Emerging Arts Professionals San Francisco Bay Area presents Emergence 2020: Community Capital, Collective Care. This year, we discuss the imperative of collective care and strategies of mutual aid and models outside of capitalism
If the current global pandemic and social upheaval has taught us anything it’s that our preconceived notions of capital and care in a late-stage capitalist society fall short when faced with adversity, especially in the sector of arts and culture. But what alternative methods are emerging? Can community capital and collective care bridge society’s authentic needs? And what role do they play during times of emergency? How do we shift from a foundation of productivity to one of wellness? From desire to joy? From injustice to liberation?
Join us June 8, 9, and 10 for safely-distanced but meaningful connection and exploration as we delve into these questions and their intersections with cultural equity, arts and capital, regenerative practice, and the creative city at Emergence 2020: Community Capital, Collective Care – presented by Emerging Arts Professionals San Francisco Bay Area (EAP) and our community partners.
EMERGENCE 2020: Community Capital/Collective Care
June 8–10, 2020 | Online
Emergence, the annual convening of the EAP network, provides a collaborative platform for Bay Area arts & culture workers to connect, share ideas, and elevate their work and voices. EAP is committed to curating Emergence as a participatory experience that encourages deep connections and inquiries that are omnidirectional through generations, career levels, business models, and disciplines. Our goal is for you to walk away with actionable next steps, as well as tangible tools and a strengthened network to support your work.
2020 Highlights
- State of Arts and Culture through the eyes of EAP Fellowship Cohort X, including discussion on Arts & Capital, Regenerative Practices, Creative Cities, and Cultural Equity
- Sessions on storytelling, mutual aid and creative resource-sharing, and giving space for dreaming
- Opening remarks by Kanyon CoyoteWoman Sayers-Roods
- Guest speakers including Maria Jenson, Kathy Zarur, Jason Wyman, and many more
Guiding Questions
- What alternative methods are emerging as we navigate pandemics, oppression, and ongoing disparities?
- Can community capital and collective care bridge society’s authentic needs?
- What role does community capital and collective care play during times of emergency?
- How do we shift from a foundation of productivity to one of wellness?
- From desire to joy?
- From injustice to liberation?
LOCATION
Keeping our community in mind, we pivot our traditionally in-person event toward a different kind of space, experimenting with ways we can connect in virtual and/or socially-distanced formats.
Several talks, events, publications, and workshops will be hosted on various platforms—mostly Zoom. See full schedule and registration for specific details.
With deep respect, EAP acknowledges that even in virtual space, our people, our work, and our network servers are on native lands and thank the indigenous people of the Bay Area who have stewarded this land throughout the generations.
ABOUT EMERGENCE
Emergence, the annual convening of the EAP network, provides a collaborative platform for Bay Area arts & culture workers to connect, share ideas, and elevate their work and voices. EAP is committed to curating Emergence as a participatory experience that encourages deep connections and inquiries that are omnidirectional through generations, career levels, business models, and disciplines. Our goal is for you to walk away with actionable next steps, as well as tangible tools and a strengthened network to support your work.
This year, as we move online for social distancing, Emergence expands from a day-long convening to 3 days of smaller convenings in celebration of the arts & culture workforce.
Celebrating it’s tenth year, Emergence is at the heart of the inaugural Art Workers Week, which honors the culture, labor, and value arts and culture workers contribute to our Bay Area ecosystem and the many networks, organizations, and collectives who hold space and provide us with resources and connection.
Schedule
- Session 1: Seeding the Future—Community Capital, Collective Care (Mon, Jun 8, 1–3:30PM)
- Session 2: Beyond Theater: Exploring Improv and Storytelling tools for Building Community Capital (Tue, Jun 9, 1–2PM)
- Session 3: Our Community is Capital—Resilience through creative resource-sharing (Tue, Jun 9, 3–5:30PM)
- Session 4: A Space for Dreaming With Crystal Mason & Jason Wyman (Wed, Jun 10, 1–2:30PM)
- Session 5: The Body is a Spiral: Guided Meditations from Poets Reading the News (Wed, Jun 10, 3–4PM)
- Session 6: Art Workers Happy Hour With Beatrice L. Thomas and Kevin Seaman (Wed, Jun 10, 5:30-7:30PM)
Emergence 2020 Community Library & Archive
Visit our shared library and Emergence archive at bit.ly/EM2020Library
Here you will find links, tools, articles, and resources related to Emergence 2020: Community Capital, Collective Care—including info from and about our sessions, speakers, and content. This is a Community Library, and we’d love to include your notes, images, and links in the library. To contribute, please email engagement@emergingsf.org with “EM202 Library” in the subject.
Fellowship Team Publications
Mon, Jun 8, 1–3:30PM PDT
Session 1
Seeding the Future—Community Capital, Collective Care
Join EAP’s graduating cohort of fellows for some moments of meaningful connection to explore and unpack the state of the Bay Area Arts & Culture field as we ask: Can community capital and collective care bridge society’s authentic needs, and what role do they play during these times of emergency? How do we shift from a foundation of productivity to one of wellness? From desire to joy? From injustice to liberation?
Delve into these questions and their intersections with cultural equity, arts and capital, regenerative practice, and the creative city and help seed a future that is bright, communal, and caring!
- Opening by Kanyon Sayers-Roods (Ohlone & Chumash, artist, consultant)
- Presentations and discussions with Fellows & Mentors from Cohort X.
- Breakouts Facilitated by Adrianne Ramsey, Vanessa Chang, and Chanell Stone
Tue, Jun 9, 1–2PM PDT
Session 2
Exploring Improv & Storytelling for Building Community Capital
Explore how Improv and Storytelling go beyond theater and performance with a variety of techniques that can be used by all culture workers to elevate community capital in the arts & culture fields. Learn ways to support culture workers connecting, sharing ideas, and elevating your work and voices through these art forms.
- Therese Davis is an EAP Fellowship Cohort IX Alumni, Cohort X mentor, lifelong activist and artist whose earliest memories involve advocating for voting equality and civil rights.
- Jen Tait has degrees in architecture and filmmaking, and has studied Shiatsu and Chi Nei Tsang massage, laughter yoga, TaKeTiNa with Reinhard Flatischler, body percussion with Keith Terry, kecak Indonesian monkey chant in Bali, and structured vocal improv in the lineage of Bobby McFerrin.
- Kathy Zarur is a curator, educator and culture worker in San Francisco. Her research areas include contemporary South West Asian/diaspora art and museum studies. She has curated exhibitions for the San Francisco Arts Commission, Minnesota Street Project, SOMArts, and the Museum of the African Diaspora.
- Ariela Morgenstern is a performer and coach who specializes in bringing intention and vitality to professionals’ leadership presence and presentations.
Tue, Jun 9, 3–5:30PM PDT
Session 3
Our Community is Capital—Resilience in creative resource-sharing
We know that monetary capital is critical to our survival, but what alternative forms of capital help us through survival and into a state of thriving?
Join moderator Tyese Wortham, EAP advisory board member and Director of Engagement at CAST, and panelists Maria Jenson (Creative & Executive Director, SOMArts Cultural Center), Arturo Mendez (Director and Producer, La Diáspora Festival), and the STUD Collective to discuss stories of resilience through creative resource-sharing.
- Serving artists and arts organizations through real estate development, Tyese Wortham runs Keeping Space – Oakland, a technical and financial assistance initiative, and is the Director of Community Engagement at CAST.
- Maria Jenson is recognized as a leader in the arts for advancing innovative strategies to sustain creative communities in the midst of rapidly changing urban environments.
- Arturo Méndez Reyes is an award-winning communications expert, project manager and cultural organizer, specializing in the intersection of community and business development.
- The STUD Collective visions keeping San Francisco queer by providing a safe, welcoming venue for creative expression, celebration and nightlife. We celebrate and preserve the legacy of the Stud bar while cultivating creativity and operating ethically and according to our established co-op values: Self-help, Self-responsibility, Democracy, Equality, Solidarity and Equity.
Wed, Jun 10, 1–2:30PM PDT
Session 4
A Space for Dreaming With Crystal Mason & Jason Wyman
Artists Crystal Mason + Jason Wyman invite you to dream together. We’ll share insights into setting the conditions for dreaming, give space to dream, and name our collective dreams.
- Crystal Mason is an artist, activist, communicator and cultural worker. They are forever Black and forever Queer
- Jason Wyman is queerly complex. Today, that means loving fearlessly + living radically. Tomorrow, who knows?
Wed, Jun 10, 3–4:00PM PDT
Session 5
The Body is a Spiral: Guided Meditations from Poets Reading the News
This unique session will feature guided meditations by poets, whose words will center on the body, the stillness, the spirit and the breath. Hosted by J Spagnolo, co-founder of Poets Reading the News and graduating EAP fellow, poets featured include Richard Garcia; Caroline Cottom, Ph.D.; Sandra Fees, and Priyatam Mudivarti. Learn more about this Oakland-based nonprofit focused on community care through transcendent poetry at PoetsReadingtheNews.com.
- J Spagnolo (they/them) is a poet and creative leader based out of California. A graduate of Mills College, they co-founded Poets Reading the News, and have just finished a fellowship with Emergent Arts Professionals, where they focused on Regenerative Practices.
- Richard Garcia‘s poetry books include The Other Odyssey, Dream Horse Press, 2014, The Chair, BOA 2015, and Porridge, Press 53, 2016. His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. He has won a Pushcart prize and has been in Best American Poetry.
- Caroline Cottom, Ph.D., is the former leader of the movement that brought an end to nuclear test explosions in the Nevada desert, described in her memoir, Love Changes Things, Even in the World of Politics. Her poetry has appeared in Silk Road, Pennsylvania English, Mandala Journal, negative capability, Serving House Journal, and The Broad River Review, among others. With her husband Thom Cronkhite, Caroline also teaches meditation and other tools for living in peace, joy, and integrity.
- Sandra Fees lives in Reading, Pennsylvania. She served a term as Berks County Poetry Laureate (2016-2018) and is the author of The Temporary Vase of Hands (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Her recent work has appeared in The Comstock Review and Poets Reading the News.
- Priyatam Mudivarti is an award-winning visual artist, programmer, writer and meditator, who calls Northern California his home, with an art studio and retreat on Cobb mountain. He has an MFA in creative writing and BS in computer science.
Wed, Jun 10, 5:30–7:30PM PDT
Session 5
Art Workers Happy Hour with Beatrice L. Thomas and Kevin Seaman
Kick back and get happy with the people of your Bay Area arts communities! Hosted by Beatrice L. Thomas and Kevin Seaman, our happy hour will have no agenda, other than to spend time connecting with each other! Depending on turn out, we may create breakout rooms to ensure intimacy, connectivity, and more fun.
- Mx. Beatrice L. Thomas is a multidisciplinary artist, creative producer and EDI (equity, diversity and inclusion) consultant from the Bay Area.
- Kevin Seaman is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural worker from San Francisco.
Opening Land Acknowledgements & Grounding
Kanyon CoyoteWoman Sayers-Roods
Kanyon Sayers-Roods is Costanoan Ohlone-Mutsun and Chumash; she also goes by her given Native name, “Coyote Woman”. She is proud of her heritage and her native name (though it comes with its own back story), and is very active in the Native Community. She is an Artist, Poet, Published Author, Activist, Student and Teacher. The daughter of Ann-Marie Sayers, she was raised in Indian Canyon, trust land of her family, which currently is one of the few spaces in Central California available for the Indigenous community for ceremony. Kanyon’s art has been featured at the De Young Museum, The Somarts Gallery, Gathering Tribes, Snag Magazine, and numerous Powwows and Indigenous Gatherings. She is a recent graduate of the Art Institute of California, Sunnyvale, obtaining her Associate and Bachelor of Science degrees in Web Design and Interactive Media. She is motivated to learn, teach, start conversations around decolonization and reinidgenization, permaculture and to continue doing what she loves, Art.
“I am Ohlone & Chumash – California Native Woman. I am a creative artist ever inspired by nature and the natural world, Catalyst of decolonizing conversations. Contemp/Traditional Artist, Native Representative, Consultant, Advocate of Truth in History, Multimedia Artist, “Coyote”, T.E.K educator, and much more – Let’s Talk”
Cohort X Fellows & Mentors
Nimah Gobir
Teach YR Producer & Project Manager
Trami Cron
Executive Director
Alex Law
Freelance Choreographer
Vanessa Chang
Lecturer, Curator, and Writer
Arturo Méndez Reyes
Cultural Producer
Adrianne Ramsey
Arts Educator, Arts Writer
Emma Rosenbaum
Marketing Director, Writer
Melissa San Miguel Quintana
Exhibits Assistant and Teaching Assistant
Chanell Stone
Visual Artist, Curator, Ideator
J Spagnolo
Poet and Strategic Director
Tyese Wortham (mentor)
Director of Community Engagement
Michelle Lynch Reynolds (mentor)
Executive Director
Bhumi Patel (mentor)
Artistic Director and Arts Educator
Therese Davis (mentor)
Social Practice Artist, Administrator, Creative and Life Coach, Social Media, Event Planning and Marketing Specialist Contractor
Vin Seaman
Artist, Curator, Cultural Worker
Guest Speakers & Presenters
Jen Tait
Jen Tait has degrees in architecture and filmmaking, and has studied Shiatsu and Chi Nei Tsang massage, laughter yoga, TaKeTiNa with Reinhard Flatischler, body percussion with Keith Terry, kecak Indonesian monkey chant in Bali, and structured vocal improv in the lineage of Bobby McFerrin.
Kathy Zarur
Kathy Zarur is a curator, educator and culture worker in San Francisco. Her research areas include contemporary South West Asian/diaspora art and museum studies. She has curated exhibitions for the San Francisco Arts Commission, Minnesota Street Project, SOMArts, and the Museum of the African Diaspora.
Ariela Morgenstern
Ariela Morgenstern is a performer and coach who specializes in bringing intention and vitality to professionals’ leadership presence and presentations.
