DOWNEY – The Rancho Los Amigos Foundation, a non-profit that works to enhance services at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center, was one of 37 organizations to be awarded grants by the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. 

The grants total $500,000 and art part of the Community Impact Arts Grant (CIAG) program, which provides funding for nonprofit organizations, offering arts services or activities to residents of LA County in a wide variety of situations and settings often outside a traditional arts environment.   

The Rancho foundation was awarded $14,900, which it will use to support a year-round, comprehensive art program for adults and pediatric patients with disabilities. 

In a statement, the arts commission said that the CIAG program “recognizes the value of the arts as a vital tool for civic problem solving across a range of issue areas and supports arts programming taking place at nonprofit social service and health organizations, municipal departments and institutions of higher education as part of larger missions to provide services to individuals and communities.”   

Examples of the projects supported by CIAG include the Urban Possibilities Writing Empowerment Program at Chrysalis Center; an afterschool expressive arts therapy project for youth at Special Services for Groups; Day Laborer Fandango Project, gathering stories of the day laborer community through verse writing workshops and fandango; and Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment’s annual arts festival Power Fest in South Los Angeles. More information about the all 37 organizations can be found below. 

Grant amounts range from $7,400 to $15,200 and support one year arts projects for organizations looking to build upon existing arts programming. There will be one additional year of available funding.   

Applications were reviewed and scored by 20 knowledgeable panelists with experience in the arts and social services, including artists, arts administrators, and those with experience working with the diverse communities being served by applicants.  

Of the 37 grant recipients, 15 were youth or after-school organizations, followed by disability (4), health (3), social justice (3), mental health (2), immigrant rights (2), homeless (2), education (2), veterans (1), municipality (1), environmental (1) and community centers (1). 

A full list of grant recipients is posted online at lacountyarts.org/ciag