Social Practice

Ramirez Meat Market Makeover. Image Courtesy Public Matters.

For the fourth in my series of interviews with socially-engaged contemporary artists, organizers, writers and thinkers as part of the SOCiAL: Art + People events, I sat down with artists Mike Blockstein and Reanne Estrada, co-founders and collaborators in the artist-run interdisciplinary organization called Public Matters. Public Matters is a multivalent and dynamically shifting arts organization dedicated to affecting powerful change (most recently regarding food injustice in impoverished communities) over long periods of time through youth media empowerment, collective creativity, leadership development, and physical and behavioral change. They are engaged in enormous partnerships with UCLA, USC, and various community organizations as part of a five-year NIH grant to combat cardiovascular health problems in East Los Angeles, and have effectively integrated arts and creativity into combating an enormous public health crisis in a way that very few arts organizations have. I have previously analyzed the organizational structure of Public Matters, but in this interview the artists have a chance to speak more in depth about their partnerships, their teenaged collaborators, and the role of arts in social justice.

Sue Bell Yank: We can start by talking about this particular event, coming up on October 20th at 10am in East LA, the Market Makeover Smackdown!

Reanne Estrada: SMACKDOWN! I like to say SMACKDOWN as if it were in capital letters.
One of the things we learned with our work with Market Makeovers is that the work really begins after the stores are physically transformed because then you have to bring in the process of making sure people come to the stores and buy the fresh produce, the healthier items, so the store owners will keep participating and the solution becomes a sustainable one for the community. So that’s, as you know, a big undertaking because you have to promote the stores, promote the inventory, but you also have to promote behavior change. So people who are used to a cheap processed food diet that’s very convenient, are suddenly fiending for kale, or going crazy for that winter squash. So there’s a gap that we have to overcome. That’s where the “Smackdown” came in, because this fall we’re working with students from the School of Communication, New Media and Technology (CNMT) at Roosevelt High School, so they’re working on the store transformations and the promotion of the project. We thought the “Smackdown” would be a good way to get their competitive juices flowing, and also to bring in fresh blood and new attention to the stores.

Read the rest of the interview here.