The 100 Families Oakland: Art & Social Change project enlivens the creative spirit and celebrates the power of families and neighborhoods in Oakland, through the transformative process of creating art that promotes hope, action, and beauty.
100 Families on KQED: Listen to members of the project discuss 100 Families Oakland on the KQED talk show Forum with Michael Krasny: 100 Families on Forum.
How to participate: 100 Families sessions take place throughout the year in different neighborhoods. Sign up for the Center email newsletter to receive announcements on when to register your family for the next 100 Families session, as well as upcoming opportunities and events.
The Project's Structure
For 10 consecutive weeks, families come together to learn about and create art, with 25 families participating at a time.
The art sessions are given in four Oakland neighborhoods: East Oakland, Chinatown, Fruitvale, and West Oakland.
Each neighborhood site offers a variety of arts that draw on the families' experiences, both personal and cultural. All art materials are provided, along with guidance and encouragement from local artists.
Israel Harros, 100 Families artist and CCA student, says:
The most important thing with 100 Families is to be able to instill in these youth and in these parents a means to really look at the rest of the world. It's not just simply about drawing or painting, but really also to explore themselves.
CCA president Michael Roth says:
This project is one of the most exciting things we've done in many years. Really working with community organizations and families throughout Oakland, to make meaning and use creativity and bring families together around art making.
Envisioning New Possibilities Brings the City Together
Families envision new possibilities, environments, and types of relationships through the process of imagining and creating.
As new possibilities are envisioned, the neighborhood groups around the city build stronger connections among themselves and with community leaders, increasing the capacity of these groups to jointly solve problems facing their communities.
Sonia Mañjon, director of the Center for Art and Public Life, says:
We really wanted artists that were passionate about collaboration, understood Oakland, live and/or work in the Oakland community. We interviewed some really fabulous artists, but I think the ones that shone for us were the ones that were really speaking from their heart about why they wanted to be part of 100 Families Oakland, and it was really about giving back.
Art Creates a Special Dialogue
In all the neighborhoods, participants are finding that their involvement is opening a special dialogue between family members.
Children, parents, and grandparents come together for art sessions held in local community centers. Here all the participants connect with each other in a supportive and friendly atmosphere while gaining artistic skills. Young children meet elders, families work together, and neighbors meet each other, which promotes the family as a unit and the neighborhood as community.
Anne Huang, executive director of the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, says:
In a lot of these families that are coming together, there is a widening intergenerational gap. Sometimes, as time goes on the various generations don't even speak the same language. So to utilize art to connect the different families together, it's been a very empowering experience.
Building from the Family Up
The power of the program is building the community arts experience from the family up, by providing support on all levels—material, social and artistic.
From its debut in East Oakland, through programs in Chinatown and Fruitvale, to finishing the initial year in West Oakland, 100 Families is gaining momentum. Communities around the country have expressed interest in bringing 100 Families to their neighborhoods.
Russell "Eesuu" Albans, 100 Families artist, says:
Hopefully, the long-term impact of 100 Families will be a lasting impression of ways for family to come together even if it's not them coming together around the art again. But just ways of dealing with one another, remembering how they talked with each other.
Melanie Cervantes, 100 Families artist, says:
Even if it's a neighborhood at a time, a block at a time, even if it means having one by one, a child, and a grandparent and a parent say, "I'm worth something," what kind of change will happen?