Los Angeles Poverty Department

LAPD is the first performance group in the nation comprised primarily of homeless and formerly homeless people and the first arts program of any kind for homeless people in Los Angeles. LAPD was founded in 1985 by director-performer-activist John Malpede who taught at UCLA, The Amsterdam School for Advanced Research in Theater and Dance and curates the Skid Row History Museum and Archive, an exhibition and performance space.

  

Skid Row Los Angeles is the poorest area in the city, with the concentration of thousands of homeless people of any neighborhood in the US. It is a 55-block downtown neighborhood that has a long history that goes back to the late 19^th century and is comprised of marginalized people who live in flop-house hotels or on the street and includes children, elderly, women, families, veterans, a large and active drug recovery community, those with mental and physical disabilities, and people recovering from incarceration. But there are those who want to rise out of the hopelessness of Skid Row.

Within this environment Los Angeles Poverty Department has brought a means to assist people to rise above the conditions presented to them and express, communicate solutions to ending homelessness. “LAPD, as the first arts organization on Skid Row, is active in a conversation and a movement with advocates, residents and social service professionals that changed the paradigm by putting forward the idea that Skid Row could be improved, by embracing and nourishing the powers of the people who live there.” Skid Row residents are at the heart of LAPD by participating in the arts and also theater performance that informs the general public about the issues of homelessness, gentrification and the criminalization of poverty.

The Back 9, designed by Rosten Woo, is a current inter-active performance on how deals are made on the golf course, issues of the rich and politically influential, re-zoning of neighborhoods and public policy. Participants play a round of mini-golf while discussing alternatives to housing development within the Skid Row community and helps to organize civic engagement, giving the residents a political voice. The continued redevelopment of downtown Los Angeles, the encroachment of high-rise housing was not factored into improving the conditions of Skid Row. Los Angeles Poverty Department advocates change, to work within the political system and encourage neighborhood agencies to include the arts into their programs.

  

The Back 9