Artist Olga Koumoundouros began her residency in 2019 as a Creative Strategist with the newly formed Los Angeles County Office of Violence Prevention (OVP), housed within the Department of Public Health. OVP works to strengthen coordination, capacity, and partnerships to address the root causes of violence, and to advance policies and practices that are grounded in race equity to prevent all forms of violence and to promote healing across all communities in LA County.

During the initial phase of her residency, Koumoundouros learned more about OVP’s work, participated in strategic planning sessions, and engaged with members of OVP’s Community Partnership Council and the Department of Public Health’s Trauma Prevention Initiative. She introduced OVP to trauma-informed, arts-based community engagement methods and employee engagement activities. In collaboration with OVP staff, including Director Andrea Welsing, Koumoundouros developed Violence, Hope and Healing in Los Angeles County: The Storytelling Project, which was designed to humanize the data being collected about violence and to uplift the voices and stories of survivors and those most impacted by violence in its many forms.

Through the art of storytelling, the County would gain a deeper understanding of the many ways violence can have a lasting effect, emotionally and mentally, on individuals who experience it. Stereotypes and assumptions would be challenged. The role systems play in perpetuating cycles of violence would be illuminated, contributing to systems change.

In March 2020, the Office of Violence Prevention and the Department of Arts and Culture both committed resources to accomplish this ambitious project. Koumoundouros’ initial one-year residency was extended, and a research component was added.

This second phase of the project–recording the stories of Los Angeles County residents who have experienced violence at the individual or systemic level–launched right at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. This made identifying potential storytellers through OVP’s network of community-based organizations particularly difficult. Koumoundouros persevered, adjusted her approach, and in the end, recorded 100 stories and 54 photographs over a one-year period.

Koumoundouros and OVP staff developed a rubric to ensure stories would reflect a diverse array of perspectives, considering such aspects as geography, age, gender, race/ethnicity, and type of violence. To identify people for the project, Koumoundouros first leaned on relationships she had built with the Community Partnership Council, Trauma Prevention Initiative, and others involved with OVP. Soon, word of mouth and referrals helped Koumoundouros identify others willing to share their story.

Using methods based in oral storytelling traditions, Koumoundouros asked participants to share their experiences with violence, advice they had for others enduring similar experiences, and what they most wanted policy makers to know. She ended each session with a trauma-informed exercise known as the Havening Technique, which helped to ground participants in their current space and time.

Koumoundouros added an artistic element that served to contribute to the humanizing qualities of the project–participants were invited to have their portraits taken, in a location of their choosing, by photographer Johnny Pérez.

The recorded stories were transcribed and edited, with each story being shared back with the storyteller in its written form for final approval. A selection of 33 stories, many with accompanying portraits, were then compiled into the book, Violence, Hope and Healing in Los Angeles County. A digital copy of the book, along with the remaining stories and portraits, is available on this page. The book can be found at LA County Library and other locations.

“Variations in tone, cadence, and non-verbal emotions expanded my understanding of these stories and through the sharing of these narratives, we are given threads that can guide us to accessing our shared humanity. I was so very honored to listen to them all.” –Olga Koumoundouros, about her process

The Social Change Institute, an initiative of Community Health Councils, was contracted to review and analyze 95 of the stories–five additional stories were collected after their analysis was complete–examining and exploring the content for patterns and themes. The process of analyzing the stories surfaced new perspectives and sparked rich conversations. Social Change Institute’s full report will be published later this fall.

Beyond providing an avenue to hear directly from those whose lives have been forever changed by violence, this project is intended to inform violence prevention, intervention policies and practices, and spark systems change that will have a lasting impact on individuals and communities. It serves as a model for how government agencies can adopt arts-based, community-informed practices to tackle complex challenges and support positive outcomes for residents.

If you are interested in sharing your story, please contact ovp@ph.lacounty.gov.

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About The ArtistS

Olga Koumoundouros is a Los Angeles cultural worker, educator, and researcher dedicated to social justice by creating works that map interconnecting systems of economic, gender, and racial inequities and how they affect people and society. By working with communities and survivors of violence, she works collectively to lift up creative power that strengthens peaceful daily living for all people. As creative strategist for Los Angeles County’s  Department of Public Health’s Office of Violence Prevention, she led the Violence, Hope and Healing in Los Angeles County: The Storytelling Project and currently is gaining more tools as a Ph.D.  student at the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work at USC.

Johnny Pérez is driven by a desire to create connections. As a high school dropout and incarcerated teen, he knows all too well what it is to not matter and lack the confidence to question it. His practice operates in a liminal territory between social practice, education, and public policy. It’s an art practice of healing through affirming his own existence by validating the lives of those who go unseen through interactions and building community. His photography celebrates the capacity of humans to open themselves up to one another. Whether in the sly smile of a stranger on the streets of New York, or the quiet pride in the eyes of a mother in Guatemala, the images act as conduits of emotion, vulnerability, and compassion between artist, subject, and viewer.

Carolina Ibarra-Mendoza is a Xicana graphic designer and visual artist from East LA. She has a double bachelor’s degree from UC Davis in gender studies and design and an MFA in graphic design from Otis College of Art and Design. Her most notable work includes working with Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz-Starus as the creative strategist and web designer for the feminist archive website AgainstViolence.Art, featured in SF MOMA in 2019.