Building on the success and excitement surrounding LA’s first-ever Arts Datathon in 2017, the LA County Arts Commission presents Arts Datathon: Collections, which aims to explore collections data as a way to increase access to the arts. This event brings together artists, curators, civic hackers, educators and arts administrators from across the region to explore collections data on topics from military memorabilia to street art.

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.

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. 

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.

Report includes 13 Actionable Strategies

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: