Hollywood Has Spirit brings LA creatives together this holiday season.

Hollywood Has Spirit isn’t just a night out. It’s a statement about keeping Los Angeles alive as a place where creative work actually happens.

On Thursday, December 18, Hollywood Has Spirit: An Entertainment Creatives Bar Crawl takes over Highland Park, bringing together filmmakers, artists, and media workers across film, television, theater, games, podcasts, and digital media for a multi-venue evening built around connection, movement, and shared ground.

Running from 7:00–10:00 p.m. PT, the event unfolds across several venues along York Boulevard. The night opens with four simultaneous mixers—Development, Production, Post-Production, and Entertainment + Media—reflecting the full creative pipeline. Attendees choose a starting point and circulate freely, creating organic overlap between disciplines that rarely gather in the same room.

Unleash creative energy

The evening culminates with the Final Cut Mega Mixer at The Hermosillo, where the entire crowd converges for a unified close.

More than 100 confirmed special guests appear on the promotional lineup, each bringing their own creative networks into the mix. Confirmed creatives include Michael P. Shawver (Sinners, editor), Matthew Claybrooks (Lil Kev, co-creator), and Briana Jorgenson (The Rehearsal, costume designer), among many others actively shaping today’s entertainment landscape.

What sets Hollywood Has Spirit apart is its alignment with organizations whose work extends far beyond one night—none more critical than Stay in LA.

Keep LA working

Stay in LA is a grassroots advocacy movement focused on a single, urgent mission: keeping film and television jobs in Los Angeles. As runaway production and aggressive tax incentives elsewhere continue to drain work from the city, Stay in LA advocates for below-the-line workers whose livelihoods depend on consistent local production. Their efforts center on modernizing California’s incentives, educating policymakers, and building solidarity across crafts at a moment when fragmentation threatens the workforce itself.

Every production that leaves LA impacts editors, grips, costumers, sound mixers, drivers, and countless others. Stay in LA frames this not as sentimentality, but as economic reality—when production leaves, communities hollow out.

Their partnership with Hollywood Has Spirit grounds the event in that reality. Networking here isn’t abstract. It’s infrastructure. These gatherings keep workers visible, connected, and engaged at a time when isolation has become one of the industry’s most dangerous byproducts.

Ignite the unseen potential

Additional partners include The California Post Alliance (CAPA) and Outside In Theatre, reinforcing the event’s broader commitment to strengthening the local creative economy from the ground up.

Hollywood Has Spirit doesn’t offer panels or pitches. It offers something more elemental: shared space, movement, and conversation across the entire entertainment ecosystem—reminding the industry that Los Angeles still has its spirit, and it’s worth fighting for.

Show your support for below-the-line crews—show up, connect, and spark the creative collaborations that keep Los Angeles working.