The 10th Annual Italian Language Week

The annual Italian language Week, now in its tenth year, aims to promote Italian language and culture in the context of the national Italian Heritage Month as declared by President Obama and by Antonio Villaraigosa, Mayor of Los Angeles, in recognition of the important contribution made by Americans with Italian origins and by Italians living in America.

The theme chosen by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for 2010 is A language for friends: Our Italian and the Italian of others. This year the Italian Language Week in Los Angeles will celebrate the Watts Towers by Sabato (Sam, Simon) Rodia, the Italian immigrant who built the Towers between 1921 and 1954. The Watts Towers are now recog- nized as a National Historic Landmark and are also one of the most important symbols of the city.

A series of events coordinated by Luisa Del Giudice, under the banner of the Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative, will take place at UCLA and at the Watts Towers Arts Center as well as the Italian Cultural Insitute.

The event is organized by: Italian Ministry of Foreign affairs, Accademia della Crusca, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Italian Consulate General, Education Office of the Italian Consulate General, Los Angeles in collaboration with City of Los Angeles, Watts towers Common Ground Initiative, S.P.A.C.E.S. – Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments, COM.IT.ES, Los Angeles, UCLA Italian Department, UCLA International Institute, University of Southern California (USC), Pepperdine University, California State University Long Beach (CSULB), Chapman University, University of California, San Diego (UCSD), San Diego State University (SDSU), University of Arizona, Tucson, Italian Heritage Culture Foundation, Lingua Viva, Marisa Antonini Foundation, Barbera Family, Patrons of Italian Culture, Orange County American Italian Renaissance Foundation, Italian Cultural Center in San Diego, J. Paul Getty Museum, Watts Towers Arts Center, Watts Community Labor Action Committee, Fondazione Premio Napoli. ‘Sabato Rodia’s Towers in Watts’ Exhibition at Istituto Italiano di Cultura October 18 – November 3.

This exhibition surveys the history of the extraordinary Watts Towers, single-handedly built by Italian immigrant Sabato (known as Sam or Simon) Rodia, circa 1921-1954, in South Central Los Angeles. The exhibit reviews various phases of the Watts towers from construction, deterioration, rediscovery and conservation to the present uncertainties regarding proprietorship and preservation. As official guardian of the Watts Towers, the ad hoc community group “Committee for Simon Rodia’s Towers” in Watts mobilized an international campaign to save the Towers from demolition and, in 1959, proved that they should stand.

After this resounding victory, the Committee’s epic struggle began to ensure preservation of this monument, and to create a focus for community art in the adjacent Watts Towers Arts Center. Opening night for the exhibition is Monday, October 18. The evening also includes the screening of Fertile Ground: Stories from the Watts Towers Arts Center by S. Pearl Sharp (2005, 60 min.), a film in which artists and community members share their humorous and enlightening stories to reveal the dynamic history of the Watts Towers arts Center.

The event is organized by the Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative in collaboration with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura of Los Angeles. For more information visit www.iiclosangeles.esteri.it

The Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative: Art – Migration – Development Conference at UCLA October 22-24, 2010. The extraordinary Watts Towers were created over the course of three decades by a single-minded artist-artisan, Sabato (Simon, Sam) Rodia, an Italian immigrant who wanted to do “something big.” Now a National Historic Landmark and internationally- renowned icon, they are both a personal artistic expression and a collective symbol of Nuestro Pueblo - Our Town/Our People. The Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative: Art - Migrations - Development seeks to celebrate the common ground of the Towers, a locus of creativity, of sustained resolve in adversity and of positive public transformation.

With an eye to renewing civic commitment to art in community contexts, this initiative will encompass a range of public events throughout the city, including an international conference at the University of California at Los Angeles and Watts, and a festival of art, film, theater, music, communal food tables and city tours. Both festival and conference carry forward the conversation begun at the international conference "Art and Migration: Sabato Rodia's Watts Towers in Los Angeles", jointly sponsored by the University of Genova and the UCLA International Institute (Italy, April 2009), which examined the monument’s multiple resonances within the milieux of local and global migrations, of contested social and urban spaces, and of the rapport between art and economic development.

For more information visit www.WattsTowers CommonGround.org