, emphasizing the powerful sentiment and declaring that “Pollution is not an act of love.”
The culminating StoryMap: Why We Stay and Fight, highlights how unequal access to clean air, water, and green spaces impacts neighborhood health and quality of life. It serves as an online resource that frames the narrative with love and emphasizes the community’s strengths in addressing environmental injustices. It informs neighbors, public agencies, and elected officials about neighborhood conditions, makes the case for urgency, and offers hope through local change agents and collective action.
At the Let’s Plant A Visión public event, attendees engaged on multiple levels with VCT, USC Urban Trees Initiative, North East Trees, Artemisia Nursery, and Self Help Graphics & Art. VCT connected and reconnected with their neighbors, who expressed renewed energy to join VCT’s efforts. Numerous Big and Small Arbolitos found homes. The Tours underscored the environmental conditions on the ground, while The Smell Workshop, in partnership with The Institute for Art and Olfaction, evoked powerful, full-body, deeply memorable responses. Watching kids take swings at the towering 6-foot-plus Pollution Monster Piñatas was endearing, but it was the adults who truly drove the message home. The determination and catharsis everyone witnessed were poignant and awe-inspiring. The pent-up frustration, in some cases decades old, was palpable.
THE ENGAGEMENT ECOSYSTEM
No one can do it alone. Good Mischief cultivated an engagement ecosystem that connected a wide range of individuals, groups, and organizations. As a toolkit, it provided tangible strategies and resources for outreach, language, and visuals that enabled VCT to engage with their neighbors and community to self-advocate and encourage them to act and become stewards of their quality of life.
ADDITIONAL PARTICIPANTS
IMPACT
Public Matters accomplished what it set out to do.
Through Good Mischief, art, humor, provocation, and strategic activations increased VCT’s capacity to:
Good Mischief:
On August 13th, 2024, VCT appeared in a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Meeting with signs from the Big Arbolitos installation. This was part of their ongoing efforts to oppose Republic Services, a waste company bringing 700 tons of trash into the neighborhood daily. Earlier in the year, VCT had successfully rallied neighbors and collected hundreds of signatures to oppose Republic Services’ conditional use permit, which was unanimously denied by the Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning. When Republic Services appealed, VCT mobilized once more. Their efforts led to the Board denying the permit, affirming City Terrace’s right to better environmental conditions.
Visión City Terrace continues to use elements from The Good Mischief Toolkit for Neighborhood Self-Determination. The impact is ongoing.
FUNDING
In recent years, Public Matters has undertaken East LA projects supported by contracts with LA County public agencies such as the Department of Public Health and Public Works. A Good Mischief Toolkit for Neighborhood Self-Determination is supported by 18th Street Arts Center California Creative Corps, a pilot program funded by the California Arts Council, a state agency, as an engagement campaign designed to increase public awareness about issues of public health, water and energy conservation, civic engagement, social justice, and more.
This arts funding for a self-initiated project provides Public Matters with opportunities for a different kind of creative flex, greater latitude for experimentation, and higher tolerance for imaginative risk.
18th Streets Arts Center: Conceived as a radical think tank in the shape of an artist community, 18th Street Arts Center supports artists from around the globe to imagine, research, and develop significant, meaningful new artworks and share them with the public. We strive to provide artists the space and time to take risks, to foster the ideal environment for artists and the public to directly engage, and to create experiences and partnerships that foster positive social change.
California Creative Corps was a $60 million effort by Governor Newsom and Legislature to, among other things, increase public awareness related to water and energy conservation, climate mitigation, and emergency preparedness, and relief and recovery.
California Arts Council “Culture is the strongest signifier of California’s identity. As a state agency, the California Arts Council supports local arts infrastructure and programming statewide through grants, programs, and services.”
UPDATES / OUT IN THE WORLD
For Dia de los Muertos, a commemoration of lives lost to traffic crashes along Cesar Chavez Avenue Paseo del Cempazuchitl Installation: October 27 – November 3, 2023 Caminata de los Altares: Friday, Nov. 3, 5:00-6:30 pm Meet at: Alma Family Services, 4701 E Cesar E......
SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 2023 Queer Mercado, 4801 E 3rd St, East Los Angeles, CA 90022 10:00 am – 4:00 pm, “Pet Parade” at 12:30 pm 31,518 households in East LA have pets – that’s a lot of paws and claws using local streets and sidewalks!......