Great Wall of Los Angeles: Expanding Opportunities for Emerging Artists

Access to tech and creative industry employment

West LA San Fernando Valley 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)

Our project trains the next generation of muralists in the preservation of public memory, and revitalizes an open green space that unites people on common ground. The White House’s March 27th Executive Order, RESTORING TRUTH AND SANITY TO AMERICAN HISTORY, is fueling erasure of the presence, stories, achievements, and experiences of a vast swath of Americans: immigrants, people of color, workers, women, LGBTQ and Indigenous communities, and more. Targeting art organizations, museums, scientific and historical resources, and official government websites, the Federal Government is denying the people’s right and ability to document, preserve, celebrate, and express a self-understanding of one’s own history. Our artist training program, and mural expansion and park improvements will ensure accessible and enduring visual counter-narratives that champion California’s diverse peoples and stories for the benefit of generations of schools, community groups, and visitors.

As artists are increasingly attacked in the public arena, the mural arts are under particular threat, further eliminating opportunities for training and career pathways into the field, especially for artists of color and from working-class backgrounds. This grant will support the efforts to expand the Great Wall mural, originally one half-mile long, and currently under expansion in our production space in the Santa Monica Bergamot Arts Station. As a public arts organization, SPARC fills the vacuum of training for the next generation of muralists, and advances the mural arts by integrating new technology and innovating new production processes. This funding would cover emerging artist salaries as we continue production on the Great Wall, expanding its narratives of social justice and empowerment of marginalized groups. Funding will enable these artists to provide workshops that will reach at least 80 participants who can be trained on different aspects of the mural production process, including: digital technology, research & interviews, colorations, monochrome, puntos system, and full scale painting techniques–-all part of the making of the Great Wall. This project provides an emerging artist career pathway to the mural arts that centers the power of building coalitions, women’s rights, and labor activism.

This project solidifies Los Angeles’s global reputation as a center of community-driven, social justice-oriented artmaking and truth-telling, ensuring there is a next generation of muralists and digital artists to carry forward Los Angeles’s ability to inspire and nurture daring, innovative artists, particularly in the realm of public art. The project team of emerging and mentor artists will collaborate on producing sections for the expanding mural, which will uplift stories of Los Angeles at a time when forces seek to silence, erase, and distort representation of these same communities and their histories. While this one-year project will advance our work as federal cuts put our project at risk, the final step will be installing the new sections in the San Fernando Valley prior to the 2028 Olympics. The park will serve as a place for gatherings and visiting the mural, as well as an educational resource, and as an example of the healing and energizing power of art and creativity.