VAPAE’s Community Arts Programs Over The Years

For his Arts Ed 195: Community Internship class, VAPAE student Donald Rizzo offered an afterschool improv comedy workshop at Grand Arts High School (Ramón C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts). Students explored the fundamentals of Groundlings-style short-form improvisation. The workshop used games and exercises to emphasize scene work and character development, fostering ensemble collaboration to create a cohesive improv team. It culminated with a final performance, allowing students to showcase their improvisational comedy skills.

VAPAE Teaching Artist: Donald Rizzo

In the Crafting Connections seminar for Multidisciplinary Art Students (MÁS) program, students asked: What do we want our community to look like?

Students made poetry, paper murals, conceptual self-portraits, and expressed themselves through objects that represented their passions and communicated their identities. Students combined individual art projects into a collaborative community art installation that represents individual and collective identity and history.

VAPAE Teaching Artist: Sonja Cayetano

In the Urban Artists seminar for Multidisciplinary Art Students (MÁS) program, students made a campus mural focused on climate change and mental health. Students gained personal and creative confidence, increased their social connection, gained a sense of agency and leadership skills, and strengthened their connection to their community.

VAPAE Teaching Artist: Blaze Bautista

SAGE Magnet at Louis Armstrong Middle School in Sherman Oaks is one of our treasured community partners and building on last year’s momentum, we were happy to offer a fall unit called Identity & Community through Songwriting, Music Making and Visual Arts.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Annabelle Hendrickson, Gabriela Acosta

In their Arts Ed 195: Community Internship class, Gabriela Acosta assisted an expressive arts group for Veterans living unhoused; with mental health difficulties such as PTSD, anxiety, depression; and/or experiencing stigma at the Westwood VA. In addition, Gabriela compiled a variety of artifacts and personal observations as she worked towards writing a comprehensive auto-ethnography research paper that detailed her participation at the VA, and analysis of their own positionality and experiences.

VAPAE Teaching Artist: Gabriela Acosta

Since 2015, MASA has brought together youth and families in a welcoming, multigenerational space to make art and share cultural traditions while bonding as artists. Following the previous years’ pivot to remote art-making and Grab and Go Art Kits, MASA’s in-person sessions re-emerged in Fall 2021. As COVID-19 continued to impact families’ lives and learning throughout 2021-22, VAPAE and the UCLA Community School worked together to revive the in-person MASA sessions amid shifting safety guidelines and comfort levels. We look forward to continuing this process of re-imagination.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Raymundo Baltazar, Jolene Fernandez, Alberto Lule

In the new Multidisciplinary Art Students (MÁS) program, students in grades 6-8 explored identity and imagination through weekly art-making sessions held during the school day. In MÁS, students created and learned alongside intragenerational peers in individual and collaborative art-making. MÁS grew out of VAPAE’s long-standing partnership with the UCLA Community School, and represents our shared values as we all imagine a return to in-person art making in the era of COVID-19.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Raymundo Baltazar, Jolene Fernandez, Alberto Lule

Building on the success of Spring 2021, this program is designed to support students’ creative and political expression through artivism, empowering students by cultivating social consciousness. Collaborative art projects invited students to reflect on environmental justice and imagine an equitable, non-binary future through multiple art forms. VAPAE has been a wonderful partner to the SAGE Magnet in a variety of ways. Most importantly, VAPAE takes the time to attentively listen to the goals of our program, and then tailors and adjusts their curriculum to best support our needs. The students in SAGE are deeply inspired by social justice, and the importance of identity seeking. They are unafraid to try on the various hats that middle school students try on, while freely exploring issues of gender, sexuality, race, and religion. VAPAE supports this curiosity with projects that inspire critical thinking and open conversations, as well as the fun and engaging art projects that extend seamlessly from these talks.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Raymundo Baltazar, Carrie Appel, Salix Hjerrild, Julie Wong

In Creative Aging, VAPAE teaching artists provided enriching arts lessons to a beloved population: seniors and elders. Launched in Spring 2021, the program brought arts experiences to a cohort of seniors ranging from emerging to expert artmakers, some of whom were reconnecting with a creative practice they had set aside for many years. The program also served as a community anchor to VAPAE’s newest undergraduate special topics course of the same name, first offered in Fall 2021.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Raymundo Baltazar, Miel Lei Apostol, Jolene Fernandez, Alberto Lule

Studio Sessions at Emerson provides young adults the tools and support they need in order to grow as artists and creative human beings. Students connect their life experiences with an arts practice in a supportive, constructive environment. These Studio Sessions inspire students to seek new perspectives of their world and a better understanding of themselves. Young adults at Emerson Community Charter Middle School engage with a wide array of media including painting, drawing, bookmaking, printmaking, textile art, and more.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Aya Fathallah & Asher Titan

By providing an arts program focused on photo narratives, Venice High School students explore the medium and technical aspects of photography while simultaneously developing digital visuals that utilize digital applications, analog, art surrounding a subjective narrative theme. This year, students explored identity as a launching point to explore their school, family and community at-large.

VAPAE Teaching Artist: Ago Visconti, Aya Fathallah, & Tigran Nersisian

An innovative arts program open to all UCLA Community School families interested in expressing themselves through art. Through a welcoming, creative and fun space to make art, share family and cultural traditions, MASA is an arts program that provides creative artists from different generations the opportunity to evolve as creative human-beings as they bond as artists. Students and their parents intertwine their life experiences with an arts practice in a supportive, constructive environment. This year students explored the artistic and cultural traditions involved in the Día de los Muertos celebration through altar making and other arts and social activities. MASA explored the idea of sanctuary; can culturally significant board-games like Loteria help our communities become stronger? What consists of a sanctuary? Where do we find sanctuary? Other topics of exploration were mixed fabric media, ceramics, and tapestries.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Brian Pea & Gustavo Tepetla

Studio Sessions at Emerson provides young adults the tools and support they need in order to grow as artists and creative human beings. Students connect their life experiences with an arts practice in a supportive, constructive environment. These Studio Sessions inspire students to seek new perspectives of their world and a better understanding of themselves. Young adults at Emerson Community Charter Middle School engage with a wide array of media including painting, drawing, bookmaking, printmaking, textile art, and more.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Jade McKenzie & Asher Titan

By providing an afterschool arts program focused on photo narratives, Venice High School students explore the medium and technical aspects of photography while simultaneously developing digital visuals that utilize digital applications, analog, art surrounding a subjective narrative theme. This year, students explored identity as a launching point to explore their school, family and community at-large.

VAPAE Teaching Artist: Tigran Nersisian, Amanda Sutton & Ago Visconti

An innovative afterschool arts program open to all UCLA Community School families interested in expressing themselves through art. Through a welcoming, creative and fun space to make art, share family and cultural traditions, MASA is an arts program that provides creative artists from different generations the opportunity to evolve as creative human-beings as they bond as artists. Students and their parents intertwine their life experiences with an arts practice in a supportive, constructive environment. This year students explored the artistic and cultural traditions involved in the Día de los Muertos celebration through altar making and other arts and social activities. MASA explored the idea of sanctuary; can culturally significant board-games like Loteria help our communities become stronger? What consists of a sanctuary? Where do we find sanctuary? Other topics of exploration were mixed fabric media, ceramics, and tapestries.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Belinda Adams, Emmanuel Galvez-Machuca, & Brian Pea

VAPAE launched its first ever Saturday Community Arts Program at the Esteban E. Torres High School Campus in partnership with the East Los Angeles Performing Arts Magnet. Originally modeled, designed and developed at UCLA Community School. VAPAE was delighted to replicate the successes of our previous MASA program with new families attending the LA Philharmonic’s Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA) Program at the Torres campus. The Multigenerational After School Arts (MASA) Program welcomed new students and family members to learn, create, and bond as artists.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Belinda Adams, Bella Granados, Elias Hernandez, & Claudia Vera Rosas

The community partnership between Las Fotos Project and VAPAE allows Teaching Artists to fully experience how arts based organizations create and sustain powerful, long lasting impact in our communities. Based in Lincoln Heights, Las Fotos Project hosted VAPAE alumna Isabella Granados throughout 12 weeks.

Las Fotos Project was founded in 2010 by Los Angeles-based photographer Eric V. Ibarra after seeing a need for teenage girls throughout Los Angeles to have a skill that could help build their confidence and self-esteem. In March of 2011, Las Fotos Project became a project of Community Partners, a 501(c)3 organization which accelerates ideas into action to advance the public good. Las Fotos Project has since worked with girls throughout Southern California, and has developed partnership with national and international nonprofit organizations and schools to expand the movement of inspiring teenage girls through photography and self-expression. Our current focus is on the Central, South, and East Los Angeles regions of Los Angeles.

VAPAE Teaching Artist: Isabella Granados

Experiential performing arts workshops implemented by VAPAE Teaching Artists used a variety of theatre arts activities such as monologues, dialogues, group poems, tableaux, pantomime, movement and dance, storytelling, music, and spoken word to help students to mine personal experiences and aspirations. Led by UCLA Arts students and alumni of the VAPAE Program, the aim of the workshops is to help students tap into past experiences as they start to write personal statements, and create pathways into higher education and other post-high school alternatives.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Stefani Hester, Jack Ironstone, and Crystal Ruelas

Studio Sessions at Emerson provides young adults the tools and support they need in order to grow as artists and creative human beings. Students connect their life experiences with an arts practice in a supportive, constructive environment. These Studio Sessions inspire students to seek new perspectives of their world and a better understanding of themselves. Young adults at Emerson Community Charter Middle School engage with a wide array of media including painting, drawing, bookmaking, printmaking, textile art, and more.

Spring 2019 VAPAE Teaching Artists: Brian Pea & Jade McKenzie

Winter 2019 VAPAE Teaching Artists: Isabella Granados & Brian Pea

Fall 2018 VAPAE Teaching Artists: Aya Fathallah & Amanda Sutton

By providing an afterschool arts program focused on photo narratives, Venice High School students explore the medium and technical aspects of photography while simultaneously developing digital visuals that utilize digital applications, analog, art surrounding a subjective narrative theme. This year, students explored identity as a launching point to explore their school, family and community at-large.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Jamie Gonzalez & Quincy Irving

An innovative afterschool arts program open to all UCLA Community School families interested in expressing themselves through art. Through a welcoming, creative and fun space to make art, share family and cultural traditions, MASA is an arts program that provides creative artists from different generations the opportunity to evolve as creative human-beings as they bond as artists. Students and their parents intertwine their life experiences with an arts practice in a supportive, constructive environment. This year students explored the artistic and cultural traditions involved in the Dia de los Muertos celebration through altar making and other arts and social activities. MASA explored the idea of sanctuary; can culturally significant board-games like Loteria help our communities become stronger? What consists of a sanctuary? Where do we find sanctuary? Other topics of exploration were mixed fabric media, ceramics, and tapestries.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Isabella Granados & Maria Vazquez

VAPAE launched its first ever Saturday Community Arts Program at the Esteban E. Torres High School Campus in partnership with the East Los Angeles Performing Arts Magnet. Originally modeled, designed and developed at UCLA Community School. VAPAE was delighted to replicate the successes of our previous MASA program with new families attending the LA Philharmonic’s Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA) Program at the Torres campus. The Multigenerational After School Arts (MASA) Program welcomed new students and family members to learn, create, and bond as artists.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Matthew Broking & Claudia Rosas

Can the Arts connect to scientific inquiry, tasks, and tools; Can it function as a solution to long term applications and challenges of travel? Two VAPAE Teaching Artists led 10 weekly sessions; projects included multidisciplinary arts lessons that explored intersections between visual arts and science, freeform sculpture, and art as equity.

Spring 2019 VAPAE Teaching Artists: Brian Pea & Ago Visconti

Fall and Winter 2019 VAPAE Teaching Artists: Rob Tom Browning & Ago Visconti

The community partnership between Las Fotos Project and VAPAE allows Teaching Artists to fully experience how arts based organizations create and sustain powerful, long lasting impact in our communities. Based in Lincoln Heights, Las Fotos Project hosted VAPAE alumna Isabella Granados throughout 12 weeks.

Las Fotos Project was founded in 2010 by Los Angeles-based photographer Eric V. Ibarra after seeing a need for teenage girls throughout Los Angeles to have a skill that could help build their confidence and self-esteem. In March of 2011, Las Fotos Project became a project of Community Partners, a 501(c)3 organization which accelerates ideas into action to advance the public good. Las Fotos Project has since worked with girls throughout Southern California, and has developed partnership with national and international nonprofit organizations and schools to expand the movement of inspiring teenage girls through photography and self-expression. Our current focus is on the Central, South, and East Los Angeles regions of Los Angeles.

VAPAE Teaching Artist: Isabella Granados

The Mann UCLA Community School is the newest LAUSD campus to become a UCLA partner school. Throughout the Summer 2018, 6th and 7th graders were inspired to explore concepts of identity and community through the lens of cameras, engaging with the themes of perception and perspective. By utilizing digital cameras and the body as a subject, students were asked to photograph new ways of seeing their world. By photographing their families, school and neighborhoods, the students learned to trust their personal and creative outlooks; improved understanding of different communities; embraced new artistic vocabulary, while learning how they are uniquely equipped to engage and develop as creative beings.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Isabella Granados & Amanda Sutton

As an extension of our commitment to community engagement, VAPAE placed one Teaching Artist at LPAN for the fall quarter. Throughout 10 weeks, Emmanuel Galvez and LPAN’s Executive Director, Fabian Debora, co-led the intergenerational art workshop titled, Convivir/To Live with one Another .

Through this partnership, VAPAE’s Teaching Artists have the unique opportunity to learn and expand their teaching abilities, while directly impacting our communities.

Latino Producers Action Network (LPAN) is a 501(c) 3 non-profit, dedicated to the development, production, promotion, preservation and distribution of multicultural theatre, art, music, and fi lm in order to create cultural awareness and alleviate racial tension and discrimination in the community.

VAPAE Teaching Artist: Emmanuel Galvez Machuca

Can the Arts provide relevance to scientific inquiry, tasks, and tools; Can it function as a solution to long term applications and challenges of travel and movement? Two UCLA/VAPAE Teaching Artists will lead 18 weekly sessions; Design and Media Arts major, and World Arts and Cultures are the Teaching Artists majors. Weekly projects will include Multidisciplinary Arts lessons that explore: Intersections between Visual Arts and Science, Art as Coding, Movement and Design, and Art as Equity.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Jane E. Kim & Alyssa Scott

ACT ONE is a partnership between Aviva Children and Family Services, the UCLA Visual and Performing Arts Education (VAPAE) program and Agency Arts offering arts based diversion programming and UCLA student mentorship to formerly incarcerated and system impacted Los Angeles youth. The fall program, starting October 5, consists of 10 workshops to build performance skills and will end with an informal work in progress sharing and art demonstration for an audience of family and community members.

Teaching Artists: Bianette Linares, Jai Williams, and Gabriel Gutierrez.

ACT TWO is a 10 week performing arts program for formerly incarcerated and system-impacted youth from throughout Los Angeles. With support from the California Arts Council's Re-Entry Through the Arts grant, and led by our team of UCLA faculty, student mentors, and VAPAE teaching artists, ACT TWO is a platform for young people of our community who have been impacted by the criminal justice system to use the performing arts - dance, theater, poetry/spoken word, music and more - to tell their own original stories onstage. Over the course of the 10 weeks, participants from our community partner sites - Aviva Family and Children's Services, Youth Build Hollywood Charter School/Home Sweet Home, and Free LA High School/ the Youth Justice Coalition - will work together in a collaborative creative process to create a fully staged devised theatre performance to be performed at UCLA in March of 2018.

Visual Arts @ Coeur d'Alene provides the tools and support students need in order to grow as artists and creative human beings. Students intertwine their life experiences with an arts practice in a supportive, constructive environment. These Visual Arts sessions inspire students to gain a new perspective of their world and a better understanding of themselves. Students at Coeur d’Alene Avenue Elementary will engage with a wide array of media including painting, drawing, bookmaking, collage, and more.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Lily Raven Leon & Yue Wang

Dance at Emerson offers students a safe, welcoming, and fun space to build new friendships, learn the skills necessary to develop as dance artists, and receive the support they need to grow as creative and confident human beings. This program is open to any student with any level of dance experience, who is committed and passionate about dancing. Dancers will train in a variety of hip-hop, house, and contemporary dance styles while also learning new choreography and creating their own dances. Every week, participants will learn new steps and work towards creating dance routines!

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Ria Julian & Jessi Pontillas

Studio Sessions at Emerson provides young adults the tools and support they need in order to grow as artists and creative human beings. Students intertwine their life experiences with an arts practice in a supportive, constructive environment. These Studio Sessions inspire students to gain a new perspective of their world and a better understanding of themselves. Young adults at Emerson Community Charter Middle School engage with a wide array of media including painting, drawing, bookmaking, printmaking, collage, and more.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Aya Fathallah & Amanda Sutton

An afterschool arts program open to all UCS 6th grade students and all UCS parents interested in expressing themselves through art. VAPAE provides a welcome, creative, and fun space in order to make art, share our family and cultural traditions, and tell our stories. MASA is an innovative arts program that provides creative artists from different generations the opportunity to evolve as creative human beings as they bond as artists. 6th grade students and their parents intertwine their life experiences with an arts practice in a supportive, constructive environment. This fall students are exploring the artistic and cultural traditions involved in the Dia de los Muertos celebration through altar making and other arts and social activities.

MASA families focus on the idea of sanctuary: what do our communities look like if we recreate them with boxes and little wooden people? What consists of a sanctuary? Where do we find sanctuary? Other topics of exploration are positive and negative space, mixed fabric media, tapestries, and weavings.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Raymundo Baltazar, Amorette Muzingo, & Claudia Vera Rosas

The UCLA VAPAE Studio Sessions at St. Sophia afterschool program provides 6th-8th graders with the tools and support they need to grow as artists and creative human beings. Students learn to connect their life experiences with an arts practice in a supportive, constructive environment, while exploring themes of identity and self-expression. Students explore and experiment with a variety of media to learn more about themselves and what they want to communicate through their art. By encouraging students to find their own visual language, gather inspiration from their everyday surroundings, collaborate with one another and understand the larger world of art and creativity, VAPAE seeks to inspire a creative arts practice that will continue throughout the lives of the participants.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Brittany Ko & Brianda Perez

By providing an afterschool arts program focused on photo narratives, Venice High School students explore the medium and technical aspects of photography while simultaneously developing digital visuals that utilize digital applications, analog, art surrounding a subjective narrative theme.

VAPAE Teaching Artists: Rachel Tu & Owen Weitzel