In this UHI Winter Methods Workshop, titled “Changing the Narrative: Creative Spatial Interventions at Elephant Hill,” students learned the political, cultural, ecological, and social dynamics present in the local landscape through direct engagement with community organizers. Students gathered and engaged spatial ethnographic research in the form of interviews, photos, video, sound, text, and experiential approaches. Students also explored the ways in which spatial analysis and ethnographic research methodologies can creatively be activated alongside community organizing efforts. Students executed collaborative projects that engaged the site through graphic, performative, interventionist, sonic, social, and video-based strategies.
Northeast Los Angeles is a fragmented geography of largely undeveloped hills surrounded by working-class communities. A patchwork of community groups and environmental organizations have come together to protect vital green spaces from luxury home developments and unsanctioned off-roading that threaten the hillside’s native ecology.
