LA Commons Empowers Youth With Training in Storytelling, Art and Leadership
Carmen Guatzozon has always loved art – doodling as a child, painting her mother’s favorite orchids in middle school. But as a self-described “antisocial” youth, she never imagined she would grow into a leader equipped with confidence, public speaking skills, community connections and enhanced artistic techniques to help paint a significant public mural in Los Angeles.
Carmen gained all of those skills working with LA Commons, a nonprofit that engages diverse communities to tell their own unique stories and collectively create public art to build connections and promote healing. Youth empowerment is a key focus, cultivated through leadership development that includes career exploration.
The California Community Foundation supports LA Commons through several grants as part of its mission to help Angelenos create a good life with access to food, housing, health care, education, job training and other support. CCF helps fund LA Commons’ youth leadership council, where Carmen found her voice, and recently distributed a state grant for the nonprofit to plan and design a creative youth workforce development program to cultivate artistic skills and gain work experience..
“I really did see myself grow in this program,” Carmen said. “I was very antisocial…but I started getting along with more people, trying to put myself out there because at the end of the day we’re a team. Those are really important people skills.”
She said she used those newly developed skills in her college applications and has started studies in radiology at Cal State Northridge – while continuing to develop her artistic talents. Carmen, the daughter of immigrant parents who never had a chance to make it to high school but always stressed education as key to success, is the first in her family to go to college.
LA Commons expects to place about 204 young people into paid positions as youth artists, leaders, apprentices and interns, said Karen Mack, who founded the nonprofit in 2000. The program will provide career training in art, storytelling and event planning, with support for the youth artists to create a project and present it publicly. The state grant helped LA Commons develop curriculum, tools to measure impact and engage with the community, both youth and adults, through listening sessions about their needs.
Mack said she wanted to use art and cultural programming as a vehicle to build a stronger sense of belonging in Los Angeles – inspired in part by American political scientist Robert Putnam’s teachings about “social capital” – or the strength of social connections in helping people act more effectively. Mack studied with Putnam at Harvard University, where she earned a master’s degree in public administration.
“Art is a really powerful strategy to bring people together and get excited about being in community,” Mack said. “They develop those bonds that then are the foundation for everything else.”
LA Commons makes art experiences not a solo journey but a collective, community effort. Carmen and 19 other youth, for instance, recently finished a mural about MacArthur Park for the UCLA Labor Center, co-creating it with two mural artists and community members. They began their journey last year, when they met in weekly meetings to learn about the area, then fanned into the park to interview community members about their experiences there and what they would like the mural to portray.
Enrique Fernandez, a senior at Alliance Ted K. Tajima High School and member of the CCF-supported youth leadership council, said common critiques of the park included trash, crime, homelessness and drug abuse.
Some community members, shaken by federal immigration raids, were initially hesitant to speak to the students, then opened up, Enrique said. Many wistfully talked about better days years ago, when the park was cleaner, families felt safer and vendors were able to sell their goods more freely without fear of city crackdowns and immigration raids.
Carmen said residents also mentioned the need for more unity – with some relating experiences of being attacked and told to “go back to your country.”
The students shared that community input with mural artists Shakir Manners and Luis Mateo, who led the design work. Then they began painting the mural, which measures 21 feet by 12 feet, on aluminum composite planks. The colorful images include tamale and ice cream sellers, lifting up the importance of street vendors. A farm worker reaches up to pick avocados and oranges. The hope for unity is portrayed by smiling children of varied races and a tree trunk made up of many hands. In the background are downtown LA’s skyline, MacArthur Park’s central lake and a cluster of leafy green trees. A monarch butterfly symbolizes the freedom to migrate.
On a recent Saturday morning, Manners and Mateo coached the young artists in the art of spray painting – how to use different caps, how to create lines, gradients and mist – along with the use of acrylics. But there is more to artistic success than talent or technique, Manners told them.
“There’s no substituting for hard work,” he said. “And it’s definitely important to work with other artists so you can build community and grow and keep on inspiring. It’s important to put your ego aside.”
The mural was recently installed at the UCLA Labor Center’s downtown facility – renamed the James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center after the iconic civil rights leader. A community gathering is scheduled for April 23 to celebrate the mural supporters and the reopening of the center in MacArthur Park.
That communal spirit is emblematic of LA Commons’ vision and approach. The nonprofit recently hosted a gathering in Leimert Park to begin collecting stories for its Festival of Masks, an annual celebration of ancestors grounded in the vast identities of Africa and the African diaspora. The festival, scheduled for June 28, includes a blessing and libation ceremony to invoke community healing and reflection, followed by a procession featuring the masks.
The group brainstormed ideas for ancestors to honor, including those who embodied lifelong learning. Some community members spoke about the need to address historical trauma related to the cotton plant, which is interwoven with slavery, and using the color green as a healing motif.
An LA Commons artistic leadership team will evaluate all nominations for ancestors to be honored and select a half dozen of them. Youth artists will work with the leadership team to create the masks, costumes and signage for the event.
Remembrance of the past is even more important today amid escalating efforts to erase the histories of people of color from public spaces, including websites, monuments and school curriculums, community members said. Tamika Quillard, LA Commons’ community program arts manager, said she sees “the light go on” in the eyes of both children and adults when they learn about their history and noble ancestral lineages.
“The end goal is a deep sense of belonging, reconnection and then just better health, mental and physical outcomes,” Quillard said.
Enrique said his LA Commons experience has given him a wealth of new knowledge about his community. In preparing his leadership council presentation, he learned about MacArthur Park’s history as a focal point of both immigration raids and community resistance, along with the forced eviction of mostly Mexican American families in Chavez Ravine to make way for Dodger Stadium.
He also learned how to spray paint for the first time – adding to an artistic repertoire he hopes to continue developing as he launches studies in architecture at Yale University this fall.
His biggest takeaway? Solidarity and hope.
“The strongest tools that we have, especially as oppressed individuals or communities, are unity and our voices to push for what we deserve,” he said.
–Teresa Watanabe
