The Los Angeles Artist Census (LAAC) is an artist-run research initiative that gathers and publishes data about the lives and practices of LA County visual artists.

Through surveys, interviews, and public programming, LAAC studies artists’ experiences with affordable housing, income security, debt, education, and access to healthcare. LAAC also examines how intersectional identities pertaining to race, gender, age, queerness, and ability relate to disparities in quality of life and professional development among artists.

Inspired by socially engaged art projects such as Minerva Cuevas’s Mejor Vida Corp and Rick Lowe’s Project Row Houses, LAAC aspires to foster community and self-empowerment amongst artists in Los Angeles. We recognize that traditional data research is conducted from a position of false neutrality, and has a history of sustaining social inequities. As such, our research employs a mixed-methods approach that is creative, empathetic, democratic, and social. Inviting fellow artists to participate in the research process, we gather and publish data that is often overlooked or misinterpreted by the institutions that ordinarily conduct this type of research.

LAAC is the first quality-of-life survey conducted on artists in LA County, and is unique among any research done on artists in the United States.