Who We Serve

A Neighborhood Arts Center with a Regional and Global Reach

youth

Venice Arts’ largest, longest-running program, Art Mentoring & Education, provides a sequenced, Media Arts Education curriculum, college success programs, and creative career development—completely free of charge to low-income young people from throughout Los Angeles. Our Center for Creative Workforce Equity targets young people ages 16-24, offering a sequenced program—from exposure, education, and training through internship placement—that helps build a more equitable and inclusive creative sector. Priority is given to uplifting those whose lives have been most challenged, including homeless, foster, justice involved, and LGBTQ youth.

Through all of our programs we reach over 800 young people, each year. As community demand far exceeds our current facility capacities, we turn away approximately 150 low-income youth annually.  95% of youth served are low-income; 53% live in poverty. Just under 50% live in Venice, Mar Vista, Culver City, and neighborhoods with high pockets of poverty on the West Side; the balance live throughout Los Angeles County including Mid-City, South L.A., and Inglewood, and some travel from as far as Norwalk and the Antelope Valley to participate. Most (85%) are youth of color, the majority children of immigrants, and nearly all attend poorly performing public schools and have no access to meaningful creative education.

artists & community

At our Gallery,  we provide a venue for photographers and filmmakers to exhibit and screen their work, and for community members—including the young people in our programs and their families—to engage with artists and art. We market broadly, although most intensively to the local area, and draws audiences of approximately 1000 people, each year, from a range of backgrounds, ethnicities, and income levels interested in photography and filmmaking. 

nonprofit organizations & their constituents

Our consulting, training, and participant-produced documentary project-based and client-driven and are conducted locally, statewide, and internationally. We work primarily with economically marginalized community members or the organizations that serve them, each reflecting a range of concerns unique to their communities. 

geographic reach

A neighborhood arts center with a regional and global reach. Venice Arts attracts participants from Los Angeles and, through its consulting programs, from around the globe.