Public Art
The Story Circle: Jules Rochielle – along with her Social Design Collective team and Santa Ana residents – collaborated to bring to life The Story Circle, a permanent public art project in a new affordable housing development. The goal of the project was to create a public, yet intimate, story circle seating area where the seeds of local knowledge can be planted as the storyteller sits in the large chair while children from the neighborhood can gather, listen and learn. The Story Circle integrates community-driven public practice with the built landscape to establish this public space's function as a center point of community convergence.
The Community Component
The Story Circle is part of the Triada Court component of the new Station District public housing developed by Related California, Griffin Realty Corp., and Affordable Housing Access in cooperation with the City of Santa Ana. The residential development will provide high quality affordable housing for low-income large families under the city’s new Transit Zoning Code, which promotes transit-oriented development in the area surrounding the Santa Ana Regional Transportation Center. The Story Circle is located at street level and viewable/accessible to the neighborhood and nearby Garfield Elementary School. As a part of the commission, Christina Sanchez, artist, educator and activist was hired to create an arts curriculum to benefit Garfield Elementary School, which restored access to arts education for its 700 students.
Mapping Practice and Pedagogy
3 years ago, Nulawlab began as a start-up organization embedded within a law school. I was hired because of my creative and social justice background. Within three years we gained international recognition and several national awards. Use design methodologies to identify and cultivate new approaches to transform legal education, the legal profession, and the delivery of legal services. Generated cross-sector partnerships and designing interdisciplinary projects. I worked with a team of designers/coders to envision, develop, design, test and launch NULAWMaps, a new GIS mapping platform blending data with storytelling. Our Webby-nominated NuLawMaps platform was recently used by the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law to map informal settlement evictions in Sweden, and by the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health to map ten years of workplace deaths.
Residency Project
During Jules Rochielle’s Grand Central Art Center (GCAC) residency, she invited a group of other artists (Carmen Montoya, Christina Sanchez, Owen Driggs and Silvia Mantilla Ortiz) to share her residency in order to create a “think tank” for collaborative artistic research. The group used models of community-based research, public outreach, interviews, community resource mapping and community building to investigate the topics of work, labor, food and immigration. The relationships that were developed during her GCAC residency with the Santa Ana May Day Coalition, Santa Ana Public Library, El Centro, United Santa Ana Artists, Cal-State Fullerton students, The Grain Project and SACReD (Santa Ana Collaborative for Responsible Development) led to the community nominating and commissioning the Social Design Collective for a permanent public art-work, The StoryCircle. In addition, she set up an ongoing partnership between The Santa Ana Public Library and GCAC to train teens from the Townsend/Raitt neighborhood to collect, archive, and share the underreported stories of survival from one of Santa Ana's most at-risk communities(
grandcentralartcenter.wordpress.com/tag/the-raitt-st- chronicles-a-survivors-oral-history/).
Performance
Each answer was captured on postcards to create the People’s Radio Café archive. Then Jules Rochielle compiled a sound track of and for the neighborhood as part of an exhibition Performing Public Space Tijuana at Casa del Tunel for their rooftop café. In addition, the People’s Radio Café was broadcast on TJ XHUAN/Fusion Radio 102.5 FM, a Mexican radio station that broadcasts in both San Diego and Tijuana, sharing the People’s Radio Café across the border.
Performance
To celebrate the Day of Love and Friendship, Jules Rochielle, Marcus Benigno, Fredrick Portillo and Andy Manoushagian wheeled the PCP kit through Tijuana on February 13 and 14, 2010, asking people: “What is your favorite song, and why?” PCP engaged over 200 residents on their walk through Tijuana – mediating conversation between residents, vendors, pedestrians, cab drivers, and border guards.
Public Conversations
Jules Rochielle created Survival Strategies, as part of Teach-In, organized by Ed Giardina and Michael Hanson, a series of artist projects and relational activities, which manipulate methodologies from traditional education to create a temporary school within a school. Her 5-week workshop series that engaged Cypress College art students in the exploration of student debt load, navigating the financial aid system as well as balancing life, study and work (one student participant had 3 jobs in addition to being in school). This project responded to the realities facing these community college students that come from working class, immigrant communities and for many they are the first in their family to go to college.
Engaged Performance
Created and raised money for three major inter-disciplinary creative projects that took place between 1999 and 2005. See more here: http://www.miscellaneousproductions.ca/about/
Image is slide from What you Carry...."Dealing with emigration/immigration, violence, and xenophobia, aging and inter-generational relationships, memory and belonging, What You Carry With You… was created and developed by a team of professional artists and technicians who collaborated with non-professional youth 14 -20 years old and elders to age 77 from Richmond, BC. Produced by Artistic Director Elaine Carol and Jules Rochielle, Miscellaneous Productions 2003, Vancouver, BC" -
While with Miscellaneous as founder and producer:
1.Sited in Promising Practices for Addressing Youth Involvement in Gangs Research Report prepared by Mark Totten, PH.D April 2008 . In support of the Strategy, Preventing Youth Gang Violence in BC: A Comprehensive and Coordinated Provincial Action Plan Appendix B: Promising Canadian Gang Prevention and Intervention Initiatives (revised and updated list based upon as a Primary Prevention Programs 2003 – 2006 B.C. primary prevention initiatives (educational videos, primary and secondary classroom education, parent information, community collaboration)
2.The Reena Project funded by: Vancouver Foundation, National Crime Prevention Centre – Community Mobilization Program, British Columbia Multiculturalism & Immigration Anti-Racism Program, B.C. Ministry of the Attorney General – Community Programs Division, Coast Capital Savings, VanCity – Vancouver City Savings Credit Union, Vancouver Sun Children’s Fund, Cosmo Plaza/RM Development Corporation, B.C. Arts Council, The Richmond Foundation, John Fluevog Shoes,Creo Products Inc., Robson Street TELUS Store,
3.What you Carry With You funded by: The Government of Canada’s National Crime Prevention Strategy, BC Ministry of Community, Aboriginal & Women’s’ Services – BC Anti-Racism Program, Vancouver Foundation, Vancouver City Savings Credit Union – VanCity Community Partnership Program, Canada Council for the Arts – Inter-Arts – Artists & Community Collaboration Fund, Canada Council for the Arts - Theatre – Artists & Community Collaboration Fund, Canadian Heritage – Multiculturalism, BC Arts Council, BC Gaming Commission – Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, Canadian Race Relations Foundation, Richmond Community Foundation, The Leon and Thea Koerner Foundation, Chris Spencer Foundation, Creo Inc., InfoWest Consulting Ltd.
4.E-race funded by the Government of Canada through its National Crime Prevention Strategy, Canada Council for the Arts – Inter-Arts, Canadian Heritage – Multiculturalism Program, Vancouver Foundation, Coast Capital Savings Foundation, BC Solicitor General and Public Safety – Safe Streets Safe Schools Fund, BC Anti-racism & Multiculturalism Program, BC Gaming, BC Arts Council, Dr. George Tien INC., Autoplan, Richmond Community Foundation, The Leon and Thea Koerner Foundation.
Community Organizing
Image of Jules Rochielle, Jorge from LaFamila and Imshatal from Intersections. This image represents the Initial convening that pulled together LGBTIA leaders and allies community leaders from Boston, New York, Arizona, Florida, Texas and California.
Writing
Issue 46 — Food for Thought, Taking it to the Streets Article:Published April 15, 2012: Food For Thought – Food gets people’s attention. That’s one reason public artists are using it effectively as an artistic medium. Food offers multisensory experiences for audiences, encouraging curiosity, questions, and delight. It also provides an intimate way for artists to learn about and address the needs of communities and sites. In the following pages you’ll read about the challenges artists face when they work with food, the various ways they’re using food to address social, political, and environmental issues, and ways audiences naturally come together around food-based projects to eat, experience, and think.With world population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, food is a major global issue. We’re faced with the failures of industrialized agriculture and declining health due to poor nutrition. At the same time, we’re seeing the flowering of farm-to-table initiatives and millions of Americans returning to backyard vegetable gardening.In this issue of Public Art Review, we will explore how contemporary artists are creating innovative ways to invite the public to explore such food issues and how they affect politics, place, community, creativity, and sustainability. Food also provides an intimate way for artists to learn about and address the needs of communities and sites. “Food for Thought” presents the challenges artists face when they work with food, the various ways they’re using food to address social, political, and environmental issues, and ways audiences naturally come together around food-based projects to eat, experience, and think.“Food for Thought” includes a new Shop Talk department, which looks at the latest trends in public policy, funding, and technology alongside conference reports, recent awards, and more. We’ve revamped our Books section to give you the latest on what others are publishing in the field, and Recent Projects (both U.S. and International) rounds out the issue.
Group Work
Plessy Day 2008 served as a tangible first step in the development of a park honoring Homer A. Plessy in New Orleans, LA. The goal was to elevate awareness of the location at the intersection of Press and Royal Streets, where Plessy was arrested in 1892 for refusing to move to a segregated rail car and to build understanding of the importance of the site both to New Orleans as well as to the nation. Jules Rochielle was a lead member of the team that worked with Suzanne Lacy, in collaboration with Transforma Projects and the Crescent City Peace Alliance, to understand the historic and socio-political contexts of the Plessy site and to strategically activate this public space to reveal its potential through art-based workshops focusing on historic and contemporary issues of civil rights in New Orleans and the events of Plessy Day on June 8, 2008, which featured public chalkboards exploring the following questions: Who was Homer Plessy? What are today’s civil rights challenges? What is separate but not equal today? What is my role as a citizen? What inspires you to learn?