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.