Creative Jobs Collective Impact Initiative

Access to tech and creative industry employment

County of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a countywide benefit)

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

In an effort to understand the root issues, Arts for LA (AFLA) assembled a steering committee of 19 cross-sectoral partners, with representation from the following sectors: business, government, nonprofit, education (K-12 and Postsecondary), research, philanthropy, labor, independent artists and creative workers. The committee convened monthly in 2023 and 2024, participated in one-on-one interviews, and hosted two listening sessions attended by 200+ artists and creative workers that helped us better understand the access barriers.
AFLA has also partnered with CVL Economics to conduct research about the creative workforce in Los Angeles in two phases. First exploring creative W2 jobs and then surveying freelancers and gig workers to better understand freelance creative work and the challenges these workers face. We know that 50% of the creative economy are freelance workers and understanding the unique barriers to accessing freelance creative industry jobs is important to understand.

Project Overview
The Creative Jobs Collective (CJC) is a multi-year, cross-sector initiative aiming to create, place and preserve 10,000 living wage creative industry jobs for historically underrepresented workers in LA County by the year 2030. CJC’s vision encompasses workers in all creative disciplines from film, TV, entertainment to theater, music, visual arts and everything in between. AFLA serves as the backbone entity for this initiative and is guided by a 19-person Steering Committee that includes 2/3rd leaders of institutions and 1/3rd artists and creative workers who have personally lived the challenges this initiative is aiming to address. In 2023, LA County Board of Supervisor Solis and Horvath co-authored a motion in support of this initiative. In that motion they asked the CJC to present a set of recommendations to the (BOS) on how the county can be a partner on this initiative.
The CJC steering committee collaborated to draft a set of strategic recommendations that were presented to the BOS on April 9, 2024. Following the submission of the recommendations, the committee worked to develop a 6-year implementation plan.

From Strategy to Implementation
The initiative is now beginning to implement the plan. The implementation phase will focus on obtaining employer endorsements, job placement commitments and in this ever changing landscape job preservation to stabilize the sector is also a priority. We envision LA 2050 as a lead investor in our implementation phase.

The CJC has set a goal of 10,000 jobs by the year 2030. LA 2050’s investment will support the placement of the first 600 jobs by October 31, 2026, and we will continue the momentum over the next 4 years. By the year 2030, we envision a Los Angeles creative industry where the workforce will be measurably more diverse. It will also value its entry-level workers with a wage that is at or above the median living wage as defined by the MIT Living Wage calculator. This initiative will also leverage the next four years of major global sporting events, including the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympic Paralympic games, to create meaningful economic opportunity and upward mobility for youth and adults from historically underrepresented communities into the creative economy. This includes women, Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC), people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ Angelenos.