Arts Consortium LA

“Since when has art had boundaries? Art is universal.”
– Mary Pickford

The Arts Consortium LA is the creation of the Mary Pickford Foundation. The Consortium helps forge social change and growth in Los Angeles by utilizing the artistic process. It provides existing community-based art organizations an opportunity to expand the scope of their work while enhancing creative growth and self-determination for the participating individuals. Through this collaborative process, artists are learning tangible skills: how to utilize new media tools, materials, along with other art production methodologies.

Projects already facilitated by the Arts Consortium LA:

ArtworxLA Animation Concept Art Workshop Culminating Event!

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artworxLA Culminating EventArtworxLA ended the school year with one of their most exciting events: our Animation Concept Art Workshop Culminating Event! Made possible through their collaboration with Create Now, 20 of our Advanced Programs students spent 12 weeks exploring concept designing for animation.

Led by industry professionals Sorie Kim and Matt Jordan, students were immersed in the entertainment industry, including in-person field trips and hands-on experience with Procreate. At their culminating event, students were finally able to show off their work at Inner-City Arts’ gorgeous The Gathering Space.

“Thanks to [my classmates] and our art instructors Sorie and Matt I was able to make two pieces that I am proud of and hopefully inspire each and every one of you to keep going no matter what and always follow your dreams.” – Student, Alejandro Cardoza

Connecting ArtCenter’s high-caliber art/design training to artworxLA’s strong infrastructure for reaching underserved at-risk teens.

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artworxLA is very grateful to the Mary Pickford Foundation for its support of the ArtCenter College of Design and artworxLA Partnership, which granted scholarships to our students in summer 2021. artworxLA students enrolled in virtual Comic Book Illustration and Storytelling Workshops, learning technical and writing skills from comic book industry professionals. These 2 Summer Intensives ran for one-week each, from 9am through 4pm from Monday-Friday in June and again in August 2021. The workshops were led by ArtCenter instructors Steven Weissman and Alan Lawrence.

Here is the link to video: https://youtu.be/fE7mkLQa1x4

Creativity Unlimited. A documentary that focuses on ECF Art Centers community of working artists with a variety of developmental challenges.

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The Mary Pickford Foundation funded the production of a short video for ArtECF which was filmed from the viewpoint of the artists. The $20,000 mentor fund paid for a supervising producer from the Otis School of Design. The funding also covered a screening at the Otis School of Design.

Here is the link to video: https://vimeo.com/425610118

Socially Engaged Art: Art in Urban Community Spaces

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This educational project engaged community youth through artmaking and learning about the environment. It focused on creative placemaking in the Ramona Gardens neighborhood in Boyle Heights in the spring of 2019. Sponsored by the Mary Pickford Foundation, the project joined four non-profit organizations in partnership: ArtCenter College of Design, Legacy LA, North East Trees, and Outward Bound Adventures.

Socially Engaged Art Spring 2018

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The Spring 2018 ArtCenter College of Design studio, “Socially Engaged Art,” emphasized participation, dialogue, and action from a place of shared concerns.

Sponsored by the Mary Pickford Foundation, this Designmatters studio teamed ArtCenter Fine Art students with artists from Art Division, a non-profit organization located near the MacArthur Park neighborhood of Los Angeles that serves young artists committed to pursuing and studying the visual arts.

For more information and video click here »

“Migrant Mamas” Mural Project

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“Migrant Mamas” mural project and “Las Fotos” featuring photography mentors inspire multi-generational support systems that can change lives.

Watch to see how art and social justice can intersect to motivate and encourage.

Exceptional Children’s Foundation’s Inglewood Mural

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In August 2018, artists from the Exceptional Children’s Foundation and Art Center College of Design created a new public mural in Inglewood, titled “Art & Justice for All.”

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ArtCenter and Art Division Students Socially Engaged Art Collaboration

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In the Spring 2018 Fine Art course Socially Engaged Art, taught by Assistant Professor Olga Koumoundouros, Fine Art students collaborated with students from Art Division, a nonprofit organization by Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park dedicated to training and supporting underserved youth committed to studying the visual arts.

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Art Center College of Design and the Exceptional Children’s Foundation (ECF)

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ECF is a MPF created collaboration between 10 students enrolled in the Socially Engaged Art class at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and 6 artists attending the Exceptional Children’s Foundation (ECF), an organization that works with adult artists with developmental disabilities in a studio setting. At their downtown Los Angeles location, artists have access to art educators as well as space to paint, make ceramic objects and do printmaking. During the project creation, sincere rapport and care was cultivated within the collaborative groups while allowing for Art Center Students to learn about the many different ways people communicate. These relationships were developed in tandem with the introduction to video, performance art, video game construction, large scale painting or Zine printing. As was evidenced in the final exhibition, the impact of creating communally expanded everyone’s art making processes. That, as well as the new friendships created, made for a very compelling experience for all the participants that are bound to impact them now and long into the future.

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MacArthur Park Neighborhood of Los Angeles and the Art Center College of Design

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MPF created a collaboration between Art Center College of Design in Pasadena with the young adult artists that participate in Art Division, a community arts center serving the multiple communities that comprise the MacArthur Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. The students from ACCD’s Socially Engaged Art class will jointly produce art reflecting on the social geography of their fast changing neighborhood. The use of video, sound, installation and/or performance in addition to 2D media such as drawing and painting to expand spatial and media aesthetic discourse will be encouraged.

Large mural and collaborative design project downtown Los Angeles

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Exceptional Children’s Foundation (ECF) Art Centers is partnering with the Mary Pickford Foundation to further efforts in engaging the Los Angeles art community to create a large mural from a collaborative design by ECF and local artists. The project will be completed in late spring of 2018 which marks the Downtown Art Center’s tenth anniversary and ECF Art Center’s 50th anniversary providing studio spaces and mentorship for adult artists with developmental disabilities. We will work with a local artist to create designs that reflect the ideas, images and concepts of ECF artists, other local artists and the space where our mural will be located. This project will offer community engagement, awareness of our talented artists and opportunities for them to create work on a large, public scale.