East Palo Alto youth development center creates job opportunities for local artists
EAST PALO ALTO, Calif. - With the support of the California Arts Council and the San Francisco Foundation, young people in East Palo Alto are using their artistic skills to serve the community and prepare themselves for careers in art and design.
"El Concilio serves the community and a lot of them have immigrated here from parts of South America, so we wanted this landscape to kind of mimic that," said Artist Olivia Herlihy.
Starting at the front and continuing down the side of the building, interns from the East Palo Alto Creative Youth Development center, better known as EPACENTER, spent over three months creating a mural at El Concilio of San Mateo County. Herlihy was one of the people chosen to work on the project.
"Public art is something I’m really passionate about. I love the community aspect. Like partnering and learning about the community with nonprofits in the community. So, after EPACENTER, I’d love to continue doing murals around the Bay Area. That would be great," said Herlihy.
EPACENTER, a new state-of-the-art 25,000 square foot facility in East Palo Alto, launched a workforce development program for young people 18-25 last year. EPACENTER says it’ll hire 25 local youth artists and five project mentors to produce promotional campaigns for community groups, government agencies and affordable housing developers.
"What we’re doing is basically doing graphic design work for them, social media, mural work, film work, for all of these different institutions, basically to try to increase their capacity to serve their constituencies better," said Nadine Rambeau, EPACENTER executive director.
El Concilio is located in Redwood City and partnered with EPACENTER. Founded in 1980 and led by Dr. Ana Avendaño, the nonprofit has been helping immigrant families improve their quality of life.
"Linda Lopez was a very important person for North Fair Oaks. For me, she was a mentor. She just passed away a year ago, so this was a way for us to honor her work," said Avendaño.
EPACENTER says it’s currently working with seven other organizations, and they hope to extend this work program to make sure artists in the Bay Area have job opportunities.