Part II: Carpool Community Engagement - How Civil Society Shapes LA's Neighborhoods

Thomas Mann Fellows Rubina Zern-Breuer, Innovation Researcher and Swenja Zaremba, Cultural Studies Researcher, explore L.A.’s diverse approaches to community engagement and civil society initiatives in a two-part video series of interviews. Join them on a tour through L.A.’s neighborhoods and learn about how these different projects help local communities and what we can learn from these approaches in Germany.
During their Fellowships at the Thomas Mann House, historian and innovation researcher Rubina Zern-Breuer and Swenja Zaremba, research associate at the Centre for Cultural and General Studies at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, focused on meaningful interactions between public administration and civil society. The two met with a variety of activists, social workers, and community organizers to talk about their practices and experiences in the City of Los Angeles. From infrastructural challenges to problems with racism, housing, gang criminality and poverty: How can local participatory approaches strengthen trust, help individuals and repair urban infrastructures? What transformative potential for public organizations as well as for civil society networks can these approaches hold? Together with their guests, they explore how collaborative approaches on the local level can effect communities - and what we can learn from them for Germany in terms of trust and collaboration.
Join Rubina and Swenja in the Thomas Mann House van on their tour through different Los Angeles communities! Learn more about the different approaches, methods, projects and civil society initiatives and how they make a difference in the city.
Part II includes interviews and tours with Kiara Aileen Machado, Contemporary Artist & Activist, Paul Vandeventer, Co-Founder of Community Partners, and Fredid Toledo, Community Organizer at Homies Unidos.
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Interview Partners: Kiara Aileen Machado, Paul Vandeventer, Fredid Toledo
Researchers: Swenja Zaremba, Dr. Rubina Zern-Breuer
Film: Boris Schaarschmidt
Camera: Boris Schaarschmidt & Hussain Najam
Graphics: Studio Pandan
Additional Support: Karola Ammon & Michaela Ullmann