The mission of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture is to advance arts, culture, and creativity throughout LA County. We fulfill our mission by providing services and support in areas including grants and technical assistance for nonprofit organizations; professional development opportunities; commissioning civic artworks and managing the County’s civic art collection; implementing countywide arts education initiatives; research and evaluation; career pathways in the creative economy; free community programs; and cross sector creative strategies that address civic issues. This work is framed by the County’s Cultural Equity and Inclusion Initiative and a longstanding commitment to fostering access to the arts.
Publications
January 22, 2018 Announcements, Arts Ecology, For Data Geeks, Publications, Research, Research & Evaluation
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.
December 26, 2017 Civic Art, Equity & Access, Placemaking & Cross-Sector, Publications, Research, Research & Evaluation
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.
The LA County Arts Education Profile survey was administered to all 2,277 public schools in LA County to learn about the quantity, quality and equity of arts education. We found that nearly every school offers at least some arts instruction, and most schools offer at least two disciplines. At the same time, we found troubling inequities that reflect disparities in the wider society.
August 16, 2017 Arts Ecology, Equity & Access, For Data Geeks, Professional Development, Research & Evaluation
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.
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.
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.