Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC)

The Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) is an arts center that produces, preserves, and conducts educational programs about community-based public art works. SPARC espouses public art as an organizing tool for addressing contemporary issues, fostering cross-cultural understanding, and promoting civic dialogue. Working within this philosophical framework, SPARC has created murals and other forms of public art in communities throughout Los Angeles, and increasingly in national and international venues. SPARC is particularly committed to producing and promoting work that reflects the lives and concerns of America’s ethnically and economically diverse populations including: women, the working poor, youth, the elderly, and newly arrived immigrant communities. It ultimately seeks means which not only produce excellent art works but also provide a vehicle for the betterment of community through a citizens’ participatory process. SPARC’s works are never simply individually authored endeavors, but rather collaboration between artists and community members. Rather than being imposed upon the community, art rises from it. SPARC has three main areas of activity: production, education, and preservation. Within these categories, each program, project, and service reflects the organization’s role as a leading resource for public and community-based art. Underlying all of SPARC’s activities is the profound conviction that the voices of disenfranchised communities need to be heard, and that the preservation of a vital commons is crucial for a healthy civil society.