Over an 18-month period that began in 2016, participants of the Cultural Equity and Inclusion Initiative (CEII) met to discuss ways to improve cultural diversity and inclusion in Los Angeles County. Participants brought forward an idea to invite artists to work in LA County government – not as arts administrators but in new roles. This idea became among the first funded CEII recommendations: the Creative Strategist-Artist in Residence program. Administered by the Department of Arts and Culture, the program has placed artists in residence in a range of County departments and agencies, where they use their creative practice to develop strategies that address challenges departments are trying to solve.

Beyond the Creative Strategist program, Arts and Culture looks for cross-sector partnership opportunities where artists can be embedded in County initiatives as a way to enact the Countywide Cultural Policy. One recent artist-in-residence emerged as a strategy to address one of the toughest civic challenges faced by the County: the homelessness crisis.

The opportunity came about through the work of staff in Los Angeles County Board of Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell’s office, who saw the need for an artist-in-residence to develop a healing-centered arts engagement toolkit to assist the County’s work in addressing this crisis.

In April 2024, artist Lane Michael Stanley began what would become an 11-month residency with the County, focusing on developing a toolkit for integrating healing-centered arts practices into community engagement before, during, and after Pathway Home encampment resolutions, particularly when engaging with people experiencing homelessness and people living in and community members impacted by RV encampments.

Pathway Home, the County’s program to resolve encampments, including RVs, is just one component of the County’s ongoing, multi-pronged response to the homelessness crisis launched under the emergency declared by the Board in January 2023. Pathway Home is intended to help people living on the streets come indoors by offering a more diverse array of immediate options for interim housing and a comprehensive suite of wraparound services to help them achieve stability and ultimately move into permanent housing. The program is led by the County and implemented in partnership with local jurisdictions, unincorporated communities, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, local service providers, and other jurisdictional partners.

Lane is a socially engaged artist with a history of developing art projects with and for residents of permanent supportive housing developments that support their recovery from chronic houselessness. Through this work, Lane developed a graphic guide, How to Be Successful in Housing. The guide helps residents navigate emotional barriers to resources, deal with stigma and shame, set wellness goals, build support networks, and more.

Lane began his residency by researching the government agencies, nonprofits, and community groups that work together to support people living on the streets in Los Angeles County and get them connected to resources and into supportive housing.

“I deeply believe in the life-saving power of connection and know that we can’t do this work alone. The problem of homelessness can feel overwhelming in scope. I hope the recommendations in this toolkit give you the tools you need to center healing and draw on the arts to work toward solving our community's collective struggles.” – Lane Michael Stanley

To address the overwhelming nature of such a complex crisis facing the County, Lane developed customized strategies for County employees, frontline and outreach workers, people with lived experience of homelessness, and impacted communities. The range of healing-centered arts practices offered in the toolkit are designed to “bring softness, clarity, and resilience for key stakeholders involved in the challenging process of the County’s RV encampment resolutions.”

Healing Survival: Arts-Based Strategies for Softening and Solving Collective Struggles is intended to be one part of the County’s broader response to the homelessness crisis and is designed to:

• Improve empathy and understanding through deep listening
• Facilitate open communication
• Support productive dialogue
• Promote shared abilities to tackle transformative work
• Help communities build collective power
• Envision new solutions to the homelessness crisis

While arts strategies alone will not solve the multi-layered challenge of homelessness in LA County, we know, and research affirms, that art and creative practices help people heal from trauma and process difficult emotions.

“It’s through an orientation toward healing and repair for ourselves and others that we recover our capacity for feeling, for relationships, and, with that, the ability to strengthen our bonds and work together.”
—Prentis Hemphill, What It Takes to Heal

Many of the strategies put forward in the toolkit would be implemented best by an artist-facilitator, such as Lane, to guide the work. If your department or agency is interested in recommendations of professionals to facilitate these strategies or train your staff, please contact cross-sector@arts.lacounty.gov.