LANCASTER – The Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA), in partnership with the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture and the Justice, Care and Opportunities Department (JCOD), presented REDEEMED, an art exhibit featuring works from nine justice-impacted women who completed a 16-week healing arts workshop at the JCOD Developing Opportunities and Offering Reentry Solutions (D.O.O.R.S) Antelope Valley Community Reentry Center.
The exhibition took place on Aug. 21 and unveiled three collaborative five-by-five-foot murals, created by the workshop participants, with design embellishments from their family members. Alongside the murals, the exhibit featured additional works that traced the participants’ creative journey experimenting with different mediums, collaborating with other participants and their own individual growth and healing. The exhibition marks the culmination of the mural-making workshop led by ACTA artist Ethel Zafranco and program coordinator Saidah Gray.
“This exhibition is a powerful reminder of what can happen when people are given space, resources and the support they need to create,” said JCOD Director Judge Songhai Armstead (Ret.). “The courage and vulnerability shown by these women through their art is extraordinary and the collaborative murals are a bold statement of resilience and hope.”
“When the first D.O.O.R.S Center opened in 2019, we knew the arts could play a vital role in reentry,” said Kristin Sakoda, Director of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture. “We helped embed arts-based strategies in the site’s services, and commissioned civic art murals that reflected the community’s resilience. Over the years, we’ve deepened that work with our colleagues at JCOD, artists, and community members. At the new Antelope Valley D.O.O.R.S Center, we are proud to continue this commitment with the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, whose unique approach to healing-centered arts features cultural heritage and personal storytelling. The REDEEMED exhibition is a powerful reminder that creative expression during the reentry journey is not just about making art—it’s about reclaiming individual voice, and rewriting societal narratives about what the future can hold in the presence of healing.”
“The REDEEMED exhibition is both a celebration of the participants’ art and healing journey and of what becomes possible when supportive systems, trusted relationships, and creative practice come together,” said ACTA Acting Executive Director Leticia Soto Flores.
The pieces are on display at the D.O.O.R.S Antelope Valley Community Reentry Center, 1753 Avenue J in Lancaster, and will remain on display to the public for one week.
Background
In December 2018, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed the Investing in Justice-Involved Individuals Through the Arts motion, directing Arts and Culture and other county agencies to develop recommendations for elevating and sustaining the arts as a criminal justice reform strategy. In March 2020, the Board adopted the Countywide Plan for Elevating the Arts as a Criminal Justice Reform Strategy, which includes goals for providing arts services for justice-involved adults.
Since the first D.O.O.R.S Center opened in 2019, the new County model of support for justice-involved adults on felony probation as they reenter the community has included the arts. For the past six years, the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture has been partnering with the County’s reentry services entity, now JCOD, to offer arts programming that supports clients’ healing, social-emotional development, job skills training and family reunification.
The Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) has been providing healing-centered, culturally responsive arts programming, such as collective songwriting and Afro-Columbian drumming, for D.O.O.R.S Center clients and their families in the Antelope Valley since 2023.
About the Alliance for California Traditional Arts
The Alliance for California Traditional Arts promotes and supports ways for cultural traditions to thrive now and into the future. Our vision is for a culturally and racially equitable California. In our increasingly fractured society, we believe ACTA will play a critical role in shaping a positive future for California where the unique value of every culture is respected, sustained, and appreciated. Through our programs, services, and funding opportunities for the traditional arts, we are weaving a more integrated, just, and empathetic social fabric across California. From Ohlone basketry to Japanese koto music, from Oaxacan mask-making to queer voguing competitions, we recognize California’s breadth of cultural practice as sources of social belonging, power, and justice.
As a statewide and national leader dedicated to supporting cultural practitioners and their communities, we travel up and down California from our offices in Fresno, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, reaching every corner of the state. We work in partnership with communities, learning from their own articulation of assets, needs, and aspirations to craft responsive programs and services. ACTA aims to serve as a bridge between cultural communities, providing opportunities for exchange, collaboration, and connection to new resources. Founded in 1997, ACTA is a 501(c)3 non-profit and for 24 years served as the California Arts Council’s official partner in serving the state’s folk and traditional arts field.
