An exciting new community arts center featuring film, literature, music and performing arts is coming to the Historic Filipinotown neighborhood of Los Angeles. 2220 Arts + Archives will operate as a programming cooperative composed of longstanding cultural nonprofits, archival projects, and event series.
Director of 2220 Arts + Archive Andrew Maxwell told What Now Los Angeles that one of the main inspirations for the new community arts center was to find a “sustaining home for a number of arts organizations, artists and curators that have been operating in scattered storefronts on the eastside of town, or subletting space in other venues.” Because of the financial difficulties that noncommercial and innovative arts face to sustain their spaces in LA–recently doubled by the pandemic–2220 Arts + Archive strives to “hang together, survive together, and build a bigger community in a single space” by creating an independent coalition of nonprofits and artists that support one another.
The team behind 2220 is made up of friends who have been programming cultural events in the same LA neighborhoods for a long time, often seeing one another at film, literary, and music events. 2220 Arts + Archive is a volunteer-based model, Maxwell explained, that the team wants to keep “loose and alive, and keep it evolving with community feedback” as they go forward.
2220 Arts + Archives will work in partnership with Black Editions, LA Filmforum, Mythscience Archives, the Poetic Research Bureau, and the Unwrinkled Ear, among others, to bring a curation of concerts, screenings, readings, improvisations, books, records, and ephemera.
2220 Arts + Archives will settle into 2220 Beverly Boulevard in Westlake, replacing what had been the former home of Bootleg Theater, which closed its doors after over 20 years of providing an “art space for original, boundary-defying live theater, music, and dance performances.” However, artists, musicians, and creatives can take solace in the arrival of a new space dedicated to the arts and to the community.
While details about the new community arts center are scarce, a recent filing for a liquor license suggests that alcohol beverages may be available for purchase and consumption at 2220 Arts + Archives. The cultural center’s official Instagram has also been revealing sneak peeks of the expansive venue, composed of various spaces, like microcinemas, dedicated to readings or screenings.
2220 Arts + Archives is slated to open its doors to the public in September 2021.
Our roots are in literary events, noncommercial film, and concerts for the creative and improvisational music community – so that’s where we’re going to start, with hopes of expanding to other types of music and performance as we build out our calendar with screenings, readings, talks, concerts. Where possible, we’d like to combine different types of performance on the same bill, and break down some of the compartmentalization of the arts in this city.
While LA is known for its gallery scene, its many rock-based nightclubs and film industry, it’s also historically sustained a number of non-institutional artist-driven spaces – places like LACE, the Underground Museum, Machine Project, Beyond Baroque. But it’s difficult and rare to find such a large space for the “slow” arts – stuff like poetry, experimental music, video art, microcinema. We’re going to try.
In the early going, on the music front, you will also see a fair amount of jazz programming from us, as the loss of the Blue Whale in nearby Koreatown is something we feel acutely and want to address. Similarly, the closure of Pehrspace just a few blocks down in HiFi was a loss for local experimental artists and performers. To the degree we can bring some of that back, and revive some of the DIY spirit in a volunteer-run space, I think we’ll feel we’re doing some good work.
Some of our events will be ticketed, some will be free. We want to be adaptive and artist-driven, so we’re open to different models of community engagement and artist compensation. Part of this is that we are a collection of different orgs serving a multiplicity of overlapping and intersecting audiences. We deliberately chose a quiet, place-based name, because we want the organizations, series and artists that inhibit the space to take front stage.
We don’t have immediate plans to offer memberships for 2220 Arts + Archives, but some of our partners, like LA Filmforum, offer their own memberships.
3. What about the Historic Filipino neighborhood makes it an ideal location for 2220 Arts + Archives?
Many of us involved in the project come from in and around the neighborhood. Peter and Andrew were already hosting concerts at the prior Bootleg space before the pandemic. I live a few minutes away in Echo Park, started the Poetic Research Bureau in Downtown twenty years ago, and Joe and I have been running it in Chinatown for the past twelve years. We have kids in local neighborhood schools. Adam of LA Filmforum was a longtime HiFi resident, while running Filmforum screenings in Hollywood.
In short, it’s a space we already know, and an easy space to come together in. A lot of our activity has been long concentrated in the 13th District, and the proximity to Koreatown, Hollywood, Downtown and Northeast neighborhoods is perfect, with a lot of complementary creative activity nearby.
4. Do you have any interior design or architectural ideas in mind for the space?
We’re initially very focused on upgrading safety and comfort features for the venue – additional bathrooms, new fire sprinklers, as the city deals with constant drought and fire threats. We want the space to be safe, and built for the long haul.
We’ll also be progressively upgrading the cinema projection capabilities over the next year or two, to move from current microcinema and 16mm support toward better support for feature programming.
We also aspire to an archival mission, and we hope to feature books, records, and audio recordings for public use in the building. I think it will take a few years to fully realize this part of our project, but we’re thinking through how to configure spaces at 2220 for listening, reading, and research.
5. Would you happen to know the square footage?
Roughly 9000 sf.
6. What will be available for patrons to purchase? Will there be food and drinks sold at the community center?
We will be creating a little curated retail shop in the warehouse for books and records, initially to be sold at events. A number of books and records will also be available free for public use on-site, which is part of our archival mission.
We’re also retaining the former bar and liquor license, so beverages will be offered at most events. We have no immediate plans for food service, but hope to partner with food trucks for some events, when the anticipated audience sizes suit.
7. Do you have a debut launch date you’re aiming for?
We’re going to slowly launch through fall, beginning in mid-September with concerts, screenings and readings – ramping up to roughly two events per week later this fall. The pandemic dynamics are very uncertain, however, and it’s hard to know what the city and state will ask of venues like ours, so we’re being watchful and deliberate, and not overloading the calendar with events that may have to be postponed if cases increase in the next couple months.
