Arts and Education
History Program with Dr. Alison Rose Jefferson
Dr. Jefferson provided an education tutorial program to our youth on the history of Bruce’s Beach, explaining the story of Willa and Charles Bruce purchasing the land in 1912 and eventually getting driven off by the City of Manhattan Beach via eminent domain proceedings in the late 1920s, leading up to where the current lifeguard station exists today.
Dr. Jefferson is a third generation Californian. Presently, her research and professional interests revolve around the intersection of historical memory, American history, the history of the African American experience in Southern California during the twentieth century great migration and Jim Crow era, heritage conservation, spatial justice and cultural tourism.
Along with other work activities utilizing her knowledge and skills expertise, she has written a book, Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era (University of Nebraska Press, 2020). This study examines how African Americans pioneered leisure in American’s “frontier of leisure” through their attempts to create communities and business projects, in conjunction with the growing African American population of Southern California during the nation’s Jim Crow era. The places Jefferson’s examines illustrate a range of recreation and relaxation production purposes and societal encounters at beach and inland locations.
Dr. Jefferson is a fellow at the Getty Conservation Institute and a guest curator of Radical Leisure, an exhibition that will open at the California African American Museum in December 2022. You can visit her website here, or view her OP-Ed below.
Art Program with For Freedoms
At Culture Club South Bay, with For Freedoms, we offered opportunities for our youth to engage with the arts during our fall 2021 program. Our youth had the opportunity to take an art lesson with Da’Shaunae Marisa and McKayla Chandler and create unique collages with Polaroid film in the fall of 2021 and in the spring of 2022.
We were fortunate to work with For Freedoms, who have launched a campaign called Here Her Here that celebrates Black femme creativity in collaboration with Converse, with a goal to propel more Black femme artists into spotlights, onto stages, and at the heads of tables.
Kids were partnered up into groups of 3 to 4 where they worked together in creating portraits of each other via Polaroid, then working on their own individual collages. This was a great team-building activity amongst the youth.
We look forward to offering more artistic experiences to our youth this fall.
Dates: 9/10, 9/17, 9/24