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A Message From Our Director
Canopy of Blossoms by Suzy Taekyung Kim. |
Dear Colleagues,
I want to first acknowledge the close of May, which marked both Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month and Mental Health Month! I am grateful to our many incredible grantees, artists, Creative Strategists, and partners who serve our AANHPI communities, and I am of course also very proud of our collaborators with whom we work at the intersection of arts, health, and recovery—including our growing Creative Wellbeing programs and resources.
It has been a productive month of all kinds of collaborations, in fact. The first-ever LA County Employee Wellness, Arts, and Culture Festival launched this month—a wonderful day that brought arts engagement and experiences to County employees, and was, I believe, a preview for the kinds of cross-departmental events we can work together to produce going forward.
We also hosted researchers, artists, advocates, colleagues, and community members at our Arts Datathon. I invite you to learn about both events below.
We look ahead now to a busy June, where we are participating in several Arts and Health Week events and convenings, which we will update you on soon. Given the array of County health departments, national and local health agencies, and new relationships with funders, and educators, I am thrilled to be engaged in a network of arts and health leaders and practitioners that I believe will change the way we incorporate the arts to build equity and access in our County services.
Onward!
Kristin Sakoda |
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LA County Employees Celebrate Wellness Through Arts and Culture
LA County Employee Artists attend the Inaugural LA COunty Employee Wellness, Arts, and Culture Festival. Photo by Monica Almeida. |
Earlier this month employees from all County departments, agencies, and offices were invited to the inaugural LA County Employee Wellness, Arts, and Culture Festival at the LA County Museum of Art (LACMA). The festival was the idea of artist christy roberts berkowitz, through her Creative Strategist residency with the County’s Department of Human Resources (DHR), where she has been focusing on developing arts-based strategies for employee wellness. The festival was implemented as an innovative collaboration between the Departments of Arts and Culture and Human Resources, with host partner LACMA, to support employee wellbeing, connection, and engagement—through the arts.
More than 1,500 employees made the arts, wellness, and creative expression part of their workday as they took part in a host of activities and exhibitions, including the first-ever LA County employee art exhibition. The artwork of more than 200 employees was displayed on digital screens—and we are still getting heartfelt emails from the employee artists, for whom the event was incredibly meaningful. LACMA recently posted a recap of the event on their Unframed blog, which includes all of the County employee artwork. We invite you to check out both the post and our photo album from the event on Flikr!
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Discovering a Great Datathon
Participants attend Arts Datathon Discovery at Inner-City Arts. Photo by Malik Daniels. |
On May 7 our annual Arts Datathon brought together arts administrators, artists, educators, data scientists, students, community advocates, researchers, and civic technologists from all over LA County to review, discuss, and examine how data continues to be so important to improving access to the arts. This year’s theme was “Discovery,” designed to focus on process rather than product, encouraging participants to explore and learn.
We'd like to take this moment to thank everyone who came out to Innner-City Arts and discovered (see what we did there?) the power of arts data with us. We invite anyone who may be interested in attending next year's Datathon to sign up for the mailing list below! |
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Upcoming Engagement Events Surrounding
'Inner Resources' by Paul Botello
Photo by Andrés Vázquez. |
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Come celebrate the conservation of the Inner Resources mural with us at City Terrace Park! The conservation team led by Site and Studio Conservation and the Civic Art Division have been hard at work over the past two months, cleaning, and conserving Paul Botello’s mural. As part of the Inner Resources Mural Conservation Apprenticeship Project, which selected emerging artists and conservators to participate in the conservation of the mural, we'll be offering four events that are open to members of the general public. Info below! |
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Conservation Tips for Muralists
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June 15, 2024Y | 11AM - 12PM
City Terrace Park, Social Hallk
1126 N Hazard Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90063
Creating murals that stand the test of time starts with community engagement, but is also predicated on choosing the right surface, compatible materials, and maintenance approach. In this free workshop, explore the fundamentals of assessing the environment as well as other potential risks that can affect your artworks, providing tools and tips to help artists minimize them. |
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The 2024 OGP Reporting Deadline is June 3!
Photo courtesy of the Ghost Road Company. |
Has your organization been awarded an Organizational Grant Program grant? Have you submitted your 2024 report on your grant-funded project yet? Don't forget to get your report in before the annual reporting deadline of June 3, 2024. To support you through this process, we offer workshops to review the annual grantee requirements and the online grant management portal.
Annual OGP Reporting webinars have been recorded for ease of access. Webinars will provide an overview of the reporting questions, required attachments and navigating the grant management portal. |
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| If you have questions or concerns, email us at grants@arts.lacounty.gov to schedule an appointment. |
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CALL FOR CONSULTANTS
Layered Histories, Boyle Heights by Jaime Scholnick. |
ARTS COMMISSION RETREAT PLANNER
The Department of Arts and Culture (the Department) seeks to solicit proposals for a contract with an individual or organization that can provide Strategic Planning, Retreat Planning, and Meeting Facilitation Services for the LA County Arts Commission.
The Consultant will plan, produce, coordinate, and facilitate a retreat for Arts Commissioners to consider their role and relationship to the Department and to identify strategic goals and/or priorities for the next three to five years. This consultant will maintain documentation of project as appropriate and develop a final report that includes recommendations for the Commission’s actions and priorities.
Proposals Due: June 5, 2024 | 4PM (PST)
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A New Round of Internships Launch June 1
Interns attend the 2019 Arts Internship Summit. |
We are pleased to announce that the third round of positions for the 2024 Arts Internship Program are now available! This program has been open since April 1, and will provide 228 university and community college students with paid on-the-job experience in the arts at over 160 nonprofit organizations across the LA region. What's more, all Arts Internship Program internships provide 400 hours of work experience at $17.28 an hour.
If you know an interested student (or students), please let them know to visit our website for the first group of available positions. Students will apply directly to the host organizations via the information found on our website. Positions will continue to be posted on a rolling basis through July 2024. |
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2024 LOS ANGELES COUNTY
ARTS AND HEALTH WEEK SUMMIT
(L- R) Director of the LA County Dept. of Arts and Culture, Kristin Sakoda; LA Opera Special Projects Advisor Renée Fleming; and NEA Chair Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson at the 2023 Arts and Health Summit. Photo by Samuel Cruz. |
Friday, June 14, 2024
Dorothy Chandler Pavillion
Hosted by LA Opera in collaboration with LA County Supervisor Hilda L. Solis; the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture; Healing Arts—an initiative of the Jameel Arts & Health Lab; and the World Health Organization (WHO), this unique, free summit offers conversations and participatory arts experiences, and promotes creative ways to approach wellness.
Thought leaders including arts practitioners, medical experts and administrators, policymakers, and researchers will be on hand for discussions and presentations that explore how the arts can equitably support health and wellbeing. The event features Special Projects Advisor for LA Opera, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Arts and Health, and acclaimed soprano Renée Fleming, among other notable advocates for the arts in healthcare. |
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IN BRIEF
- We are incredibly pleased to announce that our Arts Education and Youth Development Division has been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to receive an Arts Education/Collective Impact grant award of $100,000. This is the fourth year we have received NEA funding to support school districts in creating, updating, or implementing new Strategic Plans for Arts Education. In the year ahead (2024-25 school year), we expect to provide strategic planning coaches for up to 23 school districts, to support their thoughtful planning and implementation of increased arts instruction now possible through new funding from Proposition 28. For more information on other projects included in the NEA’s grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.
- We want to congratulate Los Angeles artist Mark Bradford on his receipt of the Getty Prize. This year, in a new twist, the Getty Prize invited its winner to select a nonprofit organization of their choosing to receive a $500,000 grant—and Mark selected the Arts for Healing and Justice Network, our longtime partner in our Arts Education Youth Development work providing arts programming for justice involved youth in County camps and halls, as well as a collaborator as we developed the Creative Wellbeing approach over the last several years.
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