Overview
Beginning in 2018 and comprised of artists and cultural workers, CAST created the Cultural Space Ambassadors (CSA) program in direct response to community feedback and requests for more peer-to-peer networking opportunities on the issue of arts and culture real estate and rapid displacement.
The CSA program provides a forum for knowledge-exchange and relationship building that allows artists and cultural workers to determine the most pressing concerns/questions for them and how they would like to address those concerns/questions as a networked body.
As representatives of their respective work, as well as for CAST’s work to secure and steward space in Oakland, CSAs are neighborhood leaders using their community knowledge to cultivate a healthier, thriving arts sector.
Our Approach
In the first 2018-2019 cohort, 11 artists and cultural workers interested in creating and preserving space in Oakland explored innovative solutions to run their operations and secure long-term space, while disseminating new models to the broader arts ecosystem through their existing networks. This body was instrumental in shaping CAST’s real estate efforts in Oakland by co-designing the next iteration of Keeping Space – Oakland (KSO).
In its second 2020-2021 cohort, the CSAs gathered a new set of 11 emerging, mid-career, and established BIPOC artists and cultural workers whose work explores innovative space preservation models. Their expertise ranged from mural-making, movement, and textiles to Afro-futurist prototyping, fundraising, and organizing to heritage and traditional culture practices, native arts and culture, and more.
CSAs represent the Oakland arts ecosystem across artistic disciplines, geography, business models, space type, ownership status, leadership status (including new and emergent voices), Oakland rootedness, and demography.
Impact
The Our Voice, Our Future collection was displayed in July 2021 to spotlight both the individual and collective efforts of the 2020-2021 Cultural Space Ambassadors (CSAs) on the preservation of the cultural soul of Oakland and the restoration of its cultural infrastructure. Led by Cultural Strategists Chi Chi Okonmah and Elena Serrano, former alumni of the 2018-2019 CSA cohort, the 2020-2021 CSA cohort built upon the work of the first CSAs in Our Stories, Our Spaces, shifting into a collective and purely artist/cultural-worker-led approach to cultural space preservation, creation, and reimagination.
Our Voice, Our Future spotlighted each individual CSA throughout its more-than two-week run, culminating in an outdoor closing event at Black Cultural Zone’s Akoma Grand Market.
