Registration

Event Description

Please join Southern California Grantmakers, the Los Angeles County Arts Education Collective Funders Council, and a cross-sector audience to learn about the valuable work that regional partners are cultivating to use arts-based, healing-centered engagement to advance equitable outcomes for youth in Los Angeles County.

The Arts Ed Collective, coordinated by the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, aims to develop a shared framework for action that recognizes and changes systems that cause harm, promotes healing, builds cohesion and cultural identity, and uplifts communities through youth engagement in arts and culture. The Arts Ed Collective is bringing together community-based practitioners and partnering County agencies to examine ways that Healing Centered Engagement, as defined by Flourish Agenda, can apply to teaching and learning through the arts in community and school settings across Los Angeles County.

National nonprofit consulting firm, Flourish Agenda, defines Healing Centered Engagement as “an asset-based and culturally-rooted approach to healing and well-being for young people of color and their adult allies.” This model, developed by Dr. Shawn Ginwright and Nedra Ginwright, is based on decades of healing-centered work with Black youth and families in Akili Camps in the Bay area.

This opportunity for learning, exploration, and dialogue will feature keynote speaker Dr. Shawn Ginwright illustrating the powerful relationships between Healing Centered Engagement and the arts. And to invoke the launch of a year-long project with Flourish Agenda, this event will also incorporate voices and perspectives from youth leaders who are informing this effort (additional presenters TBA in January).

About the Arts Ed Forum

The Arts Education Forum is presented semi-annually by the Los Angeles County Arts Education Collective Funders Council and Southern California Grantmakers. These Forums examine the roles arts education is playing in youth, community, and economic development in our region. The Forums encourage networking and discussion on ways to refine coordinated strategies for promoting positive youth development, particularly as they take shape with and in communities that have been historically denied or prevented from accessing resources or opportunities by institutions, systems, and/or dominant power structures.

About the Arts Ed Collective & Funders Council

The Los Angeles County Arts Education Collective is a regional, multi-stakeholder, public-private initiative focused on ensuring the arts are a meaningful part of every young person's growth and development. Coordinated by the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, the initiative includes hundreds of education, nonprofit, government, and philanthropic partners. Over its 19-year history, it has earned recognition as a national model of collective impact in arts education.

In October 2020, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors adopted the Arts for All Children, Youth, and Families: Los Angeles County’s New Regional Blueprint for Arts Education (Arts Ed Blueprint) which puts forward a vision of expanding arts education in schools, after school, and in communities. It is both an aspirational policy statement and a roadmap for practitioners and leaders working collectively to advance youth development across Los Angeles County over the next decade.

The Arts Ed Collective Funders Council, active since 2004, offers a roundtable for foundation and corporate grantmakers to share knowledge, develop strategy, and provide fiscal oversight of shared investments in arts education in the County. Funders Council members pool resources, track and respond to trends in arts and education, and help determine how to allocate funds to advance the goals of the Arts Ed Blueprint.

Speaker

Shawn Ginwright, PhD

Shawn Ginwright, PhD SCG Member

Board Member, The California Endowment

Dr. Ginwright is one of the nation’s leading innovators, provocateurs, and thought leaders on African American youth, youth activism, and youth development. He is Professor of Education in the Africana Studies Department and a Senior Research Associate at San Francisco State University. His research examines the ways in which youth in urban communities navigate through the constraints of poverty and struggle to create equality and justice in their schools and communities.

He is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Flourish Agenda, Inc., a national nonprofit consulting firm, whose mission is to design strategies that unlock the power of healing and engage youth of color and adult allies in transforming their schools and communities. He is the author of “The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves,” “Hope and Healing in Urban Education: How Activists and Teachers are Reclaiming Matters of the Heart,” “Black Youth Rising, Activism and Radical Healing in Urban America,” “Black in School- Afrocentric Reform, Black Youth and the Promise of Hip-Hop Culture,” and co-editor of “Beyond Resistance!: Youth Resistance and Community Change: New Democratic Possibilities for Practice and Policy for America's Youth.”

Dr. Ginwright lives in Oakland, CA with his lovely wife and is currently an empty-nester—both children are in college.
Kristin Sakoda

Kristin Sakoda SCG Member

Director, Department of Arts and Culture, LA County Department of Arts and Culture

Kristin McDonald Sakoda Esq. is Director of the LA County Department of Arts and Culture, a local arts agency with a mission of advancing arts, culture, and creativity throughout the largest county in the U.S. Appointed by the LA County Board of Supervisors, Ms. Sakoda previously served as Executive Director of the LA County Arts Commission and led the organization during its historic transition into the County’s first Department of Arts and Culture. Ms. Sakoda is an arts executive, attorney, and performing artist with over 25 years in the field. She has appeared as a speaker around the world and performed on national and international stages including with dance and social justice company Urban Bush Women and in musicals Rent and Mamma Mia! on Broadway. Prior to her work at the Department, she previously served in leadership roles at the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs overseeing a portfolio of strategic, programmatic, policy, legislative, and funding programs with a $200M annual budget, and was instrumental in advancing diversity and inclusion; public art; creative aging; cultural facilities; and affordable workspace for artists. She holds a J.D. from NYU School of Law with honors in Entertainment Law and B.A. from Stanford University with a specialization in Race and Ethnicity and a secondary major in Feminist Studies. She is a Board member of Grantmakers in the Arts, the national association of public and private arts funders in the U.S.
Denise Grande

Denise Grande SCG Member

Division Director, Arts Education & Youth Development​, Department of Arts and Culture, LA County Department of Arts and Culture

Denise Grande works alongside local, state, and national colleagues to create systemic change through arts-based youth development. In directing the Arts Ed Collective, she helps lead a coalition that includes over 100 arts organizations and 74 school districts. Previously, Denise was Director of Programs and Strategic Partnerships for the Metropolitan Opera Guild at Lincoln Center. There, she oversaw arts education programs that impacted over 250 schools across seven states. During her 20 years at The Music Center, she played a leadership role in arts education program design, implementation, research, and evaluation. Denise received her BA from UCLA in dance and was a Coro Fellow through the California Arts Council’s Arts Leadership Fellow Program.

Rebecca Renard-Wilson SCG Member

Senior Project Consultant, LA County Department of Arts and Culture

Ms. Renard-Wilson co-leads the Arts Ed Collective’s work in embedding the arts into youth and community development as well as LA County systems of care. Previously, she was executive director of CONTRA-TIEMPO, where she helped shape and strengthen the dance company’s community engagement and education work, and the lead strategist of Washington, DC’s Communities on the Rise (COR) initiative to bring together youth-serving government agencies, community-based organizations, and residents in developing and strengthening community infrastructure and leadership. Ms. Renard-Wilson holds a Master’s Degree from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study (specializing in arts-based critical pedagogy), a Master’s in Library and Information Science from the Catholic University of America (specializing in public programs), and a Bachelor’s Degree from Oberlin College in African American Studies.
Katherine Bonalos

Katherine Bonalos SCG Member

Director, Grants & Initiatives, The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation

As a senior program officer, Katherine supports the foundation’s grantmaking in human services, civic and cultural, education, and health in LA County. Prior to joining The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation in 2017, she worked in arts engagement programming at The Music Center to build healthy, vibrant communities through the arts. Her past philanthropy experience includes grantmaking with The California Endowment, addressing a range of health issues such as access to care and community health and well-being. Katherine is currently an active member of SCG’s LA Arts Funders group and the County’s Arts Ed Collective Funders Council.
James E. Herr

James Herr SCG Member

Consultant, James E. Herr Consulting

Jim brings 20 years of experience in philanthropy and nonprofit management work as a program officer at Annenberg Foundation and to his foundation and nonprofit clients. He has previously worked as a program officer at California Community Foundation and led corporate social responsibility efforts for The Boeing Company and Sony Pictures Entertainment. Jim served on the City of Los Angeles Human Relations Commission and is past Board Chair of the Southern California Leadership Network. He has also served on the boards of Liberty Hill Foundation, Visual Communications, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles, and East-West Players and currently serves on the board of directors of First Entertainment Credit Union. Jim is a graduate of Leadership Southern California and participated in the Goodwill Cooperative Services Los Angeles Korean Leadership Exchange program. He was also selected as an American Leaders of Change Fellow through National Urban Fellows. Jim is an active member of the LA Arts Funder Group and the ArtsEd Collective.

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