Report and Documentary Highlight Benefits of Artworks for Civic Engagement Four Projects in South LA Represent Shift Towards “Art As Infrastructure”

Building on the success and excitement surrounding LA’s first-ever Arts Datathon in 2017, the LA County Arts Commission presents Arts Datathon: Collections, which aims to explore collections data as a way to increase access to the arts. This event brings together artists, curators, civic hackers, educators and arts administrators from across the region to explore collections data on topics from military memorabilia to street art.

Now in its 18th year, the LA County Arts Internship Program will provide 179 university and community college students with paid on-the-job experience at over 100 arts organizations across LA County this summer.

Artist Sandy Rodriguez was placed as an artist in residence at the Recuperative Care Center at the Martin Luther King Medical Campus in Willowbrook, CA, in 2016/17. This residency was part of a $1.6 million investment in Civic Art funded through the LA County Percent for Art policy. A final evaluation report on the residency is available now.

On Saturday, April 22, 2017, nearly 150 participants, speakers, volunteers, and observers assembled in downtown LA to spend the day exploring how data can be used to improve access to the arts for all ten million residents of Los Angeles County. This report tells the story of what we did, and provides a toolkit for others who want to do their own datathon.

Report includes 13 Actionable Strategies

89.3 KPCC ​By Priska Neely

This report outlines the Cultural Equity and Inclusion Initiative, an 18-month public process that led to the development of 13 recommendations to the LA County Board of Supervisors to ensure that everyone in LA County has equitable access to arts and culture, and to improve inclusion in the wider arts ecology for all residents in every community. 

89.3 KPCC By Priska Neely

Recent research has found that across the US, arts audiences are declining, while arts participation is on the rise. How can both be true at the same time? This review of the literature on Public Engagement in the Arts explores this question.