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SAVE THE DATE for Sounds of California in San José:
Saturday, Nov. 25
The Alliance for California Traditional Arts invites you to join South Bay, San José, and Mayfair artists and residents to celebrate the
Sounds of California.
For the past 10 months,
through the support of the California Arts Council's Creative Cultural Community program, ACTA led a Sounds of California project to collect and archive our California cultural soundscape in San José's historic East Side, with a focus on the Mayfair community. W
e engaged residents who contributed their songs, stories, and impressions of their local soundscape. Please join us to celebrate this community and the artists and residents who bring meaning to this work.
Saturday, November 25, 2017 (2-4 pm)
School of Arts & Culture at the Mexican Heritage Plaza, Theater
1700 Alum Rock Ave, San Jose, CA. | FREE!
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Welcome New Arts in Corrections Staff Antonio + Jasmin!
This month ACTA welcomes two impressive new staff members to the ACTA team to steward and facilitate the expanding ACTA Arts in Corrections (AIC) program, now working in 16 prisons throughout the state. Antonio Delfino steps into his role as Program Manager, leading the expansion and overall management of the program, while Jamin Temblador takes on serving Southern California institutions as Program Coordinator.
ANTONIO DELFINO serves as the Program Manager for the Arts in Correction program, based in Fresno.
Before joining ACTA his work spanned various correctional institutions and capacities including state prisons, juvenile halls, county jails, college classrooms, and grassroots nonprofit organizations. He has worked for California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation as both a clinical social worker and prerelease teacher. Most recently he worked for a Los Angeles based non-profit, the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, as a College Program Coordinator at two prions in California's Central Valley.
He graduated from California State University, Chico, with a Master's degree in Social Work. Antonio is committed to working with the most vulnerable and understands the importance of rehabilitation as the vehicle to positive transformation. Antonio will take the lead in the overall management of the AIC program. Beyond his role with ACTA, Antonio is a percussionist, he collects vinyl records, and deejays in his spare time--
everything from soul, to jazz, oldies, and Latin music.
JASMIN TEMBLADOR serves as the Program Coordinator for the Arts in Corrections program, based in Los Angeles.
Jasmin will be coordinating the launch and sustainability of arts residencies at Southern California institutions. Through AIC programming, Jasmin will be working alongside artists who bring traditional arts and heritage-based curriculum to students in the facilities. Jasmin is an alumna from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a Bachelors of Arts in Anthropology. She is currently pursuing a dual degree at Goucher College in Cultural Sustainability and Management. Jasmin is a first generation Chicana, and a proud daughter of Mexican parents. She grew up in South Central Los Angeles, a rich community in history and culture. Jasmin has hands on experience working directly with community members at LIFT-Los Angeles as a case manager. She has conducted research in art education as a UCLA Arts IN Scholar, and has explored the diverse culture and history of South Central Los Angeles through community narrative. She supported the creation of community murals within South Central Los Angeles and SPARC Art. Jasmin has a passion for learning and dancing Folklorico, a tradition passed on from her mother. She grew up singing in choir as a child, and more recently, with the Gospel Choir at UCLA.
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Marisa Martinez (L) with ACTA artists Quetzal Flores, Omar Ramírez, and Quincy McCrary and inmates at
California Correctional Facility in Tehachapi, 2017. Photo: Eric Coleman.
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With this issue, we also say farewell to our former Los Angeles-based AIC Program Coordinator, Marisa Martinez, who is moving on to focus on time with her family and her music. Read an excerpt from our full interview with Marisa upon her departure:
What do you hope for the growth of ACTA's Arts in Corrections program, and the field of arts in corrections in California, at large?
I hope that the program continues on its unique path as an Arts in Corrections program, but one that not only recognizes the general healing and restorative aspects of all arts, but that especially in prisons, acknowledges that working with traditional artists and traditional arts communities rooted in a historical trajectories or practice and cultural development, that this program, unlike others, can reconnect, or connect some for the first time, to a deeply felt sense of cultural identity and purpose in the world. Because within the realm of traditional arts, our music, our dance, our crafts, and our stories are not things that we do, they are what makes us who we are, they are our way of being in the world, our ways of making sense of the world, and what gives our lives meaning and purpose.
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NEW VIDEOS on Building Healthy Communities - Boyle Heights
Today we release two short films documenting ACTA's work in partnership with the California Endowment's Building Healthy Communities Initiative in Boyle Heights. To find out more about this collaboration,
download our new report,
Building Healthy Communities: Approaching Community Health Through Heritage and Culture in Boyle Heights.
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ACTA, in collaboration with Building Healthy Communities - Boyle Heights, presents
El Colas Medical
--
a song that emerged from a 10 week series of Son Jarocho workshops focused on implementing traditional arts as a way to talk about issues pertaining to health in Boyle Heights. Reimagining the traditional son
El Colas
, participants composed new verses, or
versos
, reflecting the need for universal access to health care and the importance of balancing this with the riches of traditional remedies practiced in Boyle Heights.
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For over four years, Building Healthy Communities
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Boyle Heights has invested in arts and culture as an essential resource in the struggle for health impacts and systems change in abandoned communities. The Alliance for California Traditional Arts has served as a key protagonist in lifting up traditional artists and their cultural convening methods as important vehicles for exercising and sustaining opposition to injustice and proposition for a collective future.
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Follow Along with ACTA's Social Feeds!
Keep up with ACTA as we expand our digital engagement in the coming months, with artist profiles, short films, dispatches from the field, and more.
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The Alliance for California Traditional Arts is the California Arts Council's official partner in serving the state's folk and traditional arts field.
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