Grantee Database
Los Angeles Artist Census
Grant Year
2023-24
Grant Program
Impact Projects
Award Amount
$21,250.00
Project Description
With support from the California Arts Council, Los Angeles Artist Census, in collaboration with artist Rumpelstiltskin Morgan, will produce An Accessibility Guide to Los Angeles Art Spaces. This first of its kind digital resource, map, and guide will be created through intensive collective research and public outreach—resulting in improved access for people with disabilities and those with accessibility needs.
Grant funds are allocated to compensate diverse artists from diverse communities, including BIPOC, disabled, LGBTQ+ and those within the lowest HPI quartile, for their contributions to focus group discissions. It will also go to the facilitation of public programming that invites artists to contribute to the project’s creation. With input from these events, we will develop an interactive digital platform that will feature a filterable map that addresses diverse access needs as expressed by the community.
Organization Summary
Founded in 2018, the LOS ANGELES ARTIST CENSUS (LAAC) is a grassroots, artist-driven research initiative that gathers and shares data about the needs of LA County visual artists. LAAC studies a wide scope of issues relating to artists’ healthcare, housing, employment, income, debt, representation, and compensation in the local arts industries.
Using comparative analysis, we measure and assess the quality of life of visual artists and raise awareness about issues that broadly affect the wider art community. In particular, we examine how intersectional identities pertaining to race, gender, age, queerness, and ability affect the experiences of artists in LA County.
LAAC recognizes that traditional data-based research is conducted from a position of false neutrality, and has a history of sustaining social inequities. As such, our research employs a mixed-methods approach that is democratic, participatory, and multi-vocal. Countering common issues of representation, we host community workshops and discussions that invite local artists and arts organizations to collaboratively design, distribute, and analyze surveys with our team, in their respective regions.
By working alongside artists and arts organizations, LAAC builds relationships with and between these communities, which allows us to gather and provide data that is often overlooked or misinterpreted by the institutions that ordinarily conduct quantitative research. Working in this way, LAAC has developed innovative research methods, informed by radical feminist research practices.
LAAC studies artists because artists are free thinkers and independent laborers. They offer a snapshot of the economic conditions that affect laborers as a whole, and demonstrate how issues of representation have broader socioeconomic consequences. By identifying barriers artists experience when accessing resources, LAAC seeks to develop essential resources for addressing disparities in cultural representation and funding. We hope to translate these inquiries into open discussions, public programs, survey research, and reports hosted in partnership with local arts organizations.
Organization
Los Angeles Artist Census
Address
1151 Marion Avenue
Los Angeles
90026
County
Los Angeles
Region
South – Los Angeles & Orange
Phone
(305) 793-4239
Congressional District
California Assembly district 51
State Assembly District
District 51
State Senate District
District 24
