Every year, the Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission selects three community members to recognize Native American Heritage Month. As we close November, we recognize this year’s honorees: Kenny Ramos—Spirit of Creativity, Cynthia Ruiz—Spirit of Community, and Chief Anthony Morales—Spirit of Tradition. We're proud to be the home of the LANAIC and congratulate the honorees on their contributions to culture and community.

This October, in a first-of-its-kind partnership with the County’s Anti-Racism, Diversity, and Inclusion Initiative (ARDI) and the LA City/County Native American Indian Commission, we honored Indigenous People’s Day by supporting two cultural events with The Music Center and Indigenous-led arts organization Chapter House that provided artmaking, cultural activities, music, food, and more to foster awareness, respect, and understanding of the ongoing cultural contributions of Indigenous people. Thank you to all the partners, artists, and community.

First, for September, we recognize Hispanic Heritage Month, as declared in this motion by Supervisors Hilda L. Solis and Janice Hahn. We celebrated by uplifting some incredible artists with work on display in Whittier’s Los Nietos Community Senior Center, and collaborating with LA Plaza de Cultural y Artes, Michelin starred Chef Gilberto Cetina, City of Paris, and Food Temple to highlight food as culture as part of our LA/Paris Cultural Olympiad artistic collaboration projects.

It’s summer, of course, but it’s also Grants Season! Our flagship Organizational Grant Program (OGP) and the innovative Community Impact Arts Grant opened this week, and the Arts Internship Grant opens September 10.

What a month! As we take in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, we were pleased to announce the 2024 Cultural Olympiad Poster Competition in a special Board of Supervisors presentation honoring the dazzling creativity of LA and Paris student artists and their art schools. Explore Newsletter

This month, we convened researchers, funders, and practitioners for LA County Arts and Health Week, rolled out a new Arts and Culture department logo, launched more Arts Internship positions, released a program evaluation of the Creative Wellbeing initiative, and have an opportunity for organizations with creative career programs to add your listing to Creative Careers Online—you can explore these updates below.

I want to first acknowledge the close of May, which marked both Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month and Mental Health Month! I am grateful to our many incredible grantees, artists, Creative Strategists, and partners who serve our AANHPI communities, and I am of course also very proud of our collaborators with whom we work at the intersection of arts, health, and recovery—including our growing Creative Wellbeing programs and resources…

What an Arts Month it has been! It began with a motion by Chair Lindsey Horvath and Supervisor Solis declaring April as Arts Month in LA County, praising the artists, creatives, educators, organizations, and advocates vital to arts and culture, and highlighting our decades of continued work to ensure the people of Los Angeles County have access to arts. This motion, and other motions before it, also called for support in expanding our flagship Organizational Grant Program (OGP), which supports over 650 cultural and arts organizations of all sizes.

As we close out March, Women’s History Month, on behalf of the Department I acknowledge the vital and vibrant contributions of all the female-identifying artists, arts leaders, culture bearers, creative workers, and community advocates throughout LA County! Just above this note, for instance, is artist Rebecca Méndez with the artwork she created for our Civic Art Collection at the Greater Whittier Regional Aquatic Center, and below, we highlight news about the film of our Arts Commissioner, Pamela Bright-Moon.

This February we recognized Black History Month and its national theme of African Americans and the Arts. We celebrate all artists, organizations, artworks, and individuals that uplift African American and Black arts, culture, and history here in Los Angeles County. This year, I had the additional honor of being the keynote speaker for the Los Angeles County African American Employees Association gala, following a performance of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" by youth from Arts and Culture grantee Amazing Grace Conservatory!

I am grateful that LA County recognizes that arts and culture strengthen the quality of life and the social and economic development of our people and communities. The Countywide Cultural Policy, adopted by the Board in 2020, serves as a roadmap for how the County and its departments can ensure that every resident has meaningful access to arts and culture… Learn More

In our final newsletter of 2023, I wanted to celebrate our many accomplishments, which this year, I believe, share a connective thread—we provided resources, tools, and professional development so that individuals and organizations could build equity through the arts in their own lives and work...

This November, as the home of the Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission (LANAIC), the LA County Department of Arts and Culture is proud to acknowledge Native American Heritage Month, a time to highlight and lift up the cultural contributions of the American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) community

October is national Arts and Humanities Month! At the Department of Arts and Culture, we envision LA County as a region where arts, culture, and creativity are integral to every aspect of civic life for all people and communities.

Happy Hispanic Heritage Month! This month, the Department of Arts and Culture uplifts LA County’s Hispanic and Latino/a/x artists, nonprofits, educators, and culture bearers with celebratory social media and a digital art kit from artist Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia. September is also Deaf Awareness Month, and we're pleased to also feature a beautiful site-specific mural at ICA LA...

As summer comes to a close, I am happy to share that #LACountyArts Grants Season is here...

The LA County Department of Arts and Culture’s grant programs have been a standard-bearer of support for the Los Angeles region's arts and creative ecosystem for decades, but never as much as now...

This month I am delighted to share the Arts Education Collective’s 20th Anniversary Celebration Book, which highlights two decades of advancing equity in arts education...

For May, we want to first recognize the contributions of our Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, artists, cultural organizations, and partners for AAPI Heritage Month…

As always, we are proud to support LA County’s dynamic arts field and have lots of news to share.

This Spring is filled with renewal and regeneration! Our programs are in full swing: the Arts Internship Program launches soon, and we are busy planning the return of the Arts Datathon.

I want to first acknowledge February is Black History Month and celebrate Los Angeles County’s Black-identifying artists, creators, and organizations making cultural contributions to our collective history, our present, and our future...

I wish all of you a Happy New Year! We are happy to share that Creative Recovery LA, our grant initiative that directs over $26 million in American Rescue Plan funds to local arts nonprofits, is well underway. There are a few remaining workshops designed to assist applicants, opportunities for office hours, and lots of resources on our website. The application is open now, and closes February 15.

The final newsletter of the year is an opportunity both to reflect and to look forward to the new year. Perhaps most urgently for the field, we are getting ready to open applications to Creative Recovery LA in January. In this unprecedented funding investment, we will award over $26 million in American Rescue Plan funds to deliver financial relief and recovery to the LA County nonprofit arts and culture sector. It is an incredible opportunity for local nonprofits, with an equity lens, and I am proud of our team working to deliver public funding for the arts where it's needed most. Help us spread the word.

This year, the Department of Arts and Culture celebrates its 75th anniversary. We started as the Music Commission created by the Board of Supervisors back in 1947, and over 75 years we've grown alongside—and often in response to the needs of—Los Angeles County’s dynamic arts and culture landscape. I thank Chair Holly Mitchell and Board of Supervisors for recognizing this milestone and five honorees.

There are exciting changes at the LA County Department of Arts and Culture! In the County, the budget process has several phases. This fall, the Board of Supervisors passed the Supplemental Budget with great news for arts and culture—we are thrilled to receive our budget request in full, and then some, including six new staff positions in our Research and Evaluation, Civic Art, Communications, and Grants divisions, as well as a new Arts Commission Manager role. Each of these new roles will advance equity in the arts in the Department and help us get more programs, opportunities, announcements, and data to you our cultural community. I am thankful this Board wants to invest in arts, culture, and creativity, and I am also very grateful for our wonderful Arts Commissioners and their tireless advocacy during the budget process.

It is a busy time of year for all of our divisions, as you can see in the updates below. Our Civic Art Division’s Illuminate LA initiative launched this month, with a first panel, "Current State of Monuments." Three of our grant programs are open, and we have been thrilled to get queries from organizations that have never applied before. We are also getting ready to for the I.D.E.A. WAVE workshops for education practitioners next month.

I write with huge pride and excitement with the news that the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a motion by Supervisors Solis and Kuehl to adopt the Cultural Policy Strategic Plan! As you may have read in earlier dispatches, this is an important next step in our ongoing work to expand cultural equity and access across LA County. Once again, thank you for you for input and advocacy. Please check out our press release in the body of this newsletter.

In this month's newsletter, we are thrilled to share the Countywide Cultural Policy Strategic Plan for Los Angeles County. I am grateful to Supervisors Hilda Solis and Sheila Kuehl, who directed us to develop a plan to implement the Cultural Policy, and to our community for your input, advocacy, and participation. We will share updates soon…

We first acknowledge last month's Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month which we celebrated by uplifting a few of the many remarkable artists and organizations of the AAPI community. We also acknowledge May as Jewish American Heritage Month, as well as June as Pride Month, and recognize all of the rich cultural diversity we have the honor of engaging through the arts here in Los Angeles County—year round. Looking ahead, we are excited to continue to expand our work catalyzing cross-sector arts collaboration to advance equity across civic life.

Thank you for celebrating April as Arts Month! This year, it was launched by a Board of Supervisors motion, authored by Chair Holly J. Mitchell and Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, to designate Arts Month, recognize the role of arts in the work of healing and recovery from COVID-19, and continue the County’s work of ensuring that all the benefits of, and opportunities provided by, the arts are accessible to everyone.

As we advance arts, culture, and creativity under the leadership of the historic all-female Board of Supervisors, I want to wish you a happy close to Women’s History Month! We have spotlights of two incredible women below that we’re proud to have in the Department of Arts and Culture family, Arts Commissioner Madeline Di Nonno, the President and CEO of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, and Pat Gomez, an artist and Project Manager whose career has brought incredible opportunity and support to the LA public art world…

I want to first acknowledge February's Black History Month and all our Black-identifying colleagues, communities, artists, and grantees who bring their experience, change agency, and cultural contributions to the LA County field I am so proud to work in.…

As we enter the new year and face its promise and its challenges, we continue to lean in to key themes of recovery, sustainability, and equity. To that end, I invite you to engage in our latest work…

This December, we are reminded these are challenging times, to be sure. Yet I look back on 2021 with a sense of pride and accomplishment about the work at the Department of Arts and Culture, and the resiliency of the LA County arts and culture community. It was a year that required delays and pivots, but also revealed unique moments of opportunity. We stepped up. We acted quickly to support the arts sector, we secured record levels of funding for recovery initiatives, we adopted landmark arts policies, and we continued to advance equity as LA County's artists and cultural organizations delivered healing, engagement, art, and opportunities for reflection and joy…

Earlier this month, a motion authored by Chair Hilda L. Solis proclaimed November as Native American Heritage Month. In keeping with Los Angeles County’s priority of cultural and racial equity, and in recognition of our American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) communities, this month I feature our ongoing collaboration with the LA City/County Native American Indian Commission (NAIC)…

Our Department advances arts, culture, and creativity in and throughout Los Angeles County. As a local arts agency we strive to be reflective of and responsive to the communities in the jurisdiction we serve. Yet, as you will see below, we are also incredibly proud to have LA County's local arts and cultural innovations represented on the national and international stage…

As we work together toward recovery in the creative sector, it is important to celebrate the wins. I am thrilled to share the news that this month the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors adopted the new Public Art in Private Development ordinance. More than two decades in the making, the new ordinance authored by Chair Hilda L. Solis allocates 1% of private commercial, industrial, and residential development project to fund four categories of public art, cultural facilities, conservation, and arts and cultural programs…

As we all continue to navigate the shifting COVID-19 terrain and our road to recovery, I want to take a moment to acknowledge my gratitude to all of you for your resilience as we protect and uplift and arts and creative sector. One of our critical roles in that work is investing in LA County’s cultural life through our grantees and program partners, and there are several points of light on that front recently…

The June Arts and Culture Newsletter was sent out on June 25, 2021. To make sure that you never miss another update from the  Department of Arts and Culture, sign up for our Newsletter. View June Newsletter

Like you, we are very eager to engage again in local arts and culture—to return to live performance, participate in community events, and experience art alongside one another. The Department of Arts and Culture’s programs have served the sector during the COVID-19 pandemic, and now as we emerge from it, we continue to work collectively to expand equity, reimagine economic inclusion, celebrate our cultural community, and promote arts, culture, and creativity for all…