Great Leap, Inc.

Great Leap, Inc. is a Los Angeles-based multicultural arts organization that uses art as both performance and creative practice in order to deepen relations among people of diverse cultures and faiths and transform how we live on the earth. Great Leap, Inc. collaborates and creates with professional artists, fosters new leadership in the arts by mentoring emerging artists, and builds community through its workshops, residencies and performances. Great Leap’s socially conscious cultural projects have included: A Slice of Rice, Frijoles, and Greens, developed in response to the cultural conflicts which led to the LA uprisings in 1992. Featuring stories of Asian, Latino, and African-American artists, it continues to tour today. To All Relations Project, a community residency program developed in 2000 used arts to bring together people of diverse cultures to share their stories and cultures. It created residencies in Phoenix, AZ, Watts and Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, and Appalachia and with the urban gardeners in Detroit. Responding to the religious divides created by 9/11, Great Leap presented workshops to bring communities of different faiths together. It produced Leaps of Faith, a theater piece created from personal stories of artists of diverse spiritual paths. In 2009, Leaps of Faith was performed at the Parliament of World’s Religions in Melbourne, Australia. In 2009, Great Leap began to address the environmental crisis in its COLLABORATORY workshop process, and 2010 created its first music video, "B.Y.O. CHOPSTIX," a humorous look at the perils of disposable chopsticks on the environment. Says Founder and Artistic Director Nobuko Miyamoto, "I believe there is no better way than the arts to open the cultural, racial and economic chasms which abound. We have a powerful creative tool to educate, entertain, and transform our world."