UW School of Social Work is proud to welcome back Chicano Artivsta
and Grammy Award Winning Musician and Producer,
Quetzal Flores
for an interactive workshop entitled
Regenerative Process through Dialogue and Collective Songwriting:
Cultivating Cultural Vitality and Social Justice
Friday, October 25, 10:00-12:00 in SSW 305 A
Quetzal Flores may be best known as a musician and producer of the East LA Chicano rock band, Quetzal, but his portfolio of community engaged cultural projects addressing health equities in Southern California is equally innovative and impactful.
As the Southern California Program Manager for the Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) from 2012-2016, Flores spearheaded Activating Cultural Assets, a participatory cultural asset mapping project in Boyle Heights and the Eastern Coachella Valley. In collaboration with The California Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities initiative, this project relies on local traditional arts and culture systems to create programming that impacts the health and vitality of a community.
In 2014, he began managing and curating the Arts in Corrections (AIC) program for ACTA. By programming traditional artists from communities of practice, ACTA’s AIC program offers a unique mobility and connection which provides a pathway towards healing and rehabilitation. From 2014-2017 the AIC program went from servicing 3 to 16 prisons statewide.
In 2016 Flores joined the East Los Angeles Community Corp as the Director of Arts and Culture. Focusing on changing the DNA of the organization, he operates with the belief that Art & Culture are inseparable and symbiotic resources that live at the essence of community vitality and transformation.
Quetzal will share with us how collective art and cultural production provoke critical analysis and facilitation of power-sharing and cooperation in community practice in this interactive
dialogue and collective songwriting workshop.
