We The Arts: Civic Engagement Through Art is an ArtsEd4All project taking place from June 17 – July 4, 2023, in celebration of Civic Season 2023.
From Juneteenth to the 4th of July, we invite you to participate in the third annual #CivicSeason through self-guided public art visits in San Francisco, as well as in-person and online events that invite civic engagement through the arts. We’re teaming up with hundreds of history museums and sites across the country through @HistoryMadeByUs, in partnership with the next generation shaping our democracy to launch a new tradition that makes room for all of our stories – and write the next chapter together.
Read the Civic Season Report: The Art of Changemaking for more about ArtsEd4All’s participation in Civic Season 2022.
JUNETEENTH at Healdsburg Jazz
FREE – Saturday, JUNE 17, 2 pm – 8 pm Healdsburg Plaza, Corner of Healdsburg Avenue and Matheson Street, Healdsburg CA.
Healdsburg Jazz Festival kicks off its 25th Anniversary Season with Juneteenth. Enjoy free music and arts & crafts workshops!
Healdsburg Jazz is proud to present a diverse range of music, art, culture and education in honor of this holiday, free to the public in the Healdsburg Plaza. Our Juneteenth performances celebrate the wide range of Black music and art including gospel, early blues, New Orleans jazz, funk, R&B, spoken word, and straight ahead modern swing.
FREE JUNETEENTH Celebration in the Healdsburg Plaza with the Charles McPherson Quintet featuring Terell Stafford, Randy Porter, Akira Tana, and Marcus Shelby, vocalist Martin Luther The Real McCoy, The Robin Hodge Williams Gospel Choir, MJ’s Brass Boppers, Healdsburg Jazz Poet Laureate Enid Pickett and KCSM’s Greg Bridges.
Educational Activities – Families and young people are invited to join ArtsEd4All in the plaza to learn more about Juneteenth and check out the exhibit celebrating 25 years of Healdsburg Jazz Festival. Fold a zine, make a flag, pinwheel, fan or decorate your own musical shaker at the art table. This year, the public is also invited to join teaching artist Amelie Anna Hinman for music workshops at 2:30 pm-3:00 pm and 4:30 pm-5:00 pm to play and learn about the origins of a variety of percussion instruments.
Imagining “TOMORROW” with DWeb Camp
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with a mission to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge. DWeb is a global network of builders and dreamers working to create a better, decentralized web. The goal of DWeb Camp is to create a collaborative space for people to connect, learn, share, and have fun as we work towards building a better, decentralized web.
Del Sol Quartet’s DWeb Camp 2022 performance inspired The DWeb is an Ensemble Piece” which uses music as a metaphor for cooperation.
At camp, Del Sol Quartet and composer Erika Oba conducted an open workshop demonstrating the give-and-take process that goes into creating and performing a new musical composition. Erika’s composition, “Behold the Sea,” is inspired by a story of friendship between two artists, Bill Zacha & Japanese artist Toshi Yoshida which resulted in a sister city relationship between Mendocino, California (USA) and Miasa, Nagano (Japan). Continuing the tradition, Erika and the Del Sol Quartet are using music to highlight the importance of building friendships and networks of community in order to protect the water and environment to help build a better world.
Composer Erika Oba invited DWeb campers to make music using stones in the dry bed of the Navarro River.
This plaque, dedicated in a community ceremony held on July 4th, 1982 reads, “The citizens of the sister cities of Mendocino, California and Miasa, Japan dedicate this plaque to the peaceful pursuits of the peoples of the Pacific Basin and to the protection of its environment that all living things there-in may exist in perpetual harmony.”
The Plastic Pollution Coalition’s Global Webinar dives deep into the challenges that plastic pollution poses to our oceans and our bodies.
Register for the global webinar: https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/event/ppc-webinar-062223
FREE on ZOOM – Thursday, JUNE 22, 12-1 pm PT | 3-4 pm ET.
This year at DWeb Camp, we’re tuning into the Plastic Pollution Coalition’s global webinar, Plastic-Free Seas: Diving Into How Plastic Impacts Health, Climate, and Our Oceans, on Thursday, June 22, 12-1 pm PT | 3-4 pm ET. On June 22, we will dive deep into the challenges that plastic pollution poses to our oceans and our bodies, how polluted waters disrupt the “Blue Mind” mental health benefits we gain from access to healthy oceans and waterways, and how we may restore our planet as well as our own physical and mental well-being.
Joining the conversation will be “Her Deepness,” Sylvia Earle, President & Co-Chair of Mission Blue and National Geographic Explorer in Residence; Wallace J Nichols, Marine Biologist & Author of Blue Mind; and Imari Walker-Franklin, PhD, Research Chemist at RTI International & Author of Plastics. The panel will be moderated by Plastic Pollution Coalition CEO & Co-Founder Dianna Cohen.
“Tomorrow” is a LARP!
DWeb Camp is using imaginative live action role play to dream of a better internet.
Build new networks and find your flow in Nature.
FREE – Saturday, JUNE 24 (or anytime, anywhere, as you please)
Technologists at DWeb Camp are hosting a LARP Worldbuilding session, using play to imagine how the Internet of Tomorrow might be transformed for the better. A LARP is a a live-action role-playing game in which a group of people enacts a fictional scenario (such as a fantasy adventure) in real time typically under the guidance of a facilitator or organizer.
Here are some ways to play along and join in the DWeb Camp experiment.
| UNPLUG | – Take time out from the Internet and spend time recharging with a walk in nature. – Reflect upon your relationship with technology. Make a list of the ways that technology has changed your your life – for better and for worse. – What might be different? Are there aspects about your relationship with the Internet that you would like to change? “Think Different” was a slogan created for a 1997 ad campaign for Apple. |
| LEARN | – What is the Decentralized Web? – What are some important real world challenges that the DWeb aims to address? – Read the DWeb Principles which define the values of a decentralized web based on enabling agency of all peoples and learn about the origins of DWeb Camp |
| ENGAGE | – Design your DWeb Alter Ego (with or without technology!) |
“A Place for Poetry” with The Last Hoisan Poets
Anytime, in-person or virtual, FREE exploration of San Francisco public art
Take a poetry tour of the public spaces at the de Young Museum in San Francisco with The Last Hoisan Poets.
Write a poem with The Last Hoisan Poets.
Poets Genny Lim, Nellie Wong, and Flo Oy Wong — trace their roots to China’s Hoisan villages. They conduct special poetry readings in English and Hoisan-wa (a.k.a. the Toisanese/Taishanese Chinese dialect), to pay homage to their mother language which is at risk of fading from collective memory.
A Place for Poetry is a collection of poems by The Last Hoisan Poets inspired by the de Young Museum’s art and architecture. “One Eye” is a community poem begun by The Last Hoisan Poets, inspired by the sculpture of Ruth Asawa. The Last Hoisan Poets welcome poet of all ages and abilities to write a cinquain of their own. Listen to Asawa’s Gift to San Francisco, an audio tour sharing stories from the Asawa family. Take an ASL Tour of the Asawa sculpture installation the de Young Museum docent Jim Brune.
“When you put a seed in the ground, it doesn’t stop growing after eight hours. It keeps going every minute that it’s in the earth. We, too, need to keep growing every moment of every day that we are on this earth.” — Ruth Asawa
The book Your Brain on Art by Ivy Ross and Susan Magsamen shares that “neuroarts” is the transdisciplinary study of how the arts and aesthetic experiences measurably change the body, brain, and behavior and how this knowledge is translated into specific practices that advance health and wellbeing. The Aesthetic Mindset Index is based on a research instrument called the Aesthetic Responsiveness Assessment or AReA,developed by Ed Vessel, cognitive neuroscientist and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany. The authors invite you to take the short survey, and then take it again in a month or two after you’ve had time to go out in the world and build your aesthetic mindset.
San Francisco is home to one of the largest and most diverse public art collections in the country. All city residents, workers and visitors have access to world-class art in everyday settings. Here are additional resources that will introduce you to some of the most engaging public art that San Francisco has to offer.
- San Francisco CIty Hall
- Illuminate SF
- Rammaytush Language walk on King Street
- Pan American Unity Mural by Diego Rivera at SFMOMA
- Chinatown’s Public Art
- Public Art at San Francisco Hospitals
- Angel Island Immigration Station
- Aquatic Park Historic District
This Civic Season, discover your story.
Join 400 cultural and civic institutions across the country for the third annual Civic Season, a new summer tradition for learning and action co-designed with Gen Z, the future inheritors of our democracy. Civic Season unites our oldest federal holiday with our newest, going beyond hot dogs and fireworks to invite meaningful reflection on our country’s past and our role in shaping its future.
ArtsEd4All 