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Things are heating up in LA and we don’t mean the temperature! The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a $10 million allocation of CARES Act funding to the County Department of Arts and Culture. County Supervisors also approved two motions outlining key steps to restore funding to the Organizational Grant Program (OGP) and Arts Internship Program. We thank you for your advocacy for these crucial programs.

Arts for LA’s City-focused advocacy continues. Be on the lookout for our Action Alerts for opportunities to advocate for the arts in the City of LA.

In just a few days, we’ll be launching Arts for LA’s 2020 State of the Arts Summit. This year will be comprised of five virtual convenings, designed to engage our community around thinking through solutions to our field’s most pressing challenges.

Join us for our four FREE Community Strategy Sessions in September to share your vision for change within affordable space, arts education, creative careers, and arts funding.

Then in October, we will be sharing the major outcomes of these sessions, releasing our 2020 Laura Zucker report, showcasing our Arts Innovators, and more. Tickets for this event will go on sale soon. Stay tuned!

Onward!

Gustavo Herrera
Executive Director

STATE OF THE ARTS: COMMUNITY STRATEGY SESSIONS
Join us for the State of the Arts Summit 2020! This year, the Summit will be made up of five total events. Throughout the month of September, we will be leading weekly Community Strategy Sessions, each discussing a different, specific, policy area vital to the arts + culture field that Arts for LA is dedicated to addressing in 2021.

Registration for our four issue-specific Community Strategy Sessions is now open.

Make your voice heard in this critical moment.

Our first Community Strategy Session is less than a week away! Join us at 10:00 AM on September 3rd to discuss the issue of affordable spaces for artists and arts organizations. Emma Howard, Director of Planning for LA City Council District 4 will provide us with a brief overview of the current context and landscape of the issue of affordable space to help frame our conversations.

Our second Community Strategy Session will be on September 10th at 10:00 AM, discussing the issues around equitable arts education for students in LA County. To best frame this conversation, we will welcome Amir Whitaker, of the ACLU SoCal, to provide the current landscape of arts education for the County, where his team has been focusing their efforts. Join this important conversation today.

ACTIVATE: INNOVATORS UPDATE
Over the Summer we launched a brand new iteration of our signature ACTIVATE program, ACTIVATE Innovators. This program supports artists, art & culture professionals, and community advocates in the development of an advocacy project designed to address an urgent issue facing the participant’s community.

Our Innovators and their mentors have been hard at work developing these projects in preparation for our State of the Arts Summit. At the main event on October 16th, our ten Innovators will be sharing their project pitches.

Join us for our virtual State of the Arts Summit and be among the first to hear about the cutting edge advocacy programs our Innovators are curating. Click here to read more about our class of Innovators.

UPCOMING EVENTS
The California Alliance for Arts Education is offering a webinar series for Fall 2020, examining different roles and strategies for local arts advocates. The first in the series, Arts Providers and Teaching Artists in a New Paradigm, explores how arts providers and teaching artists have adapted to distance learning and are addressing are addressing challenges that persist. It will be held on September 14 at 3:30 pm PDT.

BECOME A MEMBER

In the wake of a global crisis, where arts and culture are key to unifying communities and coping with a new reality, Arts for LA is your only cross-discipline, cross-sector advocacy organization working to give the arts a voice during crucial decision making moments.

When you become a member of Arts for LA, you are joining a movement of artists, arts administrators, arts organizations, and arts advocates united in support of the same goal: ensuring the arts and culture in Los Angeles County are supported, especially in times of crisis.

Become a Member Today!