Advancing the arts for social change.
Our initiatives have been at The Teen Vogue Fest, The AWP Literary Conference, and more.
The Arts Initiative is an artist-led organization championing the arts that shift culture. We create and support experimental, risk-taking, contemporary art and writing, developing it toward galleries, museums, and publishing. In tandem, we create public, community-engaged, and participatory arts projects and creative advocacy.
Artist-led.
Founding Artistic Director Anna Goodman Herrick (they/them) is an author, performance artist, and interdisciplinary artist. They have performed their poetry at Hauser & Wirth, presented by the Los Angeles Review of Books, and at the Emily Dickinson Museum, including texts from their gallery and museum installations and the book that followed. In June 2026, Newsweek featured Anna as a leading voice in LGBTQ+ advocacy and representation.
Anna is a 2025 City of Los Angeles Commissioned Artist, and the author of the poetry collection A Speaker is a Wilderness (Monkfish, 2024). Medical News Today featured the book for its creative contributions to mental health. Anna produced and directed VH1’s first positive representation of being trans, and has created work on the Oprah Winfrey Network and Netflix.
More
Our work is made possible with support from our sponsors and partners
Art changes the world.
Initiative Case Study: The Bahebak Project
Celebrity Makeup Artist Sir John (Beyoncé’s head of beauty) wearing our Bahebak (This Says I Love You) t-shirt as an ambassador for our Bahebak Project initiative (2016-2022), on the Teen Vogue Summit panel; panels also featured Hillary Clinton and Maxine Waters.
-
Through this initiative, launched in response to the Muslim Ban, we not only provided education and creative advocacy to shift culture away from Islamophobia and anti-Arab prejudice, we funded rent and medical care for Syrian refugee families throughout California.
Initiative: Bodies Beloved x AWP Conference
Founding Artistic Director and author Anna Goodman Herrick signs books at our Bodies Beloved initiative at the AWP Conference.
The Arts Initiative (formerly SpeakWild) is artist-led, an umbrella for over a decade of innovation in the arts, creative advocacy, and direct action for social change led by Founding Artistic Director Anna Goodman Herrick.
The Arts Initiative is a fiscally sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a nationally registered not-for-profit, tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) organization serving the arts community.
Transforming Spaces & Communities
Creating public-engaging, transformative contemporary artworks, interventions, and performances, from public art in vacant spaces to participatory performance art in unexpected places.
Providing the tools and platforms to write and share impactful creative writing, while strengthening community and improving mental health.
Support the arts and shift culture.
The Arts Initiative is a fiscally sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a nationally registered not-for-profit, tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) organization serving the arts community. .