Leimert Park filmmaker creates community space to nurture Black creatives

Arts educator and filmmaker Ben Caldwell founded KAOS Network, a community arts center dedicated to providing training on digital arts, media arts and multimedia in the heart of Leimert Park, the historic center of the Los Angeles jazz culture.

"The real reason I started this place is to really settle in on media and figure out what it's really doing," said Caldwell. "What is it that Black Americans want, or the Black diasporans want when it comes to media?"

"It's a community driven space," said Robeson Taj Frazier, a professor at USC's Annenberg School of Journalism who co-wrote a book, KAOS Theory, along with Caldwell.

"Ben and I for years have been developing a friendship," said Frazier. "A couple of months in of just having these conversations, I asked Ben, I said, 'Ben, you have an incredible story. Have you ever thought about writing a book of his own work, of the creativity that had been happening and stimulated here in Leimert Park Village, in other parts of South Central LA, but as well as part of KAOS Network?'"

Nearly 40 years later, KAOS Network is still thriving and nurturing new generations of creators in South Los Angeles.

"It's a good time for us creatives to teach them how to control their own cultural wealth to use it as a tool," said Caldwell. "So they can instantly be a creator and not just a worker."

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