Today! Leimert Boulevard and 43rd Pl to be renamed “Ben Caldwell Square”
This Sunday, August 30, Leimert Park celebrates the 81st birthday of visionary filmmaker and member of the L.A. Rebellion, multimedia artist, innovator, and educator extraodinaire Ben Caldwell with the official designation of “Ben Caldwell Square” at the intersection of Leimert Boulevard and 43rd Place – home to the KAOS Network, Caldwell’s community arts incubator.
Tenth District Councilmember Heather Hutt proposed the dedication last August, just as Caldwell turned 80, to honor the man some have referred to as the Father of Leimert Park. Because the motion did not get approved by Council until last October, the ceremony was set for 9:30 a.m. on his birthday this year (TODAY!).
In a recent conversation, Caldwell confessed he’s still not sure how he feels about the all the attention – which now also includes an afternoon of performances and activities in honor of “Ben Caldwell Day” (a separate celebration spearheaded by the No Name Society) – being so focused on himself. But he is pleased about what it all means for his family legacy. “It is something they will be proud of,” he says.
The modesty is genuine. Caldwell’s preoccupation with how a spotlight can be leveraged to shine for and on others is a hallmark of who he is. It is also fundamental to the work that has made him so revered.
His films, which his former student, filmmaker Arthur Jafa, has likened to cinematic jazz, endeavored to offer Black viewers, in particular, new ways of seeing themselves, new possibilities for connection, and new avenues for liberation.
And even since its earliest days, back when it was known as Video 3333, Caldwell’s KAOS Network has been about creating safe and nurturing spaces for others to connect, sharpen their pens, hone their talents, and imagine new ways of seeing the world.
In the 1980s, his “I-Fresh” creative workshops, where he trained South Central youth in film production and given them space to perform, helped establish KAOS as an incubator for hip hop and artistic experimentation. In doing so, Caldwell opened the doors for the Hollywatts Posse, a theatrical performing arts troupe described as “radically Black and diasporic in tone and subject matter,” Project Blowed, the world-renowned underground open mic workshop from which so many legendary hip hop talents emerged, Bananas, the long-running eclectic musical showcase, and so many others to all find a home, collaborators, inspiration, and community.
But he did not stop at transforming his corner.
He co-founded the monthly and ever-evolving Leimert Park Artwalk in 2010. That same year, with L.A. Commons and artist Najite Agindotan, he cofounded the Festival of Masks — a powerful annual celebration that reaches across the generations, continents, and spiritual realms to unite the vast identities of Africa and the African diaspora (more on that event coming soon!).
He was a leader in the transformation of 43rd Place into a performance/gathering space and people’s plaza. The project also served as an anchor for the larger “20/20 Vision” Caldwell and other stakeholders developed to make the Village a more supportive hub for Black creatives and diasporic connections while safeguarding it against cultural, demographic, and economic erasure.
In 2013, he co-founded the Leimert Phone Company. The unique collaboration between Caldwell, researchers from USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab, and artists from Leimert Park began as an effort to transform abandoned payphones into portals to the past, present, and future. The project eventually took Caldwell and his collaborators around the globe to give talks on how to repurpose street furniture for a more interactive, culturally-relevant, and community-serving public space. And in 2017, they turned their attention to autonomous vehicles – envisioning an Afro-futurist-driven way to provide free transportation, wi-fi connections, and community lore in and around Leimert Park – and to laying the virtual foundation for Sankofa City.
Caldwell was also one of the thought leaders consulted for Destination Crenshaw – the 1.3-mile-long open-air museum using art and infrastructure to tell the stories of the historically Black community and mark Crenshaw Boulevard as an unapologetically Black space.
And these are just the things that I’ve personally had the privilege of covering for Streetsblog over the last decade-plus. There’s so, so much more – so many more artists he has mentored, so many more art forms he has influenced, so many more practices he has helped shape.
But Ben shows no sign of slowing down.
During our conversation on Friday, he was already looking ahead to 2028, and the special role Leimert Park will play in welcoming African nations and the larger diaspora during the L.A. Olympics. He’d been part of the Electronic Cafe during the 1984 Olympics, using then-new technology to connect people across the city via art. And he’d traveled with other community leaders to Paris in 2024 to deepen diaspora connections, exchange strategies in creative placemaking, and cultivate global partnerships ahead of 2028. He was eager to see the communities come together in ways that showcased Leimert Park’s cultural significance and uplifted the very people that had made it so special.
He also had one or more book projects in mind.
There is, of course, already a fantastic book about his life in art – the absolutely extraordinary KAOS Theory: The Afrokosmic Ark of Ben Caldwell (2023) by Robeson Taj Frazier, USC Professor of Communication and director of IDEA (the Institute for Difference and Empowerment in the Arts). But there were so many more stories, generational threads, musical threads, and connections between Indigenous, Black, and other communities to explore, Caldwell insisted.
Besides, he said, the first book hadn’t been so much about him as it was about laying out a roadmap for others to build their own arks and carry each other forward.
“That’s what I’ve always tried to do,” he said, both of the blueprints he had laid and the ones he was still drawing up. “I’ve always made it so other people could copy it.”
Join in the dedication celebration today, at the corner of Leimert Blvd and 43rd Place, at 9:30 a.m. Stick around for a full day of performances and art honoring Caldwell, starting at noon.
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