West Hollywood’s Cultural Vision for LA28: “Inventing Traditions” and Leading the Arts

Laura, could you elaborate on your collaboration with the City of West Hollywood, as you plan for an arts festival that plays to the strength of the city and its resources over the next three-plus years?

Laura Zucker: Well, West Hollywood is a visionary, forward-thinking city, and they realize that time is short. When they began this process, we were only four years out from the games. Now we're three, and they have a completed plan that’s the first and only completed plan, fully funded, for the cultural components leading up to and including the games.

Here with me is Rebecca Ehemann,  the head of the Arts Division for the City of West Hollywood, who made this planning effort happen. I was thrilled to be involved, along with the firm I work with, AEA Consulting.

Before delving into the Plan’s details, why is West Hollywood—a City of one-and-a-half-square-miles...the only LA Metropolitan jurisdiction planning and funding an Arts & Culture Olympics Hub, given the Games were awarded to Los Angeles six years ago?

Rebecca Ehemann: It’s a great question—why are we the only ones doing it? It’s really due to our supportive City Council and Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission that we can do this. We don’t wait for others to take the lead. We know West Hollywood is going to be an arts and culture hub during the 2028 Games, and we wanted to capitalize on that. We’re ​​approximately 1.9 square miles, with around 37,000 residents. Under the Council’s direction, we initiated this process last year to create a plan.

Have other jurisdictions in the region offered to collaborate with West Hollywood?

Ehemann: Support in the sense of cheerleading—like “yay, go!” But in other ways, we had participation from other jurisdictions during our community outreach sessions. We even had LA County Arts Commissioners involved, which was amazing. 

In addition to our own local arts ecosystem, our support came through communicating what we were doing. Other cities were actively interested and looking for ways to potentially partner down the line.

Turning to the nuts and bolts of West Hollywood’s Culture Olympics Plan, share how “Inventing Traditions” became the curatorial framework-theme?

Zucker: We knew that we needed a thematic framework to hold a very large, disparate group of activities—in the visual and performing, and media arts—together. We wanted to find something bespoke for West Hollywood, that connected to the Olympics and the Paralympics and their traditions, and that could work for a very broad variety of participants.

This concept rose to the top, coming directly from the fact that the Olympics, which ceased in their original incarnation in 400 AD with the Greeks, wasn’t revised until the early 19th century by the French. They’re essentially a reinvented tradition in and of themselves that has kept morphing and changing over time. And West Hollywood is a city that invented itself! This framework lives within our larger Los Angeles cultural and arts community, which is constantly inventing and reinventing cultural traditions—particularly through the fascinating mix of cultures that we have. When we tested this in an extensive series of community engagement activities, everyone just responded to it very positively. I’ve never seen such a response, and that encouraged us to dive deeper and deeper into it.

Elaborate on the selected theme…Inventing Traditions?

Ehemann: We’re inviting folks to take that on themselves—like, what does that mean to them? An artist's invented tradition could be something like Discofoot, dancers who are performing the game of soccer. That is in itself a reimagining of what the game of soccer looks like. We don’t have a defined viewpoint of what an invented tradition means, and we’re anticipating that artists will present inspired projects. 

Zucker: I want to give a couple of quick examples and then talk about the multiple levels this can work on. People don’t realize that Kwanzaa was invented in Long Beach, not that long ago, in 1966. The theme that we heard over and over again as part of the Paris Olympics was invented—it was written by John Williams for the 1984 L.A. Olympics, and it drew on a prior 1958 composition by French film and television composer Leo Arnaud, who based it on a military fanfare from the Napoleonic era.

An invented tradition can happen on a personal level. It can be asking ourselves—which we do all the time—how are we celebrating what’s coming up, Rosh Hashanah this year? How did my grandmother celebrate it? What do we want to continue? What do we want to morph and change for the future, to who we want to be?

It can be on the personal and familial level, but it can also be on a societal level: What is society? What is civilization? What is the democracy that we want to be, and how can we think about it? How can we keep what’s important to us and what’s great, and how can we morph and change to be who we want to be in the future?

Could you share what the City drew upon, perhaps regarding any past Olympics, in drafting its plans? 

Zucker: We did quite a bit of research on prior cultural Olympiads, and the one thing that they have in common is that they had very few elements in common. Each one was determined individually by the capital city represented and its strengths. We felt encouraged to, yes, think about not only what's the next move for the cultural community in L.A. since 1984, but also since 1932, right?

This is our third go-round, but what can we bring to the table as a Los Angeles creative community that's really going to be different for us now? That being said, there were elements from past cultural Olympiads that we have threaded. For instance, in Paris, some events were actively funded, but there were also opportunities for those who weren’t to propose events and be included in the marketing. That’s something that we’re hoping LA 28 will do—hoping.

With Plans about to be announced, what are the City’s goals? And what programmatic events should TPR readers expect to be hosted in the three years leading up to the LA28 Games?

Ehemann: First, West Hollywood sees culture and arts as economic drivers.

We know that arts-goers, arts participants, and artists all spend money. We did an Arts & Economic Prosperity study a few years ago and learned that every person who comes to the city will spend $50 above and beyond their cost of admission or a ticket, and that’s just a minimum. That translates into economic sense for the city to invest in this way, and then in the larger sense, the city is vested in the arts and culture economy, here to show that to the world and demonstrate that to the world. We’re a small city with a small footprint, but we pack a big punch and have an impact across the world.

Zucker: Although West Hollywood is not the site of any of the actual ‘28 Games, it will be hosting Pride House, which was handed off from Paris. It is essentially located as centrally to all the Olympic venues as you can get—and West Hollywood has some of the best hotels in the county.

Ehemann: Historically, West Hollywood has always been a place where culture is created, not just consumed. The City of Los Angeles will be hosting significant sporting events, so we capitalized on that, and we’re planning art activations as a way to get people excited about sport, but through an artistic lens. We’ll use it as a way to experiment with how we can engage with sports audiences as a city. We will design a fan zone for the World Cup, and we’ll use that fan zone space to present Discofoot among other programs. There are a lot of interdepartmental and symbiotic relationships happening throughout the city as we lead up to the 2028 Games.

During the Games themselves, we’re not intending to compete with any of the Games. During the actual two weeks of the Olympics—and then the Paralympics—the arts exploration and participation will be passive experiences. The city will be decorated, full of brand-new murals. We’ll have a new permanent art project. There’ll be a lot of things like that to experience, but the actual performances won’t conflict with any of the Games themselves. We’ll take advantage of the lead-up, the in-between.  

Zucker: We viewed the two weeks in between the Olympics and the Paralympics—which are the closest that they’ve ever been in alignment—as peak activity time for some of the tentpole events, in the hopes that people will decide to stay longer or come earlier.

Will there be international participation in West Hollywood’s Cultural Olympics?  

Ehemann: We're open to it, but we also recognize that there's so much talent that lives here, right in the L.A. region, and so we're going to focus on highlighting and celebrating our homegrown artists. If there are international partnerships or presentations proposed for the city, we’re open to that!

Our first event—Discofoot—is with an international company we’ve entered a partnership with, and the choreographers are coming in from France, but they’re going to work with L.A. dancers, so it’s an international-local collaboration.

Elaborate on the immersive experiences, events, installations…currently being envisioned. 

Zucker: West Hollywood already has remarkable cultural assets that can be amplified in the lead-up to 2028—among them, the city’s innovative digital art billboard program along Sunset Boulevard. Currently showcasing a select few dynamic displays, the City Council has reserved ten minutes at the top of every hour for curated art and public service content. 

The ambitious plan is to grow this initiative to 28 digital billboards by 2028. Just imagine the experience of driving down Sunset Boulevard as a living gallery—an immersive, uniquely West Hollywood showcase that no other city can replicate.

What about specific events for 2026?

Ehemann: In 2026, two art activations are planned. The first is in connection with the NBA All-Star Weekend. We will paint murals on our outdoor community-use basketball courts, highlighting the game of basketball through art. Then Discofoot will be presented in June to align with some of the World Cup games that are happening within the City of LA. 

Then, in the fall of 2026, it will be the 100th anniversary of Route 66. We are talking about partnerships with our neighboring cities: Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, City of L.A., Pasadena—on how or if there’s an opportunity for us to create artistic experiences together. 

Many Angelenos who watched the closing events of the Paris Olympics—particularly the video shown during the torch handoff from Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass—felt the presentation focused almost entirely on Hollywood entertainment, with little acknowledgment of LA’s broader, world-class arts and culture. Were they right?

Zucker: I agree that it represented a small slice of the cultural assets of Los Angeles, and I think one of the things we learned as we grew out of the 1984 Cultural Olympiad into the Los Angeles Festivals was how rich and deep our resources were. That’s what we saw in the progressive iterations of the Los Angeles Festival under the leadership of Peter Sellars and others.

One of the benefits of having local arts agencies and Cultural Affairs departments—like the City of West Hollywood—actually leading on this front, is that they have a real, deep respect and knowledge of the full range of cultural assets and will try to show the rest of the world the depth, breadth, and complexity of what arts and culture is in this region.

Before concluding, TPR would welcome your take on the LA28 Olympic Committee’s apparent inability to garner substantial financial support. If true, is planning for a 2028 ‘Cultural’ Olympics likely to be limited to local and regional artists and organizations? 

Zucker: That’s an important issue. I experienced the 1984 Cultural Olympiad, and it was amazing. I was also running a small theater at the time, so I know firsthand how critical the bringing in of these luminary international performances was, and how transformative it was in terms of challenging the Los Angeles creative community to get to the next place.

Now, 50 years later, LA’s cultural community is in a completely different place. We are, in many respects, setting the international standards and ideas for the rest of the world. While I think, given our longer timeline, it could have been pretty fabulous to seed and fund international partnerships and collaborations more substantively—and in fact, that was key to the original plan for the Cultural Olympiad that I helped shape, which was part of the bid proposal—we have lost that ramp and runway. I think there will be opportunities for international participation, but we’re here now, and I think the cultural community of Los Angeles—which, let’s not forget, is international in and of itself, and comes from all over the world—is world-class and in a place to do this.

Ehemann: Glad you said that. That was my thought exactly.

Lastly, TPR recently published a piece by Dan Rosenfeld recalling the creative, effective branding of LA84, while noting that preparations for the LA28 Olympic Games appear to be happening almost in secret—if at all. What explains West Hollywood’s ability to deliver what the City of Los Angeles and LA28 themselves seem unable to do so far?

Ehemann: This is what we do best. This is what West Hollywood does best. We take the lead. We experiment, and we put out bold ideas. This is—this is our comfort zone. This is our jam.

Zucker: Right, West Hollywood has taken the lead on so many issues. As Rebecca says, it's just in the DNA. And I do want to emphasize, because you brought this up earlier, how collaborative West Hollywood—and Becca—have been, particularly on this project. We’ve had exhaustive conversations with our neighboring local arts agencies and Cultural Affairs departments, and tried to include everybody in the conversation that we could.

Honestly, at this point, I think it’s going to be the local arts agencies—including the City of L.A.'s Department of Cultural Affairs, which plans to announce its plan pretty soon, in the next couple of weeks—who are going to be driving whatever happens. Luckily, this is a cohesive, collaborative community of strong cultural leaders who I think can pull it off.