How a Tiny Arts Collective Built LA's Most Ambitious Summer Festival From a Boarded-Up Building

Three years ago, a collective of seven artists stood outside a shuttered warehouse on Slauson Avenue in South Los Angeles, armed with a $12,000 grant and an idea that seemed improbable to almost everyone they knew. Today, the Los Angeles Contemporary Arts Initiative has expanded to include three permanent venues across the neighborhood and operates the city's fastest-growing independent festival series.

The Summer Convergence Festival, now in its third year, runs through August across multiple South LA neighborhoods—from Exposition Park to Manchester Square—featuring over 120 events including sculpture installations, live performance, community workshops, and pop-up galleries. Attendance has grown from 8,000 visitors in 2024 to a projected 35,000 this summer, according to organizers.

The genesis of the initiative came when photographer Marcus Webb and theater director Keisha Cole discovered each other through a shared studio space on 92nd Street. Both had independently been frustrated with LA's cultural infrastructure—the way festivals seemed concentrated in West Hollywood and Silver Lake, rarely reaching communities south of the 10 freeway with the same investment or visibility. "We realized we were having the same conversations with different people in different rooms," Webb recalls of those early planning meetings.

What began as weekly pop-up art walks in vacant storefronts evolved into something more structured when the collective secured a five-year lease on the Slauson building in 2023. The renovation itself became part of the origin story: neighbors contributed labor, donated materials, and helped design the space based on what they actually wanted to see.

The collective's expansion model is distinctly local. Rather than importing a template from other cities, they've embedded themselves in South LA's existing cultural infrastructure—partnering with Jordan Downs residents, the Exposition Park museum district, and established organizations like the Watts Towers Arts Center. This summer's festival includes a youth mentorship program with 40 participants earning hourly wages, and 65 percent of featured artists live within five miles of their venues.

Funding remains precarious. The initiative operates on a combination of city arts grants, private donations, and festival revenue—totaling roughly $280,000 annually. Many staff members still work part-time or volunteer. Yet the model is proving sustainable enough that other LA neighborhoods have begun inquiring about replicating it.

For Webb and Cole, the deeper victory isn't the attendance numbers. It's watching young people from their community develop careers in arts without having to leave South LA to make it happen. That's the real festival story—not the one on the marquee, but the one unfolding in the studios, galleries, and streets they helped reimagine.

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