Research

A study using qualitative methods to understand arts audiences in LA County.

This is the second study conducted by SMU DataArts for Arts and Culture, analyzing the demographics of the arts and cultural workforce in LA County.

Building Creative Career Pathways for Youth analyzes opportunities for youth in 70 creative occupations in the creative industries as well as programs designed to help youth access those jobs. This field scan found that Arts Education programs are nearly ubiquitous in the County, although not necessarily high quality nor equitably accessible to all residents.

Read our report on the 2016-17 Research and Evaluation Plan: what we did and why, and some key lessons we learned along the way.

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.

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. 

This study analyzes the demographics of the arts and cultural workforce in Los Angeles County—specifically, staff members, board, volunteers, and independent contractors associated with 386 cultural nonprofits, most of which receive funding from Arts and Culture, and/or seven other municipal funders in the County. The findings presented in this report are based on 3,307 unique responses to the DataArts Workforce Demographics survey, conducted from May 2016 - July 2016. Among the key findings:

Arts education across all 81 school districts in LA County has held steady since 2005/06, despite the recession and even as the total number of students enrolled in public schools has declined. That’s what Arts and Culture learned when analyzing data on arts courses, enrollment, and teachers that was reported by school districts to the California Department of Education (CDE).