NEWS: Career histories of two more LAICCC
alumni can now be viewed on the Performing
Arts Legacy Project website - More Info
EVENTS: Hattie Winston, Emily Yancy star in
"Having Our Say" play reading Sat., April 13 at
The Kirk Douglas Theatre - More Info
Beloved Community Awareness Week 2023, hosted by the UCLA Beloved Community Initiative (BCI), took place from April 18-25. Los Angeles Inner City Cultural Center has partnered with UCLA / BCI in this program since 2021.
The Beloved Community Luncheon, described in the flyer above left, was held April 25 in Royce Hall at UCLA instead of on April 18 as originally scheduled. LAICCC alumnus Glynn Turman accepted one of the two 2023 C. Bernard Jackson UCLA Bridge Builders Awards. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was unable to attend and accept her award in person.
Filmmaker Doug Harris, a participant in the April 21 "Healing Community" workshop (flyer above right), graciously provided this video he shot at the event: https://youtu.be/tF8AIJktvj0
For more complete information on Beloved Community Awareness Week 2023 events, please visit https://www.uclabelovedcommunityinitiative.org and click on "Beloved Community Awareness Week."
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The Beloved Community initiative (BCI) was launched at UCLA in 2015 with a mission “to explore and advance The Beloved Community as a global vision for the 21st century.” https://www.uclabelovedcommunityinitiative.org
The Beloved Community Initiative offers immersive interdisciplinary multimedia experiences utilizing the legacy of the philosopher Josiah Royce, who developed the concept of “A Beloved Community” and for whom UCLA’s Royce Hall is named, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech on the UCLA campus in April 1965 in which he expanded on the concept of “The Beloved Community.”
The first Beloved Community Awareness Week took place in April 2019. At the inaugural Beloved Community luncheon, the first UCLA Bridge Builders Awards were presented to the distinguished engineer Shelby Jacobs ’56, a “hidden figure” of the U.S. Space Program who was project manager of the Apollo-Soyuz orbiter, and former Congresswoman and Ambassador Diane Watson ’56, the first Black member of the Los Angeles Unified School District school board and of the California State Senate.
In 2020 the Bridge Builders Award winners were former California Assembly member The Honorable Dr. Shirley Weber (’70, M.A. ’71, Ph.D. ’75), now California’s first Black Secretary of State; and Reverend Gregory Boyle, S.J., founder and director of Homeboy Industries, the world's largest gang-intervention and rehabilitation program, and former pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Los Angeles.
In 2021, the Bridge Builders Award was renamed the C. Bernard Jackson – UCLA Bridge Builders Award.
The 2021 Awards were presented to the entrepreneur Mathabo Kunene, Executive Managing Trustee of the Mazisi Kunene Foundation Trust, Durban, South Africa, and Dr. David Hayes-Bautista, UCLA Distinguished Professor of Medicine & Public Health and Director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture.
Beloved Community Awareness Week 2022 began virtually on April 19 with the annual BCI luncheon, at which the 2022 C. Bernard Jackson – UCLA Bridge Builders Awards were presented to Nobuko Miyamoto, songwriter, dance & theater artist, author, and founder and artistic director of Great Leap, Inc., and UCLA alumnus and pioneering filmmaker Ben Caldwell, founder of KAOS Network in Leimert Park.
Three days earlier, LAICCC provided a preview of Beloved Community Awareness Week with the “Our Town LA” play reading, our first live theatrical production since the pandemic shut everything down in early 2020.
LAICCC’s participation in Beloved Community Awareness Week and the renaming of the Bridge Builders Award for C. Bernard Jackson are two important steps in honoring and strengthening the bond between Los Angeles Inner City Cultural Center and the fertile ground at UCLA where C. Bernard Jackson and Dr. J. Alfred Cannon were planting the roots for ICCC in 1965.
(For more information about The Beloved Community and ICCC’s origins at UCLA, click on the UCLA Roots page under the “About” tab of this website.)
Our Partnership with The UCLA Beloved Community Initiative