Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) creates performance work that connects lived experience to the social forces that shape the lives and communities of people living in poverty. LAPD is committed to creating high-quality, challenging performances that express the realities, hopes, and dreams of people who live and work in Los Angeles’ Skid Row, to building community, and to the artistic and personal development of its members.
Profiles - Artists, Organizations, and Projects
Looking for a comprehensive list of Artists, Organizations, and Projects involved with arts for change work?
Use the map and listings below to browse 45+ pages of profiles, or use the filters and keywords to refine your search. You can also view the listings separated by Artists, Organizations, and Projects.
Louisville, KY
Louisville Visual Art has been improving lives through visual art education, community outreach, and artist support for over 100 years. As a creative hub now established in the Portland Neighborhood, they are dedicated to engaging and encouraging artists through programming such as MAP, Artebella, Open Studio Weekend, and weekly calls for artists. LVA is shaping and inspiring the next generation of creative leaders by providing quality instruction to over 5,500 students annually through Children’s Fine Art Classes and outreach programs in schools and community centers.
Louisville, KY
The LVAA is imporoving lives through art education, community outreach, and artist support.
Sylmar, CA
Luis J. Rodriguez is one of this country’s leading Xicano writers. He has eight published books in poetry, children’s literature, memoir, nonfiction, and fiction, including the international bestseller Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in LA. His most recent books include Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times and The Republic of East LA: Stories. He also has a CD of music and poetry called “My Name’s Not Rodriguez” from Dos Manos Records (CDbaby.com). Music of the Mill, was published in the fall of 2004 by Rayo Books/HarperCollins.
Shawnee, OK
Believing that art is for everyone, the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art enriches individual lives and enhances the entire community by empowering diverse audiences to engage with works of art from many cultures and time period
Founded in 1919, the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art is one of the oldest museums in the state of Oklahoma. Father Gregory Gerrer, for whom the museum is named, was a Benedictine monk of considerable artistic talent. During Father Gerrer's travels to Europe, Africa and South America, he collected objects of artistic and ethnological value.
Macomb County Executive Office
Mt. Clemens, MI
Strengthening community relations through arts and cultural affairs.
San Francisco, CA
At the age of 23, Madeleine Lim escaped persecution by the Singaporean government for her organizing work as a young lesbian artist-activist. Ten years later, she created Sambal Belacan in San Francisco, a film that is still banned in Singapore for its exploration of race, sexuality and nationality. As one of a small number of queer women of color filmmakers on the international film festival circuit, she saw that only queer women of color would tell their own authentic stories.
Madison, WI
Permanent Public Art; Temporary Public Art; Cultural Planning; Neighborhood Planning, Preservation and Design; Exhibition Space & Arts Grants.
Urbana/Champaign, IL
The Mahomet Aquifer Project, East Central Illinois, informed and engaged communities in East Central Illinois dependent on the Mahomet Aquifer through dance performances, panel discussions, new media, and workshops. Through conversations between performers and scientists Monson developed the choreography with an interdisciplinary approach, creating a multi-layered performance experience that draws the audience into their own understanding of their relationship to water. The movements evoke the forces and flows on the aquifer, ranging from geography and hydrology, to economics and history.
New York, NY
In the run-up to the 2008 presidential elections, Provisions Learning Project organized the public art project BrushFire, an arts initiative showcasing contemporary artists whose public projects engage crucial social issues. Taking place in highly visible public settings around the United States, BrushFire aimed to enrich the environment for public discussion about important social and political issues. Artist duo Ligorano/Reese’s Main Street Meltdown was Brushfire’s final project.
Baltimore, MD
Make Studio’s mission is to provide multimodal visual arts programming, including sales & exhibition opportunities, to adults with disabilities in a supportive and inclusive environment. Make Studio is motivated by a consideration of quality of life for and a celebration of the whole person, and the understanding that art does not exist in a vacuum. Make Studio believes that providing avenues for communication, connection, & empowerment to artists with disabilities equally benefits the individual and the community.
New York City, NY
Manhattan New Music Project (MNMP) empowers youth in underserved communities, using the performing arts to develop essential life skills and achieve academic success. MNMP builds partnerships among artists, students, teachers and parents that focus on the creation and performance of new works.
New York, NY
MAPP International Productions is dedicated to developing functional, sustainable environments for artists to create, premiere and tour performing arts projects. We provide support and opportunities for challenging artistic voices to be fully heard and engaged by bringing together arts, humanities and public dialogue. This means not only placing live work on the stages of performing arts venues worldwide, but also creating opportunities for discussion, learning and civic engagement that encourage appreciation of different cultures and perspectives.
Mapping Baybrook
Baltimore, MD
Mapping Baybrook is an interdisciplinary exploration of place that uses digital mapping to illustrate research on the culture of art and history in an industrial community in Baltimore, Maryland referred to as Baybrook—a merging of the names of two neighborhoods, Brooklyn and Curtis Bay. This community is a mix of diverse but connected neighborhoods located along the southeast coastline of Baltimore City. The Greater Baybrook area includes the past and present neighborhoods of Brooklyn, Curtis Bay, Fairfield, Hawkin’s Point, Masonville, and Wagner’s Point.
Saint Paul, MN
Conceptual and behavioral artist, Marcus Young's practice attends to the collective experience of our inner, natural, and civic lives, and has included works involving slow-walking and smiling, wishing and flying kites, drawing lines miles long, dancing in public, and community gift-giving. His award-winning project Everday Poems for City Sidewalk (2008) has transformed the city of Saint Paul, where he has held the Artist in Residence position since 2006, into a book through re-imagining Saint Paul’s annual sidewalk maintenance program.
Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies
Eden Prairie, MN
The Philanthropies serves as the umbrella over three grantmaking organizations founded by Margaret A. Cargill, all with a common vision: To provide meaningful assistance and support to society, the arts, the environment and all living things. The Foundation, created upon Ms. Cargill’s death in 2006, has programs reflecting her passions and priorities, including the environment; the arts; services to families, children and the elderly; disaster-related relief, recovery, and development; planned health; and animal welfare.
Margaret O'Neill-Hull
Conway, SC
I am a professional Entertainment Contractor working 27 years in the field. Currently working toward a Masters of Arts in Art Administration.
Baltimore, MD
This long-ago dance shaman brings the healing energy of dancing to anyone who sees her perform or dances in her unique Dance Medicine classes. She pulls out the dancer in all of us, encouraging us to use that energy to support and uplift people across the globe who suffer and cannot dance. She believes when a community dances or sings together, the collective power and love are so strong that they can be transmitted anywhere on the planet for healing. See her project SING! DANCE! LOVE!
Mark Plesent
New York, NY
Great theater strives to tell stories that illuminate, challenge, and alter our perceptions, that show us who we are and transform us in the process.
Palm Desert, CA
The success of my community murals and socially engaged projects occur when exploring new artistic strategies through community dialogue, social activism, and partnerships with agencies such as: city/county cultural facilities, non profit/for profit organizations, civic institutions, and public/private schools.
The community artist is "civically engaged" through partnerships in the understanding and awareness of cultural diversity, socioeconomic concerns, conflict resolution, celebration of past histories, underrepresented/marginalized communities, and indigenous stewardship.