ACTA’s ongoing work in Boyle Heights with The California Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities initiative has allowed us to support traditional artists’ efforts to further develop cultural convening methodologies. Most evident is the Collective Songwriting processes that have facilitated many important conversations. These methods are drawing from embodied knowledge to engage community members, organizers, youth, educators, and many more in conversations about youth advocacy, Prop 47, DACA/DAPA, the Local Control Funding Formula, health care access, and restorative justice practices in schools. The traditional forms that are informing these processes include Son Jarocho, Chican@ music, Corridos, Cumbia, and Hip Hop. The spaces created during these processes support bonding and bridging, incite the imagination in a multitude of ways, and create a horizontal space where artists can be in community with music and vice versa.
We invite you to watch the following video about the Collective Songwriting work that ACTA has facilitated in Boyle Heights.