2007 Campus-Community Partnerships
Who's Hungry?
| Awardee: | Dan Froot, Associate Professor World Arts and Cultures |
| Partner: | Hunger Action Los Angeles |
Abstract:
LA County is home to nearly 1,000,000 food-insecure adults. Who’s Hungry? tests the notion that art can catalyze local food insecurity awareness within a small urban community.
World Arts and Cultures Associate Professor Froot will conduct fifteen hour-long interviews with each of four clients of Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition’s nightly food line. Froot and collaborators (including the interviewees) will adapt each of these oral histories into its own short “toy theater” play, which they will perform on miniature tabletop stages.
Products include:
- The first-ever set of oral histories collected from a food-insecure population (to be donated to UCLA’s Center for Oral History Research).
- A new World Arts and Cultures undergraduate course that parallels the project, teaching skills of oral histroy, and puppetry, and involves students in the project.
- Public readings of oral history excerpts in November of 2007 in West Hollywood.
- Three perfomances (with discussions afterward) in June of 2007 in West Hollywood.
- Data about efficacy of project in raising awareness of food-insecurity, culled from audience surveys prior to performances and six months hence.
These products will provide feedback on the project’s model, informing subsequent iterations of the project in other communities.
