Community-Engaged Research Grants—Social Impact Collaboratives

Adaptation of STRIVE: Integrating racial-ethnic socialization to build family resilience against racism

Co-PIs:
Bo-Kyung Elizabeth Kim Associate Professor, Department of Community Health Sciences
Norweeta Milburn Professor-in-Residence, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences

Community Partners:

• Homeboy Industries
• Arming Minorities Against Addiction and Diseases
• Healing Urban Barrios

Low-income racial/ethnic minoritized (REM) families are at the intersection of multiple marginalizations resulting from structural racism, including poverty, police contact, community violence, homelessness, and system involvement (i.e., child welfare, legal system). Racism- related stress refers to perceived stress incurring from experiences of racism that threatens wellbeing. These impacts of racism are intergenerational and span across the life course. We are seeking to foster a community-research partnership with three community-based agencies in Los Angeles serving primarily low-income Black and Latinx families (Homeboy Industries, AMAAD Institute, and Healing Urban Barrios) to design an exploratory study with REM families to prevent racism-related stress among REM youth. These agency providers have reported the need for families to process racism, as no service addresses this potentially traumatic aspect of these families’ lives. This partnership will ultimately lead to co-adapting an existing efficacious family-based program developed by Dr. Norweeta Milburn with intentional focus on addressing racism-related stress for further research using a community-engaged collaborative approach.

Achieving and Implementing Abolition in Los Angeles

Co-PIs:
David Turner Assistant Professor, Department of Social Welfare, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs
Kelly Lytle Hernandez Professor, Departments of History, African American Studies and Urban Planning

Community Partners:

• Justice LA
• Check the Sheriff’s Coalition
• Police-Free LAUSD Coalition
• People’s Budget LA Coalition
• PUSH LA Coalition
• LA Youth Uprising Coalition

Million Dollar Hoods is a research project that advances the labors of activists and advocates working to change how public dollars are spent in Los Angeles. In particular, it advances the work of those seeking to reduce criminal justice budgets while expanding health services, housing options, welfare benefits, and employment opportunities. MDH research also serves organizations pressing for greater transparency in police and jail data. In the current political climate, partners who have worked closely with the Million Dollar Hoods Research project and in other parts of the Los Angeles justice ecosystem have been successful in working to transform some aspects of carceral control. Whether that community partner or coalition has worked to defund law enforcement, close juvenile facilities, stop the growth of jail expansion, build new mechanisms for law enforcement accountability, or if that partner has worked to create new streams of funding to support alternative forms of community safety work. We seek funding to engage in a deep strategic planning process with our partners in order to launch a community-driven research campaign focused on implementing community-led policy initiatives that reallocate public resources to supporting human-centered services.

Advancing LGBTQ+ Vision Health Equity through Community Partnerships in Los Angeles

Co-PIs:
Anne Coleman Professor, Department of Epidemiology, Fielding School of Public Health;
Fran and Ray Stark Professor of Ophthalmology, Jules Stein Institute; Director, UCLA Jules Stein Eye Institute, Center for Community Outreach, Center for Eye Epidemiology, Mobile Eye Clinic
Victoria Tseng Program Director, UCLA Jules Stein Eye Institute; Assistant Professor-in-Residence, Department of Ophthalmology

Community Partner: Los Angeles LGBT Center

Los Angeles County has the second largest LGBTQ+ adult population of any US metropolitan area, with over 520,000 LGBTQ+ identifying individuals. LGBTQ+ individuals experience multiple forms of marginalization and health disparities, including decreased access to healthcare and a disproportionately larger burden of chronic conditions. Furthermore, marginalized communities face a greater risk of experiencing negative effects of ocular conditions, including vision loss. However, few studies have investigated vision and eye health disparities specifically affecting the LGBTQ+ population. The aim of this study is to identify and address the barriers towards accessing eye care services among this population and to increase culturally competent eye healthcare access among the LGBTQ+ population in Los Angeles County through community-engaged research and community-based interventions. We aim to do so by establishing an interdisciplinary partnership with the Los Angeles LGBT Center, UCLA Department of Ophthalmology, UCLA LGBTQ+ Health Initiative, and the UCLA School of Public Health.

Aligning Housing Policy with Popular Demand for More Housing

Co-PIs:
Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld Associate Professor, Department of Public Policy, Luskin School of Public Affairs
Paavo Monkkonen Professor, Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy, Luskin School of Public Affairs

Community Partner: Abundant Housing Los Angeles

Angelenos understand the scarcity of housing and want to see more constructed. According to a Los Angeles Department of City Planning November 2020 survey of 803 residents, 64% of Angelenos call increasing housing supply a top or high priority, and larger majorities support housing near mass transit. The Luskin School of Public Affairs’ 2023 Los Angeles Quality of Life survey finds 62% of residents support apartment buildings in single-family neighborhoods. City, county, and state policymakers agree that housing prices have become unaffordable, and a wide array of interest groups support more housing construction. Indeed, support for more housing is one of the few bipartisan policy issues in the country. Yet despite this broad demand and support for new housing, new housing construction in Los Angeles remains at multi-decade lows and rents and housing prices continue their inexorable march upwards. Untangling this puzzle is the focus of our proposed community research.

Building Urban Soil Networks in Los Angeles for Research and Action

Co-PIs:
Kirsten Schwarz Associate Professor, Departments of Urban Planning and Environmental Health Sciences, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs & Fielding School of Public Health
Jennifer Jay Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Community Partners:

• TreePeople
• Physicians for Social Responsibility-LA
• Communities for a Better Environment
• Watts Labor Community Action Committee–Better Watts Initiative

Urban soils are an important regional and national equity concern that shape the health and well-being of urban dwellers. They also represent a paradox of sorts because equity concerns around urban soils include both exposure to contaminated soils, which are a hazard, and access to clean soils, which are an amenity. Understanding the paradox of urban soils and identifying sustained and equitable solutions requires a collaborative partnership among impacted communities, local and regional non-profit organizations, and academic researchers. As such, our Social Impact Collaborative Exploratory Grant brings together community groups active in urban soils work in the Los Angeles region to: build relationships, identify potential collaborations, and begin the process of coalescing around a common theory of change for the region that includes alignment around research priorities and actions.

Building Worker Power: Support for Low-Wage Worker Leadership with the Los Angeles Worker Center Network

Co-PIs:
Chris Zepeda-Millan Professor and Chair, Labor Studies Program, College of Social Sciences; Associate Professor, Departments of Public Policy and Chicano/a and Central American
Tobias Higbie Professor, Department of History; Director, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment

Community Partners:

• Los Angeles Worker Center Network, including
  • CLEAN CarWash Worker Center
  • Garment Worker Center
  • Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance
  • Los Angeles Black Worker Center, Pilipino Workers Center
  • Restaurant Opportunities Center Los Angeles
  • Warehouse Workers Resource Center

Los Angeles has more worker centers than any other U.S. city, which profoundly impact the region’s infrastructure and culture of labor standards, immigrant rights, and anti- discrimination enforcement. The UCLA Labor Center is a founding (non-voting) member of the Los Angeles Worker Center Network and seeks to document best practices around multi-racial, multi-industry, multi-language worker center organizing in a major U.S. Worker center-driven campaigns created, and currently work to implement, the Los Angeles Civil and Human Rights, Office of Wage Standards, and County Office of Business and Consumer Affairs. Researchers and worker centers in this project will determine the best popular education, story-telling, academic journals, and social media methods to document these successful and replicable Los Angeles campaigns (2009 – present). The research team will provide technical assistance to local agencies to implement the Fair Employment and Housing Act and state Labor Code, and develop a plan to implement legal clinics in partnership with the LA Office of Wage Standards with the goal of obtaining primary data to drive strategic enforcement.

Diversifying Language Development Research in Los Angeles: Learning Spanish and English in children from 0-6

Co-PIs:
Laurel Perkins Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics
Victoria Mateu Assistant Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Community Partners:

• Para Los Niños
• Children’s Institute

In Los Angeles, where Spanish is widely spoken alongside English, there’s a notable gap in research on how children learn Spanish in monolingual or bilingual contexts. Research participants at UCLA primarily come from neighborhoods near West LA, where English predominates. This skews the demographics of language acquisition research, overlooking the city’s broader Hispanic population. We propose a collaborative effort to diversify research by engaging Spanish-speaking communities around Downtown and East-Central LA, where the demographic is more representative of the city’s diversity. In partnership with two community organizations, Para Los Niños and Children’s Institute, we will reach out to families in the communities that they serve and bring research opportunities to them, fostering engagement with language development research at UCLA. The collaboration will enhance our understanding of Spanish and bilingual language development, and will engage students from Hispanic backgrounds in research, aligning with UCLA’s goal to achieve recognition as an HSI.

Documenting Black Los Angeles: The Los Angeles Memory Project

Co-PIs:
Tonia Sutherland Assistant Professor, Department of Information Studies
Gaye Theresa Johnson Associate Professor, Departments of African American Studies and Chicana/o Studies

Community Partners in process of confirmation

The UCLA Black Memory Collective respectfully submits this application for the Social Impact Collaborative Exploratory Grant in the amount of $10,000. The requested funding will support exploratory research in collaboration with Los Angeles’s Black communities and be mobilized to build new—and strengthen existing—relationships between UCLA and Black Los Angeles. As part of our commitment to supporting Black Angelenos in their self-documentation efforts, the goal of Documenting Black Los Angeles: The Los Angeles Memory Project is to—in alignment with UCLA’s strategic plan—deepen UCLA’s engagement with Los Angeles and enhance our research and creative activities through working with LA stakeholders. Specifically, funding will support the Collective’s efforts to: identify community partners; conduct community listening sessions; host a community gathering; hold a one-day Collective retreat; craft a collaborative community-based needs assessment and community action plan; and share outcomes with both our community partners and the broader UCLA community.

Enhancing Equity in Public Library Services through Vietnamese Language and Cultural Resources

Co-PIs:
Thủy Vo Dang Assistant Professor, Departments of Information Studies and Asian American Studies
Thu-Huong Nguyen-Vo Professor, Departments of Asian Languages & Cultures and Asian American Studies

Community Partners:

• Viet Story Time
• Los Angeles Public Library
• Asian Pacific American Librarians Association

Enhancing Equity in Public Library Services through Vietnamese Language and Cultural Resources proposes to bring together a group of academic experts, grassroots community organizers, and public librarians to explore ways of scaffolding support for the creation, development, and sustainability of early childhood learning resources for Vietnamese Americans in a region that is home to the largest diaspora community. Thuy Vo Dang, Assistant Professor in the School of Education and Information Studies, and Nguyễn-võ Thu-hương, Professor in Asian Languages & Cultures and Asian American Studies, wish to collaborate on an exploratory social impact partnership with a collective of library staff and volunteers working on creating and disseminating early childhood learning resources in Vietnamese language and culture, the Los Angeles Public Library, and the Asian Pacific American Librarian Association to identify areas of programmatic and research intervention to advance equity for the Vietnamese American community. With the academic/research background of the UCLA co-Principal Investigators, the expertise of the Viet Story Time collective, the facilities of the LAPL system, and the networks of APALA, we would like to explore ways to better serve the unique needs of the Vietnamese diaspora, particularly its youngest members. Our research and creative exploration could potentially yield a longer-term partnership, leading to resource guides, translated works, recorded story times, and toolkits for the Vietnamese diaspora community that other communities with parallel histories and needs may choose to replicate. This exploratory partnership presents a unique opportunity to impact how public libraries serve the early childhood development needs of diaspora communities.

“Good Medicine”: Native American Movement, Mindfulness, and Healthful Eating for Children on Tongva Lands/Los Angeles

Co-PIs:
Dr. Tria Blu Wakpa Assistant Professor, Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance
Dr. Sung-Jae Lee Professor-in-Residence, Departments of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine and Department of Epidemiology, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health
Dr. Alma Guerrero Assistant Clinical Professor, Department of Pediatrics, David Geffen School of Medicine
Dr. Wendelin Slusser Associate Vice Provost, Semel Healthy Campus Initiative Center; Clinical Professor, Department of Pediatrics, UCLA Schools of Medicine and Public Health

Community Partners:

• Individuals with Tongva and Chumash tribal affiliation and Fernandeno Tataviam Band of Mission Indians
• Title IV Office, American Indian/Indigenous Multicultural Education, Los Angeles Unified School District
• Indigenous Mindfulness Coalition, Brown University
• Hozho Total Wellness
• Native American Council of Tribes, South Dakota State Penitentiary
• Venice Family Clinic
• LA Food Policy Council

This proposal brings together UCLA Senate Faculty from the School of Arts and Architecture, Fielding School of Public Health, and the David Geffen School of Medicine who are interested in Native American movement, mindfulness, and healthful eating for K-12 students in Los Angeles. Los Angeles County has the largest Indigenous population in the U.S., yet structural inequities often marginalize Native people and practices. This proposed project aims to engage UCLA stakeholders and broader Los Angeles communities in a Winter 2025 gathering to foster collaboration. Participants will identify health challenges facing children in Los Angeles, brainstorm research and creative projects, and lay the groundwork for interdisciplinary endeavors involving UCLA faculty, students, local partners, and national experts. While targeting all children’s health, the proposed initiative prioritizes Native American youth and practices. The goal is to address disparities and enhance the well-being of young people through future projects and interventions.

Healing Within while Incarcerated: The role of Credible Messengers in Transformative Justice in LA County

Co-PIs:
Lauren Ng Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
Laura Abrams Professor and Chair, Department of Social Welfare, Luskin School of Public Affairs

Community Partner: Healing Dialogue and Action

In Los Angeles County (LAC) and elsewhere, Black and Latinx youth are much more likely to be incarcerated than White youth. Incarcerated youth experience disproportionately high amounts of trauma and cumulative disadvantage prior to, and during incarceration. Subsequently, they experience a multitude of poor social, emotional, and physical health outcomes after detention. To address these concerns, LAC has recently adopted a “rehabilitative, care-first model” of juvenile justice that is being implemented by Credible Messengers (i.e., leaders with the lived experience of incarceration). There has been limited academic collaboration investigating Credible Messenger programs. The proposed Social Impact Collaborative of Professors Lauren Ng (Psychology) and Laura Abrams (Social Welfare), and Healing Dialogue and Action, a Credible Messenger restorative justice organization working in LAC juvenile justice facilities, will develop a mutually-beneficial community-engaged research program to advance the science behind the Credible Messenger approach with the aim of promoting healing of justice involved youth.

Housing and Homelessness Justice Research Collaborative

Co-PIs:
Chris Herring Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology
Ananya Roy Professor, Departments of Urban Planning, Social Welfare, and Geography

Community Partners:

• LA Tenants Union
• Union de Vecinos

The grant would contribute to a recently established collaborative partnership between faculty and the Downtown local of the LA Tenants Union (LATU). The initial exploratory grant would specifically support our study of LA’s premier program in ending homelessness – Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH). Despite billions of dollars recently committed to this initiative, no research to date has examined its success or weaknesses in collaborative partnership with the impacted communities it’s designed to address – formerly homeless PSH residents. The project has already received an initial grant to begin research this Summer that will conclude the Summer of 2025. The exploratory grant would (a) facilitate a more robust community partnership starting this summer (b) expand participation with additional community partners beyond LATU over the coming year and (c) aid our collaborative in exploring what a multi-year tenant justice research agenda might look like beyond this initial study.

Humanizing Migration Collaborative: A Whole Family Approach to Healing and Thriving in Los Angeles

Co-PIs:
Inmaculada Ma García-Sánchez Professor, Department of Education; Associate Director, Center for the Study of International Migration
Jocelyn Meza  Assistant Professor In-Residence, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine
Jason Dorio Associate Director of Undergraduate Programs for Community Engagement, Department of Education, School of Education and Information Studies
Kristi Westphaln Assistant Professor, School of Nursing
Chris Jadallah Assistant Professor, Department of Education
Elisheva Gross Lecturer, Department of Psychology
Roger Waldinger Distinguished Professor, Department of Sociology; Director, UCLA Center for the Study of International Migration

Community Partners:

• Refugee Children Center
• Nest Global

The Humanizing Migration Collaborative seeks funding to identify, design, implement, and assess a comprehensive framework of services for recently arrived migrant families in Los Angeles. HMC proposes a multi-phase, interdisciplinary, mixed method approach that strives to build sustainable structures that allow migrant families to thrive in a new sociocultural, educational, and linguistic environment. The complex and interrelated processes of well-being, thriving, and educational success for migrant families demand a transdisciplinary approach involving experts in education, social sciences, and health sciences, which are necessary to provide sustained, culturally responsive, and trauma-informed services to the community. Grounded in a whole family approach, HMC centers horizontalizing relationship with community partners, educational and health services and programing, student community engagement, and community based action research to strengthen UCLA-community relationships; capacity building and student training; development of pilot study and related community engagement courses; identifying additional partners; and applying to additional funding.

Indigenous Migrant Memory Work: Reseeding the Next Generation of the Oaxacan Indigenous Migrant Civil Society

Co-PIs:
Maylei Blackwell Professor, Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies
Shannon Speed Professor, Departments of Gender Studies and Anthropology; Special Advisor on Native American and Indigenous Affairs; Director of the American Indian Studies Center

Community Partners:

• Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales
• Organización Regional Oaxaqueña
• Raza Unida
• Grupo Estudiantil Oaxaqueño de UCLA
• Comité Oaxacali
• Indigenous Oaxacan Cooperative

The rich history of the Oaxacan Indigenous community of Los Angeles dates back to the 1940s Bracero program, continuing to the large-scale settlement of the 1980s. However, this history has been largely ignored, as revealed in the recent LA City Council debacle. While the 250,000 Zapotecs and members of 16 other Oaxacan Indigenous groups have reshaped neighborhoods like Pico Union, Koreatown and Palms, historic Oaxacan organizations worry about preserving their histories. As such, this grant aims to build relationships between Oaxacan Indigenous youth leaders and community wisdom keepers from founding generations. Drawing from experiences in Indigenous archiving, we will engage these actors in creating an inventory of historical knowledge holders and materials to be preserved. Additionally, we will train six youth community historians to conduct oral histories, build community archives, and create an exhibition with their results in August 2025, contributing to this community’s historical preservation and racial equity.

Integrated Care Collaborative: Supporting People Experiencing Homelessness

Co-PIs:
Olivia Jung Assistant Professor, Department of Health Policy and Management
Lillian Gelberg Professor, Department of Family Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine
Beth Glenn Professor, Department of Health Policy and Management, Fielding School of Public Health
Michael Hsu Health Sciences Clinical Instructor, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine; Staff Psychiatrist, Homeless Patient Aligned Care Teams, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System

Community Partner: Serve LA

Homelessness in Los Angeles is at an all-time high. One impediment to addressing homelessness pertains to fragmentation of care in the region’s ecosystem supporting people experiencing homelessness (PEH)—due to distributed decision-making authority among many organizations and sectors and the challenges of caring for PEH.

We propose to build a Social Impact Collaborative for integrating care for PEH through community partnerships in East Hollywood, an area prioritized by LA County for addressing homelessness. We will conduct interviews of PEH and providers from the area, and afterwards, convene meetings with interview participants and community members/stakeholders to discuss interview findings and brainstorm systems-level interventions for integrating care for PEH.

This project will yield important outcomes such as curated perspectives of PEH and frontline providers about integrating care for PEH, relationship-building with the PEH-supporting ecosystem, and developing interventions that integrate care for PEH which lead to better access and health and housing outcomes.

Los Angeles Riverfront Community Research: Public Art, Local Lives

Co-PIs:
Ayasha Guerin Assistant Professor, Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance
Chris Jadallah Assistant Professor, Department of Education

Community Partner: Clockshop

Our multidisciplinary, community-engaged approach to research will bridge ecology, education, art and design practice, and civic engagement with a focus on the LA River. With greater investment in the River’s restoration and public parks comes increased gentrification and community displacement in the majority-Latinx neighborhoods of Northeast LA. In collaboration with Clockshop, a local arts organization working at the intersection of art, politics, and urban space, we will partner with young people and local communities in Northeast LA to investigate the relationships that comprise the LA River, with a focus on its multiple histories and possible futures. Such work will be rooted in the local knowledge, practices, and assets of the communities closest to the River. We expect such work to illuminate new visions for nature- culture relations in urban areas, as well as new models for both art praxis and education research that build directly from community wisdom.

NSF Interdisciplinary Center on Housing and Homelessness

Co-PIs:
Till von Wachter Professor, Department of Economics; Faculty Director of the California Policy Lab at UCLA, Director of the Federal Statistical Research Data Center
Michael Lens Professor, Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy; Associate Faculty Director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Elizabeth Bromley Professor in Residence of Psychiatry and Anthropology; Director of the DMH+UCLA Public Mental Health Partnership, David Geffen School of Medicine, Departments of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and Anthropology

Community Partners:

• Individual community members
• Los Angeles Homelessness Services Authority
• LA County Department of Health Services
• LA County Department of Mental Health
• LA County Department of Social Services

The housing and homelessness crises in Los Angeles are caused by a complex web of factors ranging from lack of housing production and zoning policies to structural racism in labor markets and justice systems. The consequences of homelessness for individuals in LA are profound, and these crises strain public services and systems. Research on housing and homelessness is often siloed, and fragmentation in funding and program delivery across organizations undermines effective solutions. This project focuses on developing an interdisciplinary Center that brings housing and homelessness research communities together with people with lived experience of homelessness and policymakers from Los Angeles government and nonprofit agencies. The project considers the social, health, economic, and policy dimensions of these intersecting crises, and emphasizes the structural reforms that are needed to reduce homelessness and improve the well-being of individuals. It also aims to inform the public debate by replacing misconceptions with data and research.

Performing Hispanic Culture with the Los Angeles Community

Co-PIs:
Barbarra Fuchs Professor, Departments of English and Spanish and Portuguese
Michelle Liu Carriger Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Theater, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television

Community Partners:

• Bresee Foundation
• La Librería

“Performing Hispanic Culture with the Los Angeles Community” brings together an interdisciplinary team of UCLA scholars from Spanish, History, and Theater to explore innovative and equity-focused approaches to bilingual arts education in Los Angeles K-12 schools. In partnership with community groups that serve Los Angeles’ large Latinx student population, the project will address the lack of arts-engaged learning opportunities in underprivileged schools, as well as the need for creative educational programs that are not solely focused on Anglophone narratives and experiences. The project will gather together partners from the arts and education spheres to create an incubator space for new ideas and approaches in the classroom that activate the possibilities of performance and language for greater and more equitable learning in the Los Angeles community.

Skin-Deep Resilience: Addressing Multimorbidity among Black Americans through a Community-Driven Social Impact Health Equity Collaborative

Co-PIs:
Courtney S. Thomas Tobin Associate Professor, Department of Community Health Sciences; Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, Fielding School of Public Health
Keith Norris Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research

Community Partner: South Central Prevention Coalition

Our interdisciplinary team seeks an exploratory grant to establish a health equity social impact collaborative addressing multimorbidity among Black Los Angeles residents. Partnering with the South Central Prevention Coalition, we aim to identify factors influencing multimorbidity trajectories among Black individuals, thereby integrating public health research with community-engaged innovations. Our long-term goal is to develop effective, culturally-relevant solutions to enhance health and quality of life among Black Americans. To build our health equity social impact collaborative, we will (1) collectively identify a diverse team of healthcare providers, organizational leaders, community members, and stakeholders as members for a health equity community advisory board; (2) host a convening meeting between our collaborative team of researchers, community partner, and community advisory board to identify multi-pronged approaches to address multimorbidity among Black Los Angeles residents; and (3) co-create an aligned vision and research plan with all partners to address multimorbidity among Black Los Angeles residents.

Tówla (Root): Shifting Consciousness in Native Arts Practice

Co-PIs:
Nancy Marie Mithlo Professor, Departments of Gender Studies and American Indian Studies
Alex Ungprateeb Flynn Assistant Professor, Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance

Community Partners:

• LA County Museum of Arts
• Great Oak Press, Pechanga Band of Indians

Tówla is a unique collaboration between the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and UCLA, in partnership with ‘Atciaxum Luiseño writers and poets associated with Great Oak Press, Pechanga Band of Indians. LACMA has sought our guidance on how Indigenous plant gardens can address longstanding equity issues: the integration of Indigenous expressive arts and knowledge with curatorial programming and educational outreach. We propose two curated convenings held in the fall and spring of academic year 2024/2025, with one convening addressing Indigenous ecological issues occurring at the UCLA Mathias Botanical Garden (fall 2024) and the other focusing on Indigenous arts and curatorial practices (spring 2025) occurring at LACMA. A formal plan for establishing a LACMA/UCLA artist residency centering on the Indigenous knowledge will be finalized for future submission with the input of project interlocutors. The expressive power of poetry and creative writing will be integrated into program planning.

UCLA Skid Row Partnership: Engaging Providers and Lived Experts

Co-PIs:
Randall Kuhn Professor, Department of Community Health Sciences, Fielding School of Public Health
Lillian Gelberg Professor, Department of Family Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine

Community Partners:

• LA Homeless Services Authority
• LA County Homelessness Initiative
• LA County Department of Public Health
• LA Care
• Project RESPECT

We request funding to engage community members in UCLA’s ongoing research on homelessness in Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA). Through ongoing research, SRP has set a goal of co-designing and developing an integrated intervention package focused on three essential needs for addressing homelessness: 1) housing, 2) health care, 3) basic income. To fulfill this broader vision, we first submit this exploratory grant proposal focused on engaging with existing provider networks and establishing a permanent lived expertise group with subcommittees focused on design, implementation, evaluation and translation. Our project team includes faculty from Fielding School of Public Health (FSPH), David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM), Division of Social Sciences and USC Dworak-Peck School of Social Work (USC-DPSSW) and a network of providers anchored by the Homelessness Policy Research Institute. All requested funding would go to compensate lived experts or to hold engagement events, with all other expenses covered by existing grants.

Unframed: a Film Writing Workshop featuring Black Women Film Critics

Co-PIs:
Ellen Scott Associate Professor, Department of Theater, Film, and Television,
Caroline Streeter Associate Professor, Departments of English and African American Studies

Community Partner: Academy Museum of Motion Pictures

In collaboration with the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, we propose an intergenerational learning/teaching workshop where 2-4 Black women film critics whose writing careers began in the 1970s-1980s teach the art of media criticism and cultural critique to high school and college-age writers, targeting specifically aspiring Black women media/film review writers. We note that the writing workshop is a well- documented and successful approach to teaching writing.

Where Is Our Land: Dispossession and Repair in Black California

Co-PIs:
Kaily Heitz Assistant Professor, Department of Geography
K-Sue Park Professor, School of Law

Community Partner: Where Is My Land

Los Angeles once boasted the highest rate of Black homeownership in the country. Today, as calls for reparations are being initiated by the state, Black dispossession has only grown in LA county, following a centuries’ long pattern of theft, devaluation and exploitation of Black people and places. We are proposing a partnership with Kavon Ward’s organization, Where is My Land, to investigate families’ claims to property that has been wrongfully taken. Through legal study and geographic representation, we aim to contribute to a local and national database that can mobilize political action for Black reparative justice that moves beyond the racist strictures inherent to the constructions of property. In so doing, we wish to restore dispossessed families with something greater than the value of stolen land: a material means of offering relational repair between Black, Indigenous, and ecological kin.