About Us | Sidewalk Stories LA

Our Mission

Repair, Create, Connect

Sidewalk Stories LA is an emerging Los Angeles nonprofit initiative with a simple mission: improve public safety and youth civic engagement by repairing damaged sidewalks and transforming them into community-built mosaic art.

We believe a single repaired panel does two things at once. It removes a hazard that has tripped seniors and snagged wheelchairs for years. And it gives neighborhood kids a chance to design and build something beautiful on the street where they live.

Our founder, Trevor Damyan, walks these streets every day. He started with the cracked panels near Blackburn and Melrose in the Fairfax / Mid-City West neighborhood, and wondered why nobody had fixed them. So he decided to do something about it. Not just patch them. Transform them.

Cracked and lifted sidewalk panel in Los Angeles neighborhood

What We Believe

Our Core Values

Safety First

Every project starts with a hazard. We repair the concrete because it matters. Seniors, parents with strollers, and people with mobility challenges deserve safe sidewalks.

Youth Led

Kids do not just watch. They design, vote, and build. We hire teaching artists who know how to guide young people through the creative process from sketch to finished tile.

Community Owned

Residents vote on which panels get repaired. Local businesses sponsor panels. The neighborhood decides what the mosaic looks like. This is not top down art. It is bottom up.

Tangible Results

We do not do reports that sit on shelves. Every dollar produces a panel you can walk on, photograph, and point to. Before and after is our favorite metric.

Our Team

Who We Are

A small group of Los Angeles residents who believe sidewalks can be safer and more beautiful at the same time.

Trevor Damyan

Founder & Board President

Trevor lives in the Fairfax / Mid-City West neighborhood and walks past cracked sidewalk panels every day. He brings a decade of experience in structured finance and project formation to the nonprofit world.

Meredith Reed

Director & Board Secretary

Meredith is an attorney, operations executive, and public art advocate. She has never encountered a crumbling public asset she didn’t want to save. As Board Secretary she keeps notices, minutes, and corporate records tight while connecting Sidewalk Stories LA to LA’s creative community.

Jim De Vico

Director & Operations Lead

Jim is a Principal and Fractional COO who brings operating discipline to the founding board. He helps turn plans into repeatable systems for partner coordination, vendor management, and pilot execution.

Jason Ciment

Founding Tech Advisor

Jason is a GetVisible co-founder and digital marketing entrepreneur who is loosely associated with Sidewalk Stories LA as a technology sounding board. The nonprofit develops and owns its community reporting platform in-house.

Children engaged in hands-on mosaic and craft activities

Our Story

From a Walk to a Movement

It started with a walk. Trevor noticed the same lifted panel near his apartment every day for months. Then another. Then a whole block where the sidewalk looked more like a hiking trail than a city street.

He looked into who was supposed to fix it. The answer was complicated: property owners are technically responsible, but many cannot afford the $1,500 repair. The city has a backlog measured in years. So the cracks stay.

Then he thought: what if fixing the sidewalk was not just a repair, but a moment? What if neighborhood kids designed the pattern? What if a teaching artist helped them sketch it? What if the finished panel became a point of pride instead of an eyesore?

That is how Sidewalk Stories LA was born. One cracked panel at a time. One neighborhood at a time. One story at a time.

Why We Do This