SANTA MONICA, Calif., September 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) – Cardboard City – a free public art gallery and activity center produced by Rediscover the center and artists from all over Los Angeles – concluded its two-month run on August 29 with a staggering attendance and positive community reviews. The activation hosted a groundbreaking 16,000 visitors: 28% of whom were low or very low income families and 60% BIPOC families to reach parts of the community historically underserved by arts and educational resources.
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The reDiscover Center opened on July 8, 2021, transforming a 10,000 square foot retail opening on Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade into an uplifting space for art, sustainability, and community. The city’s Cardboard Camp taught kids how to use craft tools and build projects large and small out of cardboard and expansion materials such as skewers, Mylar, and Makedo SCRUs. Mechanical sculptures, marine animals, adult-sized robes, buildings and more were donated to the art exhibition by Los Angeles-based artists such as Ann Weber, Sherri Madison, Lynn Christopher, Aaron Kramer, Mimi Haddon and Joshua Abarbanel. Haddon created costume elements from cardboard, colorful and geometrically complex structures to wear. Together with the choreographer Cody Potter, the two took over the basement of the Cardboard City facility and created a dance performance. During the recitals, angular cardboard shapes seemed to shimmer, commenting on the human shape, which was similarly altered by familiar and confusing images.
Notes Executive Director of the reDiscover Center, Jonathan Markowitz Bijur, “Cardboard City celebrated paperboard: its creative potential, its sustainability and its accessibility for children and adults. At Cardboard City, the art was made of cardboard, the furniture was made of cardboard, the projects the children made and took home were made of cardboard. Created in collaboration with the LA Arts community, amazing sculptures and artists-in-residence inspired projects each week that thousands of children took home or contributed to one of our growing installations. “
Founded in 2003, the reDiscover Center is the result of a working group of 25 educational agencies and individuals in Santa Monica and Venice. The aim of this group was to develop an alternative to the uninspiring art materials that were then used in local preschool and elementary school classes, and to address the limited environmental awareness of these schools. The reDiscover Center is now a full-service organization for sustainable art and offers school services, camps, classes, the distribution of “creative reusable materials” and public engagements that have reached over 200,000 Angelenos.
About reDiscover Center
Our mission is to encourage children’s creativity through practical handicrafts with sustainable materials.
Our vision is for all people to have an opportunity to purchase and donate reusable materials and develop skills to use them in a variety of ways. As reDiscover addresses this need, we are moving towards a culture where all waste materials are recognized for their educational and creative value.
We achieve our mission and vision through strategic initiatives: community engagement through our reuse warehouse, programs focused on education and creative expression, and shaping the next generation by working with children in our center, schools, and community.
For more information contact:
Amanda drum
[email protected]
Press Kitchen (310) 394-3900
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