The We in Me: Beyond House Resilience, 2024

Recap Video - linked above

March 9, 2024

Beyond House Resilience, a celebration of foster youth voices in the arts.

Beyond House Resilience is a creative platform by MoFundamentals in partnership with homeLA that showcases perspectives on houselessness and resilience through art from and by current and former foster youth artists, adoptees, and advocates. The festival-style event will include: a vogue dance class, dance performance, short film screenings, and a rap performance along-side booths by food and coffee vendors, entrepreneurs, support organizations, plus free sportswear giveaways for attending foster youth.

EVENT SCHEDULE

Beyond House Resilience will open with a blessing by Lupita & Luz Rodriguez from Kalpulli Teocalli Ollin, who will ground the festival in community and intention and offer individual blessings throughout the evening. From here, event attendees can participate in a voguing dance class taught by former foster youth dancer, Daniel Bisuano and visit community booths before event programming begins.

Arts programming will begin at 6pm with a dance performance choreographed by Gabriel Gutierrez of MoFundamentals and performed by Gabriel and two foster youth dancers: Steviey Adore and Billy Jones.  This site-specific performance is set in dialogue with an unfinished affordable housing unit on site at The Box by artist Corazón del Sol and the dancer’s life experience. Following this presentation, two film shorts will be screened and presented by students working with Kids In The Spotlight, a non-profit that helps foster youth heal and grow from trauma through the power of storytelling and filmmaking. Films include “Redemption,” directed by Sade Oyinade and Deshawn Plair and “Imperfect Star,” directed by Jazmin Bryant. The evening will close with an energetic musical performance by the talented Jacob Jackson, rap artist and foster youth advocate for the Youth Justice Coalition and LA County Youth Commission.

Opportunities to support foster youth artists and entrepreneurs are available throughout the event, including shopping vendor booths from TheElevenShop Candles by former foster youth Diamond Evans whose brand promotes mental health awareness and Foster Youth Flea, a community market that provides youth impacted by the foster care system opportunities to generate income, develop and tune their entrepreneurial skill sets, and network with the larger foster youth and advocacy community. Journey House’s Visual and Performing Arts program will present a photo exhibition with work from their foster youth photo crew that explores music as a form of healing. Project Q will also be on hand to provide guests information about their work as a non-profit dedicated to providing essential services specifically tailored to support ex-foster youth and Black LGBTQ individuals who are experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity. Free YoungLA athleisure wear giveaways will be provided by Brown Bag Lady, a non-profit rooted in using kindness, food, and essentials as a way to improve the lives of others throughout Los Angeles.

This event is a part of The We in Me, homeLA’s public outreach program that considers homelessness through the lens of empathy, civic engagement, and art - offering a variety of opportunities for support, public engagement, learning, awareness, and action around homelessness.  The We in Me furthers homeLA’s mission to promote intersectionality and cultivate inclusivity through the embodied exchange of ideas around varied contextual imaginings of “home.”   

The We in Me: Beyond House Resilience is created by MoFundamentals in partnership with homeLA and hosted by The Box gallery.

Beyond House Resilience centers the talents, creativity, and ingenuity of those impacted by the foster care system and provides foster youth with mentorship, creative professional art opportunities and pathways, and support through a foster-youth centered approach to healing through the arts.

This activity is supported in part by an Impact Grant by the California Arts Council, a state agency. Learn more at www.arts.ca.gov.  homeLA is fiscally sponsored by Fulcrum Arts.