DSTL Arts

The Poet/Artist Development Program served up to 26 Emerging Poet/Artists, providing direct mentorship and guidance in workforce development-related skills specifically relevant to working artists. This program offered approximately 750 hours of mentorship through further program refinements made after the extensive restructuring of Program Year 21-22 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, this program continued offering Teaching Artist Internships for program participants and also relaunched our podcast, Art Block, featuring writers and artists from across our programs and community.

Art Block Zine and Aurtistic Zine are annual, sister publications that feature Emerging Poet/Artists from both Los Angeles County and nationwide, respectively. Both publications have ongoing open calls for submission from individuals, and each publication seeks to highlight the works of individuals from historically marginalized and underserved populations. In FY2023, our publications released 2 total new publications, and managed to serve approximately 100 individuals through publication and participation as either featured artists or audience members at the combined public reading (in-person/virtual). Additionally, approximately an additional 150 individuals watched the recorded readings on the DSTL Arts YouTube channel throughout FY2023. Furthermore, our podcast was rebranded and relaunched as the Art Block podcast and is now published under the banner of this program.

Conchas y Café Zine is the product of our Conchas y Café Bilingual Creative Writing Workshop Series for Adults, offered virtually for FY2023. This triennial, 12-week series shifted to a biannual, 15-week format for Program Year 22-23, continuing to provide instruction in literary concepts and techniques to participants while publishing their creative writing at the culmination of each series of workshops. For FY2023, this program produced 4 new publications, with 2 accompanying public readings, serving approximately 450 individuals across all workshop sessions, readings, and publication distribution. Furthermore, this was accomplished entirely online, utilizing various virtual platforms for instruction, including Google Classroom, social media livestreams, and YouTube for hosting recorded lessons.

Our Creative Impact workshop series (a sub-program of our Poet/Artist Development Program) offered paid, Teaching Artist Residencies for 3 Poet/Artists from historically marginalized communities in Los Angeles County. This program provided social justice-focused workshops that explored the impact of Redlining, Income Inequality, and the lack of affordable housing in our community, culminating in the publication of an anthology of art and creative writing produced by workshop participants; it also provided 8 virtual workshops in introductory phonics and poetry with the Los Angeles Public Library's Adult Literacy Program. This program resulted in a total of 14 workshops (in-person and virtual), 1 new publication featuring the artworks of our Teaching Poet/Artists and workshop participants, and 1 virtual reading that was recorded and uploaded to YouTube, along with the individual lessons from the workshops. Approximately 300 total individuals engaged with the program either as workshop participants or audience members viewing the associated workshop recordings and readings/performances conducted as a culmination event after the anthology publication. The post-program views on YouTube of all related workshops and reading recordings resulted in an additional 200+ individuals benefiting from this program.