Big City Forum: Stories That Move
Artists/collaborators: Leonardo Bravo, Cynthia Vargas, Reina Imagawa, Jeremy Rosenberg

Big City Forum is an interdisciplinary project that facilitates the exchange of ideas through gatherings, symposiums, exhibitions, and special events that provide access to forward-thinking creative projects. As an incubator of ideas it promotes the arts and imagination as powerful tools for community and civic transformation. By bringing together creative visionaries around issues of social change, Big City Forum aims to build a platform for collaboration and partnerships that promote a more active sense of cultural vitality and engagement. (from KCET, Artbound)

During its three-day residency at ICA LA’s Field Workshop, Big City Forum (BCF) will focus on harvesting information and stories through gatherings of its community of past and current collaborators. BCF will conduct a series of online workshops that explore the meaning and role of art collectives, organizations, and networks in a time of upheaval.

Aug 16 will be the third, fully open community meeting of the residency. The format will incorporate Big City Forum’s 10-year evolutionary history in a discussion and reflective exercise about the need for independent cultural initiatives. What are the new models of knowledge-generation? How do we adapt and catalyze the imaginative collective power of communities through cross-organizational partnership?

BCF has invited special guest Danny Gamboa, founder of SELA STRONG, a storytelling project developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the current movement for racial justice. The South East LA community is severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and police violence. SELA STRONG documents, records, and elevates the voices of this community during this challenging time.