Last year I had the fortune of attending the L Creativo Festival, a Latin alternative music and arts festival that took place at the S. Mark Taper Foundation amphitheater in Cold Water Canyon, where local musicians shared the stage with artist from Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Mexico and other countries and I am happy to report that the organizers are already working on a new edition of the festival for this year.
As with any event, besides the hard work of the organizers, volunteers, musicians and artists, it also takes money to put an event of this magnitude together and for that reason, the creators of the L Creativo, Andrés Ospina (Colombia) y Danilo Arroyo (Ecuador) have been working on a new strategy to have an even better festival for the second edition.
In a conversation with Andrés, he expressed how working on the first edition of the L Creativo was such a learning experience and stated that even though the first festival was successful in terms of the artistic intentions, there were many things that could have been done better and it is for that reason that he and Danilo sat down to work out the kinks and submitted their project for consideration for a grant from the LA2050 Grant Challenge and they were selected to be one of the participants.
The LA2050 Grant Challenge is a project of the Goldhirsch Foundation and promoted by Good.
The project was approved and selected to participate in the LA2050 Grant Challenge under a category that is looking to make Los Angeles the best city to create. There are two grants of $100,000 that will be given out to the best projects. One grant will be decided by the judges and the second one will be decided by popular vote. The voting began this past Tuesday and will continue through September 16th.
With real connections in the alternative and independent music scene of Los Angeles and Latin American countries, L Creativo is looking to fill an important void in the city of Los Angeles, which is one of the most important cities around the world.
L Creativo is based on the vision of helping new generations of Latinos to connect with their culture through art, music and creativity and to promote a cultural exchange between artists from Los Angeles and those living in Latin American countries.
The L Creativo Festival will take place at Highways Performance Center in Santa Monica October 17 & 18. The Festival will include a photography exhibit, screening of Latin American independent films, seminars in music composition and, of course, some of the best independent Latin Music.
Voting is already underway, it doesn’t cost any money, and all you have to do is register, which you can do with your Facebook sign on. Once you go to www.la2050.org/, click on “Vote Now” at the bottom of the page, it will then direct you to 5 different voting categories, click on “Create” and then look for L Creativo and cast your vote.
