LOS ANGELES -- On July 7, the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture announces over $31 million dollars will be awarded to over 750 arts, cultural, and equity-building organizations, a historic County investment in the nonprofit creative sector.

Over twenty-six million dollars of that sum comes from Los Angeles County’s allocation of the Biden Administration’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) relief and recovery programs. To distribute these one-time funds, the Department of Arts and Culture designed and implemented Creative Recovery LA. This initiative supports the nonprofit creative sector that is facing ongoing challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, and focuses on organizations located in and serving communities most impacted by COVID and inequity. With a $26.4M total, 668 grantees, and over 1,900 individual grants awarded through the program’s innovative 5-in-1 grant opportunity design, Creative Recovery LA is believed to be the largest single publicly funded arts grant program in the history of the Los Angeles region.

The rest of the $31M is funded by the Department of Arts and Culture’s flagship Organizational Grant Program, which sustains LA County’s cultural ecosystem with funding to arts organizations of every artistic discipline, budget size, and geography, and the innovative Community Impact Arts Grant initiative, which supports municipalities and social service and social justice nonprofits that use the arts in their community service programs.

The Department of Arts and Culture designed Creative Recovery LA to support the post-COVID arts and creative economy, while leveraging the unique qualities of the arts to support the recovery of communities. Its program design included five grant opportunities, so organizations could apply, in one streamlined application, for funds to address distinct needs and policy goals—Arts Relief and Recovery; Creative Works and Jobs for Artists; Reopening Culture, Tourism, and Marketing; Creative Career Pathways for Youth; and Arts for Justice-Involved Youth. In all, 668 organizations were awarded 1,912 grants across the five program categories.