Local Arts Spotlight: Junior High

[At Junior High] “whatever you can imagine is exactly what can happen in the space as long as that is by our ethos.” 

*This interview was edited for clarity and length.

Junior High is a non-profit 501(c)3 community arts space prioritizing the safety and expression of female, queer, nonbinary, and artists of color. Their physical space, publication, podcast, and other ventures function on principles of radical empathy, equity, and mutual aid.

Junior High L.A. moved to Glendale (603 S. Brand Blvd, Brand Blvd/Chestnut St) in early 2021 bringing with them a reputation for inclusion, art and community with a fresh sense of humor and a level of confidence and fun that is staggering. Their programs, workshops and events (which include a book club, poetry readings, figure drawing classes, Teach-In educational workshops and comedy shows just to name a few) perfectly complement their ethos and aesthetic. 

I spoke with Eden Hain, General Manager and Booker at Junior High, about their space, goals and programs.

Could you tell me a little bit about your role in Junior High and how you got started with there?

I went to the very first fundraiser before there was a store because my best friend in the world saw Faye (Orlove), the founder and director of Junior High, at a Staples making copies of the flier for the very first fundraiser. I booked four shows with Junior High in the first year, and was booking shows annually with Junior High every year since. I was in bands; I was always going to shows. Faye’s more in the visual-gallery-arts type of scene, so it was a really great way of strengthening each other's weaknesses and we just became really good organizers together. So that’s how I got into it!

Can you explain the ethos of Junior High?

The ethos of the space is to make a space to create, and to foster empathy within the community, for the space that we take up, physically in Glendale as well as empathy for one another.

I was going through the mission statements and "radical empathy" came up and I thought that was such a perfect phrase for what Junior High is all about.

Yeah! I completely, completely agree. We're always, especially in these Covid times, and in this post Trump-era, understanding how we got to the place that we are today, and today changes every day. When coming into this new space in Glendale, we were thinking a lot about how we can protect our staff, protect our community, protect our volunteers and thinking about what it means to be radically empathetic, what it means to really be an anti-police establishment, what it means to be a place that is quite provocative in merchandise and in thought. Not everything that we do is correct, and I think that is also important to own your mistakes and think "you know what we can’t be right every time, we’re fallible people."

Junior High moved from Hollywood to Glendale during the pandemic, correct?

Yes, well sort of. I would say it was post vaccination, that was when we signed the lease. We didn't know what was the future of physical events. We sort of took a step back from signing the lease and then after Faye got vaccinated that’s when we went back to the space in Glendale. I drove by and thought "nothing is happening soon, but this place is still perfect" and that's when Faye signed the lease.

I remember hearing Junior High hit a snag when you moved to Glendale, was it a zoning issue or permits?

We found this really bizarre loophole. Our space was zoned for either a gym or fitness studio, a car sales place, an auto mechanic, and randomly a museum. What all of these things have in common, I don't know.

Then we just got it into our heads, why are we a gallery, why are we not a museum? We put on exhibitions and sometimes will sell art, and when we do, we make zero profit off of the art, 100% of sales of every piece of art in every exhibition goes entirely to the artist. We started putting together a permanent collection because what does every museum have? A permanent collection.

We had so much [resistance] from local Glendale government, we thought, there's no reason why you’re not allowing us to be in the space, and we actually feel that not allowing us to be in this space is both sexist and homophobic. We were hearing from Out Magazine’s LGBTQ chapter in Glendale that the last gay bar of Glendale just closed. So there was clearly a yearning for a space. I think over 600 emails were sent from not only L.A., not only from Glendale, but all over. We had a lot of the community behind us saying there is no reason why you should be gatekeeping your neighborhood, and after all that, they said it's fine.

It was the big push to get everybody to write to the City of Glendale and say let’s make sure that this place can open.

Could you speak to the types of programming and why it's important to offer those types of things? When I checked the calendar I found a vast range of programs; a book club, comedy shows, music,  AA meetings for people in marginalized communities, workshops, and figure drawing classes. I read about something in the newsletter called Community Cuts. where your favorite hairdressers are offering haircut services to the community for free. 

I learned that Junior High is anything that you want it to be. It is such an open space, there's no staging, whatever you can imagine is exactly what can happen in the space as long as it is by our ethos. The most wonderful thing is that 80% of our programming right now is coming from the community, it's our board members and our staffers saying we’re sober and we want to have space for sober people here or comedy shows. All of the comedy shows are completely booked by local bookers and those are our most diverse bookers that we have for any of our shows.

Community Cuts is something that has been happening for four years now. I don't know how it originated except all of the staff, even all our friends were getting our haircut by Sarah and so we thought we should keep doing this. She does really amazing community work. Just this past weekend she did free haircuts for unhoused people where she cut hair for 6 hours and I’m sure would keep cutting hair as long as the sun was out. The majority of our programming really is [due to] the spirit and tenacity of the community.

I don't want you to play favorites but I will--do you have a personal favorite recurring program or show or event at Junior High?

That’s really difficult. I would probably say the Non-Denominational Winter Holiday show, which my friends and I put together because Rhiannon, who introduced me to Faye, and I both have December birthdays and we're both Jewish. So we put it together as a sort of like, "We're Jews but not everyone has to be Jewish here!" It's a tongue-in-cheek thing. We also this week have our tenth Night of Queer Expression, which has been incredible because it has been happening since we were in Hollywood. It used to be $5 a pop and now its $15 because the scope of the whole thing has grown so massively.

I would probably say my last favorite thing is Art Club--it's brand new and it's held by two of our staffers - Chelsea and Juliana. It's amazing seeing how they put their strengths and connections together to build something that we’ve been doing at the space, (craft fairs) making it into something that is more formalized and just really cool! Also I can't not shout out Mads Gobbo at Hand Follows Eyes doing Send Nudes and the No Nudes [figure drawing] workshops which have sold out every single time. [It’s] a favorite because A) people love it and B) it's not like anything else in L.A. currently or in Glendale currently. I'm so honored that people trust us to put on these events and choose us to do it.

That's fantastic. What an interesting range of things that this place offers and it seems like everything is popular.

Now I think people are just so excited to not be in the house. Everything is really cool, we can be engaged with art and with community and I'm really really excited. I didn't even bring up Teach-In's, I went to our second one the other day and I was crying because I was so moved by how many people were ready and willing to absorb information from a really incredibly guest speaker. It was a thing that we had received so much pushback on and something that no brand was interested in helping us fund and helping us start. When it started and I saw so many people taking notes and asking really incredible questions; I was very emotional. It was really really amazing to see how this organization has shifted and changed and grown with how society and culture needs it to.

Just to clarify - can you explain Teach-in?

Teach-In, comes from this 1960’s term, you may have also heard of "Sit-Ins" or "Love-In's"-- typically it's this form of peaceful resistance that encourages education as a form of resistance.   A Teach-In is a way of democratizing information and saying everyone deserves to have this information. It's a free workshop series that allows the community to learn different skills, sometimes it's finance, sometimes it's “what should a book deal look like.”

Thanks to Eden Hain for spending their time answering these questions for us, thank you to Faye Orlove for being the brain-child behind such a unique, fun and necessary space in Glendale, and thank you to all the entire Junior High team for putting tireless hours into the operation.

Check Out Junior High’s CALENDAR for upcoming events, and don’t be shy about stopping by their space, 603 South Brand Boulevard.

The first time I heard about Junior High, was through your incredible bumper stickers; the ones that read My Gay Child Has Perfect Attendance at Junior High in Los Angeles, and my personal favorite - My Queer Daughter Forged My Signature at Junior High in Los Angeles (designed by Faye Orlove), which shows such a great sense of humor and pride.