SouthLACulture.org is the product of Promise Zone Arts South Los Angeles (PZA:SLA), a cultural asset mapping and activation initiative of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA).

Building on the work of DCA’s previous Promise Zone Arts initiative in the Central Los Angeles Promise Zone, PZA:SLA is focused on the federally designated South Los Angeles Promise Zone. It has been co-created and implemented in partnership with LA Commons, the South Los Angeles Transit Empowerment Zone (SLATE-Z), Community Coalition, and the University of Southern California (USC)’s Neighborhood Data for Social Change (NDSC) Initiative.

This project gives South LA community members a participatory platform to spotlight local cultural treasures that they deem significant, illuminating the rich cultural tapestry that makes this community thrive. Cultural Treasures could include artists, musicians, dance and theater companies, studios, galleries, street art, restaurants, annual events and celebrations, bookstores, social halls, cultural practices, community elders and tradition-bearers, historic sites, and gathering places of all kinds.

The project seeks to counter “top-down” methods that impose cultural definitions and metrics onto community-centered practices: it instead aims to center community definitions of what arts and culture mean to those who live and work in—as well as frequent—South LA.