Venice Arts’ mission is to ignite, expand, and transform the lives of Los Angeles’ low-income youth through photography and film education, and to use our participatory storytelling practices to amplify the voices of underrepresented communities around the world. This mission grew out of our founding dream: to create a vibrant, neighborhood arts center committed to education and community-building through the arts. We do this by building creative equity for low-income youth through media arts education, advanced studies, college success, and creative career pathway programs, where we put creativity, art making, and art learning at the center of youth development.

Venice Arts was founded in 1993 by a diverse group of dedicated community members—artists, activists, educators, and others— to link Venice’s flourishing community of emerging and established artists with the significant number of neighborhood young people who were low-income or living in poverty (40%).

In 2021, Venice Arts Center for Creative Workforce Equity (The Center) was created to house our growing roster of creative career development programs for Los Angeles County’s low-income young people, ages 16-24. There currently exists an upswell of interest, advocacy, and opportunity in the nonprofit and public sectors. Many in the creative sector are motivated to expand opportunity; build a pipeline of diverse, young talent; and support and uplift new previously ignored voices.