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.

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

PhotoVoice at 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 Artists: Jamie Gonzalez & Quincy Irving

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 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

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: Matthew Broking & Claudia Rosas

Creativity Sessions @ Ad Astra

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

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

Photography @ Horace Mann UCLA Community School

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

Intergenerational Art @ Latinx Producers Action Network

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