Image: (1) Flyer for the upcoming Scratching the Surface: 40 years of Visual Arts in Skid Row exhibit, which opens this Saturday, September 6, 5pm at Skid Row museum; (2) interactive Skid Row Design Collective cardboard foldout (2016), one of the items in the exhibit. one of the items in the exhibit.
Kind light / Բարի լույս* to you, dear neighbors, artists, collaborators, community partners, co-conspirators, supporters of arts in Skid Row and doodles w/o borders,
*morning greeting in Armenian translates as “kind light” (բարի լույս [baree looys])
Post highlights: (1) Events/Activities in and near Skid Row, (2) Thoughts Aloud – Local to Global, (3) Quote of the Month.
COME VISIT the UPCOMING Scratching the Surface: 40 Years of Visual Arts in Skid Row exhibition at the Skid Row Museum and Archive (250 S. Broadway), opening this Sat, Sept. 6th, 5pm (and running until Oct 25) which it’s been my honor and pleasure to curate. The exhibition is a small glimpse into all the art making and cultural production that happens in Skid Row neighborhood. The impetus for curating this exhibit was to show and celebrate some of the work held at Community Arts Depot artwork storage project–a sister organization to Doodles!–and it grew to include multiple formal and informal archives and personal collections.
And follow LA Poverty Department and Doodles without Borders posts on Instagram for programming related to the exhibit, like a mini-Zine Fest, a dive into History of Poetry in Skid Row, and a discussion of Community Archives!
– Hayk
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HIGHLIGHTS in and near Skid Row neighborhood, September 2025
Some neighborhood events, celebrations, and parties to join
- Friday, Sept 5, 3-5pm, Filmmaking workshop with Adam Johns @ Skid Row Museum
- Friday, Sept 5, 7pm: Movie Night at LA Poverty Dep’t ‘s Skid Row Museum (250 S Broadway)
- Saturday, September 6, 5pm: OPENING CELEBRATION of Scratching the Surface: 40 years of Visual Arts in Skid Row exhibit at Skid Row Museum (250 S Broadway)
- Wed, Sept 10, 6pm: Movie night at the General Jeff (Gladys) Park (movie starts at dusk)
- Fri, Sept 12, 5-7pm ARTS JAM @ Studio 526 (526 San Pedro)
- Tue, Sept 16, 1030-12, 5-week Poetry Workshop starts @ Skid Row Museum
- Fri, Sept 19, Marketplace at LACAN (838 E 6th)
- Fri, Sept 19, 7pm: Movie Night at Skid Row Museum
- Fri, Sept 26, 5-7:30: Open Mic @ Skid Row Museum
- Fri, Sept 26, Dusk: Movie Night by StopLAPDSpying coalition in front of LAPD headquarters (check their instagram for more info)
- Mon, Sept 29, 11am-1pm ~ SOUND BOWLS workshop with Ptah Ahochi Tehuti Eil and Linda Leigh @ Skid Row Museum
Pa/est/ine + Skid Row Actions: some places to find local downtown LA and nearby actions that make local Skid Row to global connections: Pal Youth Movement – LA, Organize – LA, StopLAPDSpying, LACAN
SAVE THE DATE / ONGOING
Exhibit: Scratching the Surface: 40 years of visual art in Skid Row: OPENS Saturday, September 6
Regular museum hours are Thur, Fri, Sat 2-5pm
OPEN MICS as places to come together, and plant seeds of collective struggle.
There are at least FOUR regularopen mics currently in Skid Row:
Weekly – (1) every Thurs, 6:30-9pm at Peace and Healing Center (116 E 5th)
Monthly – (2) every 2nd Friday, 5-7pm, at Studio526 (526 San Pedro St); (3) 3rd Fridays 11a-2p: BuckFest at 5th/San Pedro by Urban Voices Project, (4) every last Friday of the month, 5-7:30pm with Lorinda at LA Poverty Dept‘s Skid Row Museum (250 S. Broadway)
THOUGHTS ALOUD
#SKIDROWCONNECTED
(excerpt from the Suggested Use of Language – LA’s Skid Row Neighborhood evolving text, first drafted and presented in a meeting of then active Skid Row Design Collective in 2016)
Skid Row is not unique. Skid Row’s struggles are inseparable from the Black Liberation struggle in and beyond the American empire, the Working Class struggle, LGBTQ struggle for human rights, Tenants Power struggle and many more. It is exposed to the same anti-Black, white supremacist, imperialist, colonial, patriarchal, ableist oppressions–with the violence of class war and capitalism as the through line–which manufactures civic disenfranchisement, criminalization of poverty, and economic oppression affecting more than 150 million people (from rent-burdened tenants living in fear of displacement, to people living on the street in daily fear for their lives in every major city of the country) in so-called united states.
Skid Row neighborhood–as countless neighborhoods worldwide, undeterred by systemic oppression–is a bastion for defending humanity and of mutual aid as a method of survival (including the abolitionist mutual aid groups coming from without, but here focusing on neighbors looking out for each other in a myriad of informal ways). While Skid Row is not immune from replicating systems of oppression, it is also a place where every day residents come together, stand up for each other, show solidarity, empathy, and love.
Locally and globally, working-class oppressed people led, collective liberation struggles already align with Skid Row. Our common struggle must be to find ways to cultivate, grow and defend spaces where the necessity for universal protections of all basic human needs is the baseline. Our common struggle must be for each person’s individual responsibility to align with the collective responsibility to build power that will extend this baseline to the entire world.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“The coalition emerges out of your recognition that it’s fucked up for you, in the same way that we’ve already recognized that it’s fucked up for us. I don’t need your help. I just need you to recognize that this shit is killing you, too, however much more softly…”
― Fred Moten, cultural theorist, poet, and scholar whose work explores critical theory, Black studies, and performance studies.
dwb ONLINE:
1) Doodles without Borders (dwb) is now on Instagram / Facebook.
2) There is a monthly dwb Skid Row Community & Arts Calendar. If you do community strengthening work in Skid Row and know of an event/meeting that should be on there, please share.
3) dwb wishlist! You can find it here: bit.ly/dwbwishlist
Able and interested to SUPPORT Doodles?
Support Artwork Storage as a Human Right (and Collective Responsibility)
Community Arts Depot is a sister project addressing the vital need for artwork storage and access focused on Skid Row neighborhood members and residents. Artwork Storage as a Human Right – a glimpse from the Community Arts Depot story. This project’s sustainability is deeply dependent on grassroots support. To donate to the campaign click HERE!
Email us for donating directly via Venmo, Paypal, or other ways.
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For previous newsletter(s), go to www.doodleswithoutborders.com homepage
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Community Artivism 