Organization: EastSide Arts Alliance
Mission: Cultural visual and performing arts
Activities: EastSide Cultural Center ProjectEastSide Arts Alliance (ESAA) has continued to expand its programming in our EastSide Cultural Center facility. The EastSide Cultural Center also supports over 50 community organizations, artists, musicians, performers, schools and community groups with very affordable multi-use theater space for performances, concerts, celebrations, benefit events, rehearsals, retreats, meetings, trainings, film screenings, and workshops. Our online donor program continues to grow steadily and contributed toward sustaining organizational operations.EastSide Arts Alliance eventsESAA presented nine months of community cultural events serving over 2,000 adults and youth. Cultural events included presentation and production of art exhibitions, Artist talks, cultural events, townhall educational events, block parties, music concerts, dance, theater, and spoken word events. Also presented were events open to the public and free of charge: panel discussions by artists, healthcare advocates, educators, and community organizers; free monthly video/film screenings; art receptions, and weekly open mic poetry nights. Quarterly visual arts exhibitions and artist talks in our Cultural Center gallery and quarterly in the Asian Resource Center Gallery in Chinatown, Oakland. Periodic theater workshops, book reading/signing events, family art-making activities, community meetings and gatherings plus weekly zazen meditation, and periodic Yoga workshops were offered for free and open to the public. Monthly African dance presentations and SUYA, an African cultural evening with DJ, dance, food, and discussions expanded as regular events. We continued to grow our dance/theater and performance events with a focus on providing an affordable Works-in-Progress space for young and emerging artists of color to explore and experiment. Out of our 8-year relationship with NAKA Dance Theater as a resident dance company, the EastSide performing arts series, Live Arts in Resistance, continues to gain momentum, bringing artists and community together to examine immigration rights, State sponsored violence, and displacement in our communities. ESAA also offered concerts ranging from Jazz to contemporary urban music forms to traditional music from immigrant and indigenous communities representing the diversity of our neighborhood and city. All of these events and workshops came to a halt when the pandemic closed down gathering spaces in mid-March of 2020. However, by May 2020, our weekly poetry open mic, poetry writing workshop pivoted to an online format and successfully continued with an expanding audience. We introduced Live Arts in Resistance Virtual with video clips, photo images and interviews with performing artists about their work. Sadly, what would have been our 20th Annual Jazz Arts festival offered free to the public in a local park attracting over 2800 community members had to be cancelled due to pandemic restrictions on public gatherings.Community Archive and Resource ProjectESAA continued to plan and obtain materials for our Community Archive and Resource Project, a resource library and archive of Movement literature, posters, newsletters, broadsides, photos, and books to be used as historical reference and research materials for community artists and activists of all ages. The majority of the materials are donated to EastSide Arts Alliance specifically for the Project. The intention is to create an accessible, neighborhood resource for youth who are seeking Ethnic Studies materials that their schools or libraries no longer provide and for artists and other community members and artists researching images and content for their work in the community. This is a living archive, working in conjunction with the activities presented at the EastSide Cultural Center.Neighborhood Arts ProgramIn collaboration with local artists EastSide Arts Alliance produced 2 large-scale public murals in the neighborhood, including one that serves as an art billboard, addressing neighborhood issues with its image changing every 5-8 months. A second mural was initiated, honoring the legacy of two women leaders of Mujeres Unidas y Activas, covers 2 sides of a warehouse that is now serving as a community art-making and outdoor gathering space coordinated by EastSide Arts Alliance.1)As a part of the development of the Black Cultural Zone EastSide produced a block party designed to be a pop-up cultural plaza.2)Our annual collaboration event with Navarrete x Kajiyama Dance Theater and Mujeres Unidas y Activas, El Dia de las Madres (Mothers Day) had to be cancelled due to pandemic restrictions. 3)Community artists and neighborhood organizations worked with our collective and Beats Flows youth program to create an El Dia de los Muertos street procession with accompanying cultural events in an effort to celebrate local culture and reclaim our neighborhoods in opposition to the gentrification of our San Antonio neighborhood.4)Now in its seventh year at the EastSide Cultural Center, Dance Naganuma companys The Girl Project, continues as a program of EastSide Arts Alliance. The Girl Project is a free, series of arts and empowerment workshops offered to Middle School age girls during Spring and Summer Oakland Unified School District breaks (total of 3 weeks) plus periodic after-school arts and community building workshop sessions during the school year. The pandemic closed the Cultural Center in Spring of 2020, right before the Spring workshops were to begin. The program pivoted to a virtual weekly workshop that included cooking classes, drawing, painting, and singing.5)In December 2019, we held our annual Holiday Art & Book Fair featuring local artists, craftspeople, authors, and poets as a way for EastSide Arts Alliance to promote and thank our local artists and expose our constituency to their wonderful work. 6)EastSide Mosaics, a program of EastSide Arts Alliance was commissioned to create a 29X12 exterior tile mosaic mural on the newly opened Camino 23 Apartments, an affordable housing development a few doors down from the EastSide Cultural Center. The mural was installed in late June 2020. Because tile setting was done off-site over a period of 11 months in a private studio, the project was not severely impacted by pandemic restrictions.HAVENHAVEN is a cultural media production and distribution initiative for housing justice aimed at local Bay Area voters. It is a project of EastSide Arts Alliance conceived by artist-activist Ryan Austin (RyanNicole), inspired by the Shift The Narrative Table convenings facilitated by the Non Profit Housing Association and the San Francisco Foundation. Objectively, HAVEN is purposed to engage local artists, media makers, experts, and leaders in the related fields of housing and racial justice to share their perspectives, experiences and testimonies on housing in the Bay Area. Through the creation and distribution of social justice media (music, art, film, comedy, memes), HAVEN invites members of the Bay Area community to radically imagine more just neighborhoods and cities.Black Cultural ZoneWith support from EastSide Arts Alliance, the Black Cultural Zone (BCZ) has obtained nonprofit 501(c)(3) status and has hired an Executive Director. As a collaboration of cultural, faith-based, business and arts organizations along the thoroughfare that runs through East Oakland the BCZs purpose is to convene community to discuss, plan, organize and implement more festivals and public art spaces that honor and claim our diverse peoples history and presence in these neighborhoods along our International Blvd. toward creation of a Black Cultural Zone in deep East Oakland. Initially spearheaded by EastSide Arts Alliance and East Oakland Building Healthy Communities, the Black Cultural Zone would spur black business development, arts-based entrepreneurship, gardens, food equity,and affordable housing. Ultimately, a cultural center in every East Oakland neighborhood would make for a healthier, safer, and vibrant City and we are excited to share our experiences and support those efforts.After-School Arts Workshops for YouthArts workshops offered to more than 50 youth ages 10-22. All workshops are offered free of charge. Youth programs include:1)The Girl Project - a free series of arts and empowerment workshops for Middle School age girls during OUSD Summer Break (total of 2 weeks). Workshops in dance, visual arts, creative writing, gardening, neighborhood spaces planning, bike riding, self-defense and new music were offered to neighborhood girls.2)Periodic intern workshops for High School age youth focusing on project-based design/art production, trainings offered free of charge. By mid-March of 2020, the youth programming had to switch to a virtualplatform, and were presented on a weekly, instead of bi-weekly basis so as not to overburden youth who had to spend entire days doing online learning.Fiscal SponsorshipsEastSide continued to provide fiscal s
NTEE category: Arts, Culture & Humanities
Secondary category: Community Improvement & Capacity Building