Impact Hub Los Angeles

What if there were a place in LA where artists, media makers, social entrepreneurs, and individual citizens could come together under one roof and collaborate? What if artists had more customized support and were able to explore new ways to get their projects made and participate in creating media that mattered?

Imagine a collaborative community anchored by a physical gathering place in Los Angeles which brings visual artists together with social entrepreneurs to create meaningful change. A place that equips artists and creative professionals with the enterprising tools needed to create their work and sustain themselves. A place that is home to a diverse community that:

-Brings forth disruptive new ideas and technologies -Changes distribution dramatically -Redefines a service and product -Focuses the disorganized and connects the disconnecte -Challenges the infrastructure, changes the rules and the flow of information -Democratizes access and directs gains to the creator -Honors the individual AND the community -Takes the lead on new ethics, a new business model that cares for not just profit but also people and the planet

That place and community exists now.

Hub LA opened in September 2012 as a new kind of gathering place in the Arts District in Downtown LA. With near 200 members and growing, Hub LA uses collaborative consumption and community-sourcing to provide the space, resources, and relationships individuals and teams need to launch and scale their projects. It is the place for professionals of all disciplines who are dedicated to making a better world and co-creating our new economy. To accomplish this vision, we know we must design a place that includes artists and creative professionals, and amplify the role of arts and culture in building a more just economy.

After being open six months, we are launching a Media Lab that will be a physical resource of 3200 square feet with additional programming for media makers, storytellers, and visual artists of all kinds because we believe building this kind of infrastructure and institution will do three key things to spur innovation in the arts and culture sector in a way we haven’t seen before.

1) Social good start-ups will have access to cutting edge talent to tell the stories that set these new companies apart. These stories are critical for social entrepreneurs to attract capital and tap into loyal customers looking to buy from sustainable, pro-social brands;

2) Artists will have access to entrepreneurial energy and start-up resources along side ongoing critique from a curated community of peers. Equipping artists and creative professionals with the business acumen and tools to produce their own work will allow more people to make a viable living from their creative pursuits; and

3) Be a home for the disruptive companies that are leading the way towards a “New Hollywood.” Start-ups that are democratizing access to production, distribution, and funding; collectives of creative professionals launching new design businesses; and storytellers who are creating meaningful, different, yet entertaining work: we want this to be your headquarters.

Hub LA’s Media Lab aims to build a world in which artists and social entrepreneurs collaborate and combine storytelling with new media to create social change and in turn provide entrepreneurial tools for artists to sustain themselves.

Anchored by a physical space equipped with the necessary technical equipment for multimedia creation, the Media Lab will:

Make new media equipment accessible, thereby attracting local independent artists in need of affordable professional facilities;

Cultivate a talent pool of modern artists through programs built around design thinking, data visualization, and brand-building; and

Develop new mediums and channels for content distribution through partnerships with content distributors in the multimedia industries; and

Provide the enterprising training and new models of collaborative funding that will lead to a more sustainable arts and culture sector in Los Angeles.

Our Media Lab will serve as a platform for connecting storytellers, photographers, videographers, designers, programmers, visual artists, and social entrepreneurs in a media facility fully equipped with pre-production, production, and post-production equipment. This space will benefit the creation, dissemination, and support of LA’s next generation creative artists and provide a new model that’s part institution, part campus, and part innovation lab to spur Arts and Culture in Los Angeles.