BiciCrófono: Amplifying The Voice of Community

Affordable housing and homelessness

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Unhoused community members suffer from a host of debilitating symptoms linked to systemic inequity – from housing insecurity to mobility access. BiciCrófono is a human-powered stage – built at our Re:Ciclos workshop – that connects to organizations working with frontline communities and offers our programming services to augment their operations. Additionally, we partner with Metro through their Adopt-A-Bike Program and donate free bicycles toward ecological, active transportation mobility for unhoused populations. Combined, these elements deliver an uplifting, connective cultural experience and a vehicle, free of cost, to access vital resources.
Helping solve the homelessness issue in Los Angeles requires deep cross-sectional work. BiciCrófono is a literal stage, towed by bicycle, that meets Community and frontline organizations where they are to build solidarity, resilience, joy and hope toward tackling this socio-political inequity Together.

Art, music, storytelling and creative engagement provide a soulful mobility required to lift ourselves out of strife. The BiciCrófono micro-stage is deepening relationships with unhoused populations and the organizations that support them by providing opportunities to heal, express, tell their stories and to enjoy performances delivered to their own community. Coupled with programming we co-produce with organizations, our Metro contract helps us provide bicycles as an additional transportation resource. Funding assists in securing performers, upgrading our mechanical and audio-visual equipment, strengthens admin and logistics and in the repair of donated bicycles.
As an example, we are co-creating a workshop with LA Community Action Network, SCI-Arc school of architecture in partnership with the Getty Foundation and Metro, to bring one such experience to unhoused community members in the Skid Row community. Confluences of support like this offer essential resources, shore up hope and stokes resilience in the journey toward wellbeing.
Additionally – our work being public by design – we outreach to local performing artists to help spread solidarity, information and collective movement. Deeper funding allows us to record events and produce videos toward archiving and connecting to a broader audience via streaming channels. Engaging a local and global community brings us all together in battling existential threats to humanity like homelessness, racism and global warming.

Mobility-justice, transportation equity, food and housing security, access to work and resources, and connection to healthy, green urban space are all interrelated elements that inform a community’s wellbeing. Alongside our direct community work, BiciCrófono also deploys at larger public gatherings such as CicLAvia and Active SGV’s Open Streets along with supporting smaller events for value-aligned organizations. These settings provide our project a venue to disseminate information, garner support and connect to thousands of community members across the County.
Our project’s aim is to inspire communities across L.A. to invest in human-centered infrastructure and direct resources toward those most in need. Further, our capacity to influence will grow as we increase the profile of performing artists. In this, we seek to employ art toward inspiring systemic change, activate public spaces and deepen human investment in a fun, ecological and humanitarian approach.

Via our Metro partnership, we currently deliver 10-15 bicycles a month to community members in need. Our partnerships with CicLAvia, Active SGV, SCI-Arc, The Getty Foundation and the various homeless advocacy organizations, such as LA CAN and Homeless Healthcare L.A., continue to help us create opportunities for creative engagements to work toward solutions, healing, innovation and investments for frontline communities.
We seek to increase our capacity in:
Bicycles donated
Performances brought to community
Programming via karaoke, spoken word, storytelling, speakers and more
Cross-sectional organizations engaged
Content produced in engaging a larger audience
Resources brought to community members in need, e.g.., workshops, bicycles and basic-need items
As we all work together to affect change, it is cross-sectional and cross-cultural movement infrastructure that will safeguard the future of those most in need. BiciCrófono is a stage where these bonds are forged in Community.