The Department of Arts and Culture’s Civic Art Division invites artists and artist teams to submit qualifications for the LA River Headwaters Canoga Park Civic Art Project. The opportunity is for a site-specific artwork composed of multiple artist-designed interpretive signage and hardscape elements along a quarter-mile trail.

This is the first civic art opportunity along the Los Angeles River. This project highlights themes outlined in the 2022 LA River Master Plan and input from 2021- 2022 Headwaters Area Project Community Engagement Plan meetings. The Department of Arts and Culture seeks to prioritize the histories and natural environment of the river, in particular as they pertain to the First Peoples.

Creating this artwork, artists are encouraged to explore shared resources and the spaces required to deepen our connection with the LA River. How can we bridge our past with our future? How can we become better stewards of the land and enhance our natural environment?

The County of Los Angeles recognizes that we occupy land originally and still inhabited and cared for by the Tongva, Tataviam, Serrano, Kizh, and Chumash Peoples. We honor and pay respect to their elders and descendants—past, present, and emerging—as they continue their stewardship of these lands and waters. We acknowledge that settler colonization resulted in land seizure, disease, subjugation, slavery, relocation, broken promises, genocide, and multigenerational trauma. This acknowledgment demonstrates our responsibility and commitment to truth, healing, and reconciliation and to elevating the stories, culture, and community of the original inhabitants of Los Angeles County. We are grateful to have the opportunity to live and work on these ancestral lands. We are dedicated to growing and sustaining relationships with Native peoples and local tribal governments.

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