The 2023/2024 LAPL Creators in Residence: Andy Crocker (left) and Shing Yin Khor
The library, in partnership with the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, has established a residency program, Los Angeles Public Library Creators in Residence, designed to engage creative Angelenos from a multitude of disciplines. The program supports local interdisciplinary creators and inspires new work informed or enhanced by the Los Angeles Public Library’s collections and services, while also highlighting the impact of the library as a creative haven.
The Los Angeles Public Library and the Library Foundation of Los Angeles are pleased to introduce our 2023/2024 Creators in Residence.
Andy Crocker is a live experience designer and director known for highly participatory, fun-forward pieces. With expertise in innovative storytelling, she’s worked with collaborators and clients from Noah’s Ark at the Skirball to Walt Disney Imagineering. Recent independent work includes the absurdist show/game Escape from Godot, the musical decluttering seminar Objectivity, the interactive pirate radio documentary 40 Watts From Nowhere, and Shower Thoughts, a mini-memoir styled after a Dr. Bronner’s soap label. Her mischievously uncategorizable projects have been recognized across industries, winning awards intended for escape rooms, immersive theatre, and themed entertainment.
Shing Yin Khor is a multidisciplinary graphic novelist, analog game designer, and installation artist exploring mythic Americana and new human rituals, at the intersection of race, gender, immigrant stories, and queerness. They are the author of The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66, one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year in 2019, and The Legend of Auntie Po, a 2022 Eisner Award-winner and a National Book Award finalist. Their games and immersive installations, such as the live mail game Remember August, which won the 2022 Indiecade Tabletop Award, and the guerrilla art performance The Gentle Oraclebird, create delightful interruptions in everyday life.
Proposed Projects
The new Creators’ proposed projects are set to deliver dynamic opportunities for creative public engagement. Andy Crocker will create a playful series of site-responsive, interactive installations at branch libraries, inviting patron participation to co-create a constellation of stories that could only take place in the library. Shing Yin Khor, inspired by the LAPL’s Map and Photograph collections, envisions a series of large-scale, hand-painted maps documenting historical and personal narratives from L.A.’s queer and immigrant diaspora communities.
Each Creator will receive a $20,000 honorarium, and will have the opportunity to work closely with LAPL and LFLA staff, explore the Library's extensive collections, utilize its facilities, and participate in programs while developing and executing their own original projects which are expected to be completed by summer 2024.
The LAPL Creators in Residence program operates on an 18-month cycle, and the next open call is expected to launch in late 2024 or early 2025. The two inaugural Creators in Residence were photographer Kwasi Boyd-Bouldin and interdisciplinary visual artist River Garza. In 2022, they created bodies of work deeply rooted in community and identity, which are on view in the First Floor Galleries at the Central Library. You can learn more about their residencies by visiting this link.
Questions? Please contact creators@lapl.org
This program is funded by the Library Foundation of Los Angeles with an endowment provided by the Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg Fund.