CAHUENGA GREEN STAGE FESTIVAL

GreenStageAlliance@gmail.com Narrative Proposal

History of Mother Earth Day festival

Stage Of The Arts, Inc. is a producing and presenting multidisciplinary arts organization sponsoring the celebration of Mother Earth Day in District 13^th since 1995.

EcoMaya Festivals was founded in 1995, with its first Mother Earth Day celebration at The Greater Los Angeles Photography Center. In its second year it moved its celebration to the beautiful Barnsdall Art Park in East Hollywood, where it remained for four years. The Festival returned to Barnsdall Park in 2004.

Recognizing that the crowds and performances were becoming larger year after year, the organizers decided it was time to seek a larger venue. The Mother Earth Day Celebration had a new home for the new millennium at the Los Angeles City College, where it remains another four years. Furthermore, the Los Angeles City College is located in the area of East Hollywood/Rampart where 75% of the festival’s attendees reside.

In 2005, the host of the Festival was ECO Village at Bimini Place, with a colorful street festival supported for sponsors and neighbors.

The organizing committee of the XII ECO Maya Festival decided to celebrate the two days 2006 event on grounds of The Cornfields. We were inspired by the powerful conceptual art work of Not a Cornfield created by artist Lauren Bon to present a corn harvest in front of LA downtown skyline.

It became the first festival to be presented at the LA State Historic Park, an opportunity to highlight the entire LA River re-development plan and the California preservation of urban space for human development.

The Green Stage Alliance developed a Zero Waste educational program integrating arts and humanities as social marketing tools to promote the principles of the Zero Waste International Alliance. The same year Stage Of The arts, Inc. was also the artistic green-producer of the Echo Park Cuban Music festival, the Grand Opening of LA State Historic Park and the National Latino Congress music rally at the same park.

The Festivals have been realized because of the help and support of the Los Angeles City Council, the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, the Los Angeles State Parks and other sponsors and volunteers who join us in the celebration each year, as well as the perseverance and personal commitment of the Eco Maya founding director Julio Santizo Sr.

The Green Stage Festival expanded the Eco Maya experience celebrating aboriginal cultures and returned to The Cornfields in 2007 Earth Day featuring the all-night “Satya Yuga” multimedia show from 7 PM on Saturday to 7 AM on Sunday. Artists and ecologies from all around California join the cast to create a unique environmental interactive installation.

• The 2008-2009 theme of our event is “Cahuenga”.

• Cahug-Na was the territory of the Tongva inhabitants of East Hollywood.

• The Spaniards named the territory “Rancho Cahuenga”

• The Cahuenga Pass extended from Santa Monica Mountains to Rancho Hollywood.

• Tongva means “Sons of Mother Earth” (from the indigenous Tongva language).

Stage of the Arts has celebrated Earth Day festivals during the last 13 years.

• International Earth Day is April 22.

Overall Goals and Purpose

The purpose of our Mother Earth Day celebration is connecting Environment, Culture and Heritage for the enjoyment of the general public of Los Angeles.

Our goal is using Arts and Humanities as environmental working tools in society. After twenty five years of art services in Los Angeles, Stage Of the Arts, Inc. is implementing Blue Ocean Strategies creating uncontested market space and making competition irrelevant.

The streets of East Hollywood are our venue

The first inhabitants of East Hollywood were the aboriginal people of Cahug-Na, who lived in the area spanning from modern-day Hollywood to Atwater Village. The Spanish settlers named them and their area "Cahuenga."

From Sunset Junction to the Ocean, Santa Monica Boulevard is one of the most colorful American parades of diversity. We are closing Santa Monica Boulevard between Virgil Avenue and Madison Street to present a non-traditional ecological celebration of Life and Land.

The outdoor celebrations also include but are not limited to the one block fenced yard of the Bureau of Street Lighting (4550 Santa Monica Blvd.) in the South sidewalk and the front stairways of the Cahuenga Public Library (4591 Santa Monica Blvd.) in the North sidewalk.

The Cahuenga Branch of the LA Public Library was build in 1916 with money donated by steel magnate Andrew Carnegie on Santa Monica Boulevard.

In addition to the street closing there will be several destinations for a “fringe festival” including mapping of historic sites and cultural destinations like the Vermonica Exhibit created by artist Sheila Klein at the mall parking lot in the intersection of Vermont and Santa Monica boulevards, a temporary installation of vintage streetlights so popular that it's still in place 15 years later. Some of the lamps date from 1925, when the city's Bureau of Street Lighting was created. Together, the collection represents a cross-section of the 500 or so designs found among Los Angeles' quarter-million streetlights.

Looking north at the intersection of Western and Fernwood avenues (just south of Sunset Boulevard), The William Fox Studios operated out of East Hollywood from 1917-1924 before moving west to what is now Century City. Fox's studios merged with Darryl F. Zanuck's 20th Century Pictures to become the 20th Century Fox Corporation. Today, the old Fox studio lot is now a Food 4 Less supermarket and the Color By DeLuxe post-production studios.

The corporate headquarters of Stage of the Arts, Inc. are located on Santa Monica Blvd., just in the perimeter of the proposed street closing and study subject area of Cahuenga by the borderline of East Hollywood at Sunset Junction.

Jorge Luis Rodriguez, producing director of Stage of the arts, Inc. during the last 25 years, is the Community Service representative of the new Governing Board of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council (number 89).

Summary of administrative and professional qualifications:

Organization and Structure

Stage Of The Arts, Inc. is a grassroots arts organization, a non for profit 501 (c) (3) California Educational corporation founded June 15, 1982 in the East Hollywood-Echo Park neighborhood ( LA District Councils 1^st and 13^th).

Arts education and cultural activities are our working tools to promote social change and community gathering in the City of Los Angeles. The Stage of the Arts’ Board of Directors has empowered its constituency to operate a variety of arts and humanities programs and events during the last two decades:

E.g.: Lead organization/fiscal receiver for the Green Stage Alliance sponsoring ecological visionaries to demonstrate waste management control and self-sustained Arts and Humanities for community development in North California. Rock-A-Mole programs sponsoring musicians working for universal healthcare and living wages (1994-present). Power of Music workshop for self-production of public events (1994-present). UNITY Arts Center operating LA Photography Center in partnership with the LA Cultural Affairs Department (sic) from 1994 to 1998) and “Teatro Studio Jorge Negrete” (1985-89) managing a physical locale for artistic and community development.

Each program has been operated by an organizing committee or an operating board.

Our Board of Directors, made out of writers, artists and community activists, fosters leadership development within our organization by applying “consensus decision making” among each level of participation.

Since 1995 the actual programs of Stage Of The Arts are grouped into the environmental committees (100 members) and the AfroCuban Research Institute (382 registered members).

Traditions, creativity and innovation

The symbol of Hunab Ku become the theme of our green alliances since 2005 and is printed on thousands of t-shirts available during the two days Mother Earth annual event that brings together a very diverse audience to this program sponsored by a grant from the California Council of Humanities.

Hunab Ku is the concept the ancient Mayans said is the gateway to other galaxies beyond our sun. Gazing upon this concept allows you to transcend the barriers of perception and time.

The Hunab is also a unit of length rediscovered by the researcher Hugh Harleston Jr. who after leaving his position of professor at Rochester University, moved to Mexico and living near the Teotihuacan Pyramidal Complex for more than 25 years dedicated his life to find out what unit of length was used by the designers-priests.

Hunab Ku rebuilt the world after three deluges, which poured from the mouth of a sky serpent. The first world he created was inhabited by dwarfs, the builders of the cities. The second world was inhabited by the Dzolob, 'the offenders', an obscure race. The third and final world Hunab Ku created for the Maya themselves.

The oral traditions, the music and the dances from the Mayan community of Los Angeles came from the creation of the Maya, as well as the mathematical mysteries of the Time-Message that the designers-priests left with the Geometric PI Value of 3.146264371 and how it relates to the Decimal System.

The Hunab Ku program has been gathering stories from the life of members of the Ventura family and members of the Quezada family. The lead storytellers are Jose Ventura and Roberto Quezada. Special educational services are provided for youth and seniors.

Jose Ventura is a Mayan priest with generations of memories and traditions to share from his native Guatemala, a family of talented dancers of Ajpop Tecun that run into their Californian sons and daughters.

Roberto Quezada is a well recognized Guatemalan writer who will turn 80 next year; First Prize of Novel for “Ardillas Enjauladas”, a journalist and translator who’s been living in Los Angeles since 1952 with his Californian family.

There are interactive multimedia presentations in the frame of archival research testimonials from the history of the Mayan world, in the frame of those stories the families of aboriginal cultural bearers share their own stories, dances and legacy (featured in video sample).

The 2007 Green Stage festival (http://www.stageofthearts.info/ourwork.html) presented a multimedia celebration of The Day of the Earth, honoring our ancestry and modern primitive culture and its unending always-evolving need to create, change and mystify. A two days multimedia event saturated in meditation, dance, music, poetry and mass landscape installations.

This tribal theater is also a multimedia tour into the work of Derick Ion’s photography. The performers are travelers that live and learn the motivations from aboriginal cultures around the world while walking on the transparent walls that divide arts from religion, and photography from reality. Cultural anthropology research and production are conducted by Jorge Luis Rodriguez.

The Green Stage partnership program

Stage of the Arts, Inc. and Green Wave International are the leading organizations of the Green Stage Alliance, authors of the “2006 Green Stage Resolution” and the “2007 Zero Waste Resolution” of the National Latino Congress sponsored by the Earth Day Network and conveners.

The Green Stage Alliance launches the Green Stage Incubators, a partnership program between LA South Central Farmers (Familias Unidas), Techqua Ikachi inter-tribal, Church of the City (Placita Olvera), Green Acres urban farm, Lucumi Botanical Gardens, Sunset Junction E-waste, Santa Monica Habitat Llc., and the new certified East Hollywood Neighborhood Council.

WORKPLAN

June 5, 2008: (US Day of the Environment) Letters are mailed to actual newly proposed members of the Green Stage Alliance to convene the Cahuenga Green Stage Festival.

July 1^st, 2008: (New fiscal year) The Board of Directors of Stage of the Arts, Inc. provides the actual City licenses, vendor’s codes and tax ID as required to document the public benefit and educational federal and state status for tax except operations of the Green Stage alliance.

September, 2008: The Festival committee of fifty volunteers assembles. A contact list with member’s assignation/task circulates in the Green Stage Alliance.

October, 2008: (Hispanic Heritage Month) A fundraising event and promotional opportunities are developed for the Cahuenga GS Festival. Production Meeting and Union call. Key personnel are on duty.

December 3, 2008: To prepare for grant writing, statements and narrative proposals as needed for 2010 Festival.

December 15, 2008: A mass mailing campaign and Green Stage Alliance distribution of New Year postcard containing Cahuenga theme and Earth Day information is to be launched.

January 3, 2009: Green Stage Alliance art and humanities programs start disseminating grass root community goals and objectives for implementation of a Zero Waste Pilot Program in East Hollywood.

February 14, 2009: The Green Stage Incubators presents Zero Waste arts events in visual reference to Cahuenga/Tongva heritage.

March 2009: Final agreements are made with participating artists. Arrangements are made for stage and portable devises as needed, toilets, sinks, booths, etc.

March 15, 2009: General Production Meeting. Weekly meeting of the green Stage Incubators are established now. A News Advisory is release calling for a press conference on April 15, 2009.

April 15, 2009: Cahuenga Festival Public Release. Press Conference on site. Ritual arts.

April 24, 2009: Basic set-up on grounds and stages. Final review of line-up and handout program is to be printed. Transportation department places sings and barricades as needed.

April 25 & 26, 2009. Cahuenga Green Stage Festival: 7 AM: Sound installation and sound check. Banners review and final vendors display. Zero Waste demonstration plans.

10 AM: The festival opens free to the general public. Opening ceremonies. Festival line-up.

April 30, 2009. EVALUATION: The facilitator for each Green Stage Incubator reports on-line according to the evaluation plan. The zero waste Sub-committees of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Governing Board determines the achievement of our Zero Waste Goal.

Some evaluations are mere mathematics evaluating the Festival on a 100 points score. Also, the audience attendance and vendors sales are measurable. Other scores are determined by quality of programming and will be executed according to the criteria set by each Incubator or Sub-committee.

Thank You for reviewing this Narrative Proposal.

Stage Of The Arts, Inc 4423 ½ Santa Monica Blvd.. Los Angeles, California 90029 (323) 662 3750

www.StageOfTheArts.info, a 501 (c) (3) California Educational corporation founded 1982

http://GreenStageAlliance.blogspot.com