For National City’s Ramel Wallace, care equals creativity

For more than a year, National City resident Ramel Wallace has opened his backyard for anyone looking for a venue — often sharing his space for free.

Wallace is heavily involved in San Diego, especially creative spaces. He hosts the monthly lecture series CreativeMornings at the San Diego Central Library; created a book club; voice acts; writes poetry and music; owns a business; works for a marketing company; co-founded a production organization centered around arts and education; serves on the San Diego African American Museum of Fine Art board; and even carves out 15 minutes of his time every Friday to chat with new people. 

inewsource sat down with Wallace last week on the importance of offering more community spaces in the South Bay.

I’d like to talk about your backyard and how fruitful it has been since you started offering it to the public as a venue space. Can you tell me about the types of gatherings you’ve been trying to host here?

I guess I’m just trying to tap into the community and see what they need. And as time changes, the community needs different things. So far there’s been birthday parties, and there’s a thing called the Park Takeover where kids come and they learn how to do art or propagate plants, maybe do floral decorations. There’s been kickbacks like a house party type of vibe.

Is your backyard open to the public for free? Or, are you accepting donations?

Yeah, mostly for the public for free. But if you’re selling a bunch of tickets or something, then we will just talk about how we can make things work. I’m very influenced by a solidarity economy and how to make money without capitalism and trust in my community and just saying, “How can we build something that’s equitable?” Maybe we do something for free the first couple of times and then we see what can work. 

After posting your open invitation to use your backyard for events, how many parties have you hosted so far?

Maybe two events per month. You got the Park Takeover, which is once a month, and then DJ Dandelion had an event, and you got the band that’s coming up next weekend. Then the hip hop show. So we got stuff planned ‘til about August. It’s just coming along. It’s like I’m counting it, but I’m not counting it. I’m just moving through my life.

How did you come up with the idea of offering your backyard as a venue space?

I think it’s just something that maybe I grew up with. From grandma sharing the house to LaRussell doing stuff in his backyard to people like Grace Lee Boggs. Oh yeah, and the Mexicans out here. People be having shows and events and parties and I’m like, “Yo, if they could do that next door and be partying until whatever time o’clock it is,” I’m like, “We could do that.” Plus I’ve lived in Brick Row for seven years, and it could look like different ways that we can get people access to this space. ‘Cause it’s a historic place. People have lived in National City their whole life, and they’ve never even seen it or know that people live here. And I never thought that that was something that’s fair. People should be able to access it and see it. The eventual goal is to turn this into a land trust: Have the nonprofit eventually own the space — and I’m shooting for the stars with this idea — and then have the space accessible to people in the community.

It’s a good segue to this next question: People complain about barriers to “third spaces,” which are places outside of work and home where people can mingle. Barriers can look like having money to pay to enter a space or just a reduction of them altogether. Are you essentially trying to fill this void in National City?

I just made a video making fun of the spaces. I said I’m in the 19th space about to go into outer space. People need space, people need venues, and they don’t need as much red tape to do these things. You have a venue, you have to cover the overhead, or you have to sell a certain amount of drinks, and there’s so many barriers just to be a person that provides the third space that the people don’t, people don’t even do it so that people can come out. Making it easier for those people that are active so that other people can come out is kind of the niche that I hope I’m filling.

Being from LA, I’ve personally found it kind of hard for me to find diverse spaces once I moved back here a couple years ago. Some friends express the same kind of struggle, especially for Black spaces. Has there also been a challenge for you? If so, I’d like to hear ways you might recommend other Black folks to find community within each other in the South Bay.

I’ve lived in San Diego my whole life, and finding other Black folks has always been a struggle. I suggest connecting with the organizations. I’m on the board at the San Diego African American Museum of Fine Art, and they might have different events that you could go out to, check out Black San Diego, and just bring those people to where you’re at. I’m in the South Bay, and I might invite people out here to meet each other. 

I was gonna also say: finding the blackness that’s within other people. A lot of people have blackness within their culture that they don’t recognize or that they don’t see. But Black folks, “We see when you Black.” We know our history. We know a lot of the slaves went down to South America. We know families lied to each other, and so we can see the connections that a lot of people don’t see. We’re aware of that, but a lot of other people ain’t aware of that. But we know you Black, we know when somebody Black. We might not tell you, but we know.

You host CreativeMornings, which is a monthly breakfast lecture series for creatives, and you are the first Black host for it. How has your identity influenced those meetings, if at all?

Well, I’m the first Black host, but I am only the second host of CreativeMornings out here. In 2017, creative meant white. You were white, you worked at an agency, it was a certain thing, and I always felt odd about this distinction of what a creative is. I knew so many creatives that were in healing, that were in social spaces, storytellers, rappers, poets. CreativeMornings started out as focusing on the creative agencies, and I took it to this space where it was looking at all the other creatives as well. We’ve had different people, from death doulas to spoken word poets, architects, all sorts of different creatives and looking at creativity as care — or care as creativity. One of the most creative things that you can do is actually care about someone. It’s been awesome. It’s our 10-year anniversary. I’ve hosted 50 of them. It’s been a blessing: so many dope voices, so many kind parts, so many amazing stories.

I read that you have some experience in education for over six years, and I wanted to kind of talk about how you’re able to reach younger audiences. You definitely have a very strong social media presence. For example, you’re really funny online. You’re hilarious.

Oh, thank you. I’m not as funny in person.

I disagree wholeheartedly. There’s a warmth in you that, at least personally, I think younger generations might find charming. Has that been influenced by your background in education, or are there ways that you’ve used that background to kind of reach younger audiences now?

I guess so. Um, I worked at Primetime for six years. It’s an after-school program, and it’s free. Child care is so expensive. It leans towards single-parent houses and military houses as well. You meet so many kids, and then you end up talking to the kids and you realize you’re talking to yourself. You realize how much adults and youth need to be given grace. We’re like big kids — we really are — but we just learn how to hide a lot of our emotions. I think one of my biggest powers is I’ll go up there flawed, and do it flawed, and people will see it and say, “If he could do it, then I could do it.” I think that’s a big thing. It doesn’t have to be as polished as people present it. People would always talk about it during 2020 but they don’t talk about it no more — that perfectionism is a form of white supremacy. I’m out there, I’m not being perfect — I do get my reps in, like CreativeMornings 50 times — but it’s not about being perfect and it’s not about being at the top of the totem pole. Showing up is such a big deal. And I feel like the younger generation wants to be encouraged to just show up and then everything else will emerge.

Speaking of showing up, you wear a lot of hats, and I’m wondering: How do you make time for everything?

I guess the word I keep hearing is “capacity-building” nowadays. How do you capacity-build? And I think for me at least, it’s designing the time. Usually I have my Friday dedicated to talking to people in the community, going out there and doing certain things. Then my mind kind of generalizes everything as the same thing. I work in PR — to me that’s storytelling; working with the museum, that’s storytelling and preservation of stories; CreativeMornings is storytelling. A lot of the things that I’m involved with is telling my story or giving a platform, say the backyard, to allow other people to tell their stories. They might tell their story through dance, through a birthday party. It’s like everything is just the same thing. 

Is storytelling your favorite creative outlet?

I don’t know how anything is not a story. I look at art as: artifacts articulate our arteries. The things that we create, the artifacts, they’re an articulation of our blood, sweat, tears, identity. We’re always trying to articulate who we are in some sort of way. And that is what the story is.

Thank you so much, Ramel, for your time. Is there anything else that maybe I didn’t ask you about that you’d wanna make sure that viewers take away from this conversation?

Who helps me with the backyard so much? Adela. She does all the herbs, and she’ll make soaps out of the herbs and things like that. So check her out.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.