Studio Sessions @ Emerson Community Charter Middle School

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

PhotoVoice @ Venice High School

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

Multigenerational Afterschool Arts Program (MASA) @ UCLA Community School

 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

MASA @ Torres High School

 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

Photography @ Las Fotos Project

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

College Prep through the Performing Arts @ Inner City Arts

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