INTERVIEW: KCET to highlight resiliency of local arts scene on ‘Southland Sessions’
Photo: Southland Sessions will kick off on KCET with a virtual discussion on Southern California arts in the time of COVID-19 and national protests. Photo courtesy of KCET / Provided with permission.
The arts community — encompassing theater, music, film, community art and so much more — has been greatly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Live audience offerings have stopped, ticket sales have ceased and the future remains uncertain. This is especially true in the Los Angeles area, which is a bonafide cultural capital of the globe.
But to say that the art-making has stopped altogether would be wrong, and the folks at KCET know there are many stories to tell — now more than ever. So they have crafted a new series, with the partnership of the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, that highlights the many ways artists are surviving, thriving and plotting a new path forward. The new series, called Southland Sessions, premieres Wednesday, July 15 at 8 p.m.
The first episode will feature a virtual discussion with several arts leaders in the Southern California area. Included among the panelists will be Danielle Brazell, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs; Betty Avila, executive director of Self Help Graphics; Ravi Rajan, president of California Institute of the Arts; and Leslie Ito, executive director of the Armory Center for the Arts; plus leaders from the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California Community Foundation, The Music Center Arts, Community Coalition and KAOS Network.
“I think that one of the things that we’re the most excited here at KCET and PBS SoCal is that we are being able to provide a space where we’re presenting the diversity of arts and culture across the region when people are not being able to present it and showcase it, and audiences are not able to go to the traditional places where that used to happen,” said Juan Devis, KCET chief creative officer and host of the first episode. “So for us being able to create a space where we are presenting everything from … orchestra performances to backyard singalongs in East L.A. and everything in between is what we’re the most excited about, really putting a focus on the role that arts and culture [has] as an essential part of our mental well-being during this pandemic and these moments of virtual uprising and reckoning.”
Southland Sessions has a stated goal to include a diverse offering of art-makers, everything from LACMA to smaller outlets. For example, the first episode will also feature local youth poets from the organization Get Lit. Another episode will showcase the Watts Towers Day of the Drum Festival, and another one will focus on the Simon Rodia Watts Towers Jazz Festival. The second episode includes an interview with Yuval Sharon, artistic director of The Industry opera company, while later episodes will find mariachi musician Julian Torres exploring the cultural significance of this unique art form.
KCET is excited for what the series will offer audience members, and the same excitement is shared by the City of Los Angeles.
“From the city’s perspective, we’re the city’s local arts agency, and we have a mandate and a mission to support and foster creativity and culture throughout our city,” Brazell said on behalf of the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. “Los Angeles is a global creative capital. We’re the cultural crossroads of the world, and when the pandemic hit, arts and culture … was the first to shut down in a sense. One in six or one in seven [jobs], depending on how you slice it, is directly related to the creative economy in Los Angeles. When we talk about the creative economy that means cultural and creative workers. That means artists and artisans, whether they’re trade, in front of the camera, behind stage, in the booth … we’re all part of this dynamic ecosystem, and when COVID hit, we immediately started to think we’ve got to move everything online. And what we saw was the resiliency from the arts and cultural community to begin to put everything online.”
Brazell said that she saw audiences gravitating online and still wanting their arts and cultural offerings, but unfortunately there wasn’t a centralized place to find the many works from Southern California’s artistic community. The most innovative and most interesting voices needed greater exposure.
“We’re now in a complete shifting of our daily lives, and we don’t know how long that shift is going to happen,” she said. “We have this new extraordinary movement around social awakening and reckoning, and I think for the City of Los Angeles we really needed to identify a partner who could create a new platform that has the capacity and the innovative storytelling chops to get into the homes of every person in Southern California, and there was no better partner than KCET, PBS SoCal and Juan Devis.”
The local Department of Cultural Affairs is guided by a cultural master plan, Brazell shared, and equity is at the core of their mission. So whether they are administering grants or approving public art projects, they are trying to consider equity in every decision they make. “So it made perfect sense for us to work with a partner who really also had that at their core,” Brazell said.
Devis added that KCET is trying to fill a hole essentially — a hole created by the pandemic, one that leaves members of the community at home and social distancing. They are charged with breaking down some of those necessary health barriers by presenting these community offerings from the safety of the living room.
“That means we’re going to be giving them everything from orchestral episodes with partners such as Pacific Symphony to more tailored concerts,” Devis said. “But we’re also going to be looking at [how] the dance community has been doing as a whole, or the mariachi community, the Indian music community, the theater community, so we are trying to create a platform where everything fits and everything can be shared with the audience.”
He added: “We’re also inviting people that are stakeholders in those particular genres, like dance and theater and music, to come to the studio and host these episodes. We’re starting to also open the doors for people to just come and say this is what my community has been going through, what the dance community has been going through, this is how we’re using technology, this is how we’re adapting to moving our artistic practice to a safe-distance presentation, this is how we’ve been affected economically. That sort of democratic approach to our programming is what I think is going to make it stand out.”
For Brazell, it’s important for her that Southern California residents understand this is a pivotal moment, with history being written almost every second of these tumultuous times. Thus, it’s critical that the storyteller has a role to play in the reopening and reshaping of society.
“This is also a historical moment, and who is telling the story of what happened in Los Angeles in 2020 and how are we telling that story to the rest of the world,” Brazell said. “We really need to engage the storytellers, the artists, the ones that are continuing to make the work and helping all of us get through these extraordinary times.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Southland Sessions will premiere Wednesday, July 15 at 8 p.m. on KCET. Click here for more information.
