Overview
A CAST pilot program dedicated to providing training and funding for Oakland arts and culture organizations seeking real estate assistance. Through direct financial grants, one-on-one technical assistance, and real estate readiness training, Keeping Space – Oakland was developed to provide safe, stable, and permanent real estate solutions for Oakland’s local arts organizations.
Our Approach
CAST launched the program in December 2016 with funding from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Keeping Space – Oakland is one strategy of many proposed by the Oakland Arts Workspace Group, a public-private partnership that includes the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, CAST, Northern California Community Loan Fund, and the City of Oakland. The group is focused on creating workspace stability to foster, support, and sustain the arts and cultural ecosystem in Oakland.
Impact
With its project partners, CAST awarded six Oakland-based arts and cultural organizations with Technical Assistance Awards, helping them to secure long-term, affordable, safe space in Oakland. Awardees included ALENA Museum, an active work hub for arts and social enterprise, dedicated to advancing the cultural richness of African diaspora; Pro Arts, one of the oldest and most significant contemporary arts institutions in Oakland; Project Bandaloop, a vertical dance group re-imagining dance to activate public space and honor nature and community; A PLACE for Sustainable Living, a grassroots experiential learning center that showcases and fosters sustainable living practices for the public through art, community, and ecology; Qilombo, a former community center striving to advance Afrikan and Indigenous cultural revitalization through arts and education programming; and Ubuntu Theater Project, now Oakland Theater Project, which works to bring together divided social groups through transformative artistic experiences that reveal our shared humanity.
$90,000 in professional real estate training and consultation services were rewarded across the six local organizations in partnership with the Northern California Community Loan Fund (NCCLF).