Grantee Database
THE AJA PROJECT
Grant Year
2025-26
Grant Program
Impact Projects
Award Amount
$18,000.00
Project Description
“Counter Surveillance” will collaborate with emerging artists and cultural bearers, specifically those of immigrant/refugee backgrounds, in a 6-month fellowship to creatively tackle the racialized impacts of San Diego’s rapidly advancing surveillance technologies, such as the newly installed “smart” streetlight cameras. These cameras disproportionately impact San Diego’s most vulnerable communities, equipped with facial recognition and artificial intelligence that turn people into searchable data. We will engage fellows and our community in educational workshops dissecting key components of surveillance. Under the lead artist’s guidance, fellows will create media arts projects based on their learnings. The project will then become a traveling pop-up exhibit shown throughout San Diego to unite and educate different neighborhoods while inviting them in for further dialogue.
Organization Summary
The AjA Project has a strong reputation of delivering high-quality, high-impact programs to young people from diverse cultural, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds. This includes in-school and after-school programs as well as participatory workshops in collaboration with cross-sector partner organizations. AjA’s programs support young people to process experiences, understand their social and political landscapes and use the arts as a tool for creative self expression and social change. This year we have provided programming to newly arrived refugees, teen mothers, youth in detention, young people in military families, and youth across San Diego. The work at AjA remains grounded in the power of photography and visual arts as a tool for all youth, regardless of background, to see themselves as agents of change. AjA remains committed to igniting individual and social change from a grassroots, creative approach.
Organization
N/A
Address
4504 51st Street
San Diego
92115
County
San Diego
Region
Far South
Phone
(619) 230-5556
Congressional District
California's 51st congressional district
State Assembly District
District 79
State Senate District
District 40
