The Los Angeles County Arts Commission Lacac Seeks a Fulltime Arts Education Coordinator

Arts Access in Fifty.A.

A county arts-and-civilization program aims for equity

In April 2017, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission (LACAC) appear a monumental new Cultural Equity and Inclusion Initiative (CEII), which includes 13 recommendations to the 50.A. County Lath of Supervisors intended to "ensure that anybody in L.A. Canton has equitable access to arts and culture" and to "improve inclusion in the wider arts ecology for all residents in every community."

The initiative wasn't merely a hopeful shot in the dark on the part of activists—the county itself chosen for it, back in Nov of 2015.

The recommendations comprehend areas such equally cultural policy, the use of inclusive language, internships and training, workforce evolution, and equity and inclusion in arts funding, programming, audition development, and arts education.

"Anybody is very hopeful of moving the needle, so to speak," says LACAC executive director Leticia Buckley of the initiative and its recommendations, "and ensuring that in that location ends up being more accessibility for folks to engage in the arts in every neighborhood beyond the county."

The CEII's full 116-page report was the result of an 18-month process conducted past an informational committee of 36 various community leaders, led by three co-chairs—Tim Dang, Helen Hernandez, and Maria Rosario Jackson—well-known arts leaders in L.A. The committee conducted fourteen boondocks hall meetings in locations around the county, during which a total of 650 participants shared their experiences with, and ideas almost, canton arts programs.

The informational committee also formed working groups to further talk over and hone ideas near equity and inclusion in 5 key target areas: the boards of directors of cultural organizations, arts system staffing, arts audiences and participants, arts programming, and artists/creators. More data and information were captured through the first-ever 50.A. County–broad demographic survey of the arts and cultural workforce, which measured the diverseness of boards, staff, volunteers, and contractors.

Finally, to determine all-time practices and assess the electric current state of knowledge about inclusion and cultural disinterestedness, the committee consulted with peer groups in cities like New York and San Francisco, and conducted a total literature review.

The public procedure that LACAC conducted to formulate the CEII'south recommendations was critical to its completion, simply even more than important was what Buckley calls "the perfect storm" of county back up for the initiative, which promises to requite it a real and practical impact. Subsequently all, since it was the L.A. County Board of Supervisors who originally directed LACAC to behave the study and formulate a set of recommendations, the initiative marks a rare opportunity for effective policy to emerge.

"Above all," says Buckley, "we actually wanted to walk abroad with real, actionable items. It was very important all along that this was not going to be another gathering of arts and culture folk having a conversation virtually lack of diversity or anything else with nix to prove at the end of it."

Political realities are political realities, however. The applied steps associated with the 13 recommendations imply an increment of $20.5 million in county arts funding in the first twelvemonth. In June, the Board of Supervisors, citing "budget uncertainties at the state and federal levels," approved funding for only five of the recommendations, dedicating a bit more than than $1.ane million to establishing a cultural policy for the county, requiring canton arts grantees to prefer equity plans, expanding paid arts internships for community college students, developing work-based arts learning opportunities for teens, and placing artists in paid positions as artistic strategists to solve social bug.

While the allocations savage far brusk of the CEII'due south recommendations, the LACAC remains hopeful that the county board volition work toward realizing what are, subsequently all, its own equity and inclusion goals past funding additional recommended programs in future years. "What's of import is that this conversation isn't about the arts only," says Leticia Buckley. "Information technology is virtually access and disinterestedness for residents and citizens in 50.A. County. With the idea that the arts are embedded in everything we practise, it'due south important to know that this is another tool in the tool kit to ensure that people are receiving equitable distribution of resource and access."

Michael Fallon is a Los Angeles–raised, Twin Cities–based arts writer who is the writer of two books, includingCreating the Future: Art and Los Angeles in the 1970s (Counterpoint Press, 2014). He is as well the executive director of Paw Papermaking, Inc.

Featured in Public Art Review #57.

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