Eden Night Live | Ashland, CA (2016)
September 27, 2018
“When Sheriff Ahern and his deputies says, ‘Hey, jobs matter; parks matter; the arts and culture matter; the built environment matters, specifically from a public safety perspective,’ it can be powerful and persuasive bully pulpit… We have played a key role in attracting resources and attention to our neighborhoods, and in reframing police-community relations.”
– Captain Marty Neideffer, Almeda County Sheriffs Office
Eden Night Live: Creative Placemaking, Cops, and Community
The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office is recognized as a national leader in progressive public safety, using community development, authentic relationship building, sports, arts, and recreation to help transform disinvested neighborhoods in urban unincorporated areas of the county. The Deputy Sheriffs’ Activities League (DSAL) has been a synergistic component of this work, using its flexibility as a nonprofit and its programs for adults and youth to complement the community-oriented and problem-solving policing work that the Sheriff’s Office is pursuing.
DSAL has collaborated with the Sheriff’s Office, the Chamber of Commerce, community groups and artists to build Eden Night Live – an ongoing seasonal pop-up community festival that uses arts, sports, food, and local entrepreneurship to transform a vacant lot on Mission Boulevard in unincorporated Cherryland into a safe place of creativity, expression, community, and joy.
Using ArtPlace funds, DSAL will now implement a community-driven process that will allow residents and the Sheriff’s Office to transform an additional vacant lot along the East 14th Street-Mission Boulevard Corridor into a thriving and safe cultural space, and potentially to find a permanent home for Eden Night Live.