Engaging in an Unlikely Manner: Artists as Environmental Stewards

“If you actually engage a place in an unlikely manner, you probably won’t forget it. It becomes yours.” So says Catherine Gudis, a professor of public history at the University of California, Riverside, and one of the founders of Play the LA River, described as a “game of urban exploration and imagination.” The game consists of a 51-card deck developed by members of Project 51, a collective of “LA River–loving artists, designers, planners, writers and educators,” that invites Angelenos to explore — and reclaim — a river that for decades was “a polluted, concrete-encased ditch,” as reported in Next City.