Overview and Portfolio

Oakland Artists, Inc is a fiscally-sponsored 501(c)3 California nonprofit corporation founded in 2003 to address the needs of artists and residents of West Oakland in sustainable manners. Our main goal is to weave together the specific historical development of local live/work arts community within local continuities of multi-culturalism, arts and community service.

Our board is comprised of leaders of West Oakland live/work arts community and leaders of West Oakland neighborhood communities. As a part of the Incubator Program of Intersection For the Arts (our fiscal sponsor) we are enabled to receive tax deductable monetary and in-kind donations. You can review the structure of our functional/model nonprofit here.

Programs Include:

Job Board/Website

Promote and develop opportunities for artists residing and working in Oakland, CA. Through our job board and web portal we provide a free public venue for artists to highlight their skills. The program is funded by charging the public for referrals to artist services. The job board and website are used for: connecting artists and the public, generating commissions and day work for emerging artists, info and access to live/work space for artists and opportunities for emerging artists to show their work. We emphasize collaboration and resource-sharing as valuable approaches toward community goals.

The Oakland Artists Inc Job Board is located at Mama Buzz Café (2318 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA) where it is accessible to the public and members of our community.

Maintained by Executive Committee

Youth Empowerment Arts Mentoring Program

Towards our goal of lessening neighborhood tensions, we have been developing a mentoring program that connects artists with low-income urban youth in West Oakland. This reflects our commitment to creating significant immediate and long-term positive change to our neighborhoods through our own coordinated community service efforts. Our approach is four-fold:

• Assist youth in finding and expressing their creative voice through self-expression: volunteer artists teach their skills to individual or small groups of interested children.

• Address the deficiencies of our public schools and after school programs in providing children with necessary educational skills and information through volunteer tutoring.

• Facilitate direct exposure to a broad cross-section of experience and society to inspire and create opportunities for low-income urban youth: attending and discussing public events, and facilitating new opportunities for youth through partnerships and outreach.

• Address health and nutrition poverty issues via direct programmatic and material support (pending funding)

Currently limited to an experimental approach (pending permanent space and funding issues): tutor/teach children informally, attend and discuss public events, public parks, street clean-up.

Maintained by Director Joseph Neustadt

Sustainabile Solutions: Earth-Friendly Innovations, Technology and Know-How

We emphasize sustainability considerations in our approach to all of our programs and actively seek to partner with community members with similar values and skills. Local markets, conservation principles and emerging technologies are some of the areas we attempt to integrate and normalize within our approach to building live/work arts community. We promote familiarity with and use of clean renewable energy sources such as biodiesel. We are also working on a proposal to coincide with City efforts to restore local waterways. We are advocating the use of our team of local specialists and craftsmen to utilize 3rd world sustainability practices and standards to build a sand filter around Lake Merritt. This would have the effect of drastically reducing the amount of pollution entering the Lake due to run-off. It would also provide a rich opportunity to publically explore the principles and necessity of water conservation in our modern age.

Maintained by Matt Townsend, Director

Oakland Murals Project: Contribute to an Enduring, Unique, Accessible & Significant Body of Work

We propose a series of murals and installations to be created by a diverse team of local artists to reflect our Oakland arts/culture history and as well a positive vision for the future in which the arts and culture flourish in Oakland. Our goals for the project include providing opportunities for emerging artists, public accessibility and relevance and incorporating and normalizing sustainable/emerging arts practices such as creative re-use and conservation principles. A key opportunity is approaching for such a project with the upcoming disbursement of City of Oakland Measure DD Public Arts funds.

Maintained by Erik Groff, Director

Model Live/Work Warehouses: Plans, Proposals, Know-How and More

Live/work community is a key component in efforts towards sustainable development in Oakland's deindustrialized urban neighborhoods. A warehouse is not usually a warehouse, but an ex-factory. Factories are the place where workers, through coordinated effort, created the value that historically made our country strong. In our contemporary post global era, large-scale manufacturing production is sourced to industrializing 3rd world nations. To capital these abandoned factories have no further use. Nevertheless, the legacy of cooperative effort and the dire need for space within which to discover community, culture, art and imagination are a mandate to those seeking a space for the development of global humanity in our modern times.

Please submit your inquiries to our Live/Work Warehouse Community Alliance

Benefit Events/Art Shows

We intend and hope to provide a forum for artists and community organizations to showcase their art and to assist in making the experience accessible and relevant to the public and local community. We are still sorting out the details of how, when and where this will occur. Many informal and private events currently take place – we would like to expand the opportunity for the public to participate in sustainable live/work arts community. Issues such as insurance and permits, as well as the challenge of communicating and coordinating a diverse and changing range of art events currently limit this program to a planning stage (planned/ongoing).

Contact: Devin Satterfield, Development Coordinator

Hour-Share Volunteer Program

We encourage volunteerism and public service through our Hour-Share Program. On an informal but effective basis, we have successfully facilitated and modeled cooperative volunteer efforts for community projects including: art shows, live/work warehouse building projects and in providing for the direct needs of individuals and artists in the community. The structure is simple:

1) invest in yourself through your own efforts and/or by taking part in skill-sharing and collaborative projects
2) make your skills and resources available to the community
3) help when you can and ask for help as needed

We don’t track time spent helping each other and there’s not a formal limit to the amount of assistance you can request. We have found that individuals find a variety of mutually satisfying ways to leverage their skill sets to help themselves and each other. The impact of such efforts can be quite substantial.

Resources for Artists & Community Members

We actively work to expand resources for individual artists and the broader art community in low-cost manners such as: networking, collaboration & resource-sharing and access to information & technology. Towards this end we gather information of use to our community and try to make it accessible. Proposals include: membership card w/discounts @ for local goods and services, creating and maintaining volunteer lists & providing the context for cooperative community forums and researching an alternative group health care policy . We have hosted a limited number of informational/organizational events and meetings to provide a forum through which such issues may be addressed directly by artists and community members. Also, we would like to facilitate state-wide, national and international exchange opportunities for artists in order to share and enrich the legacy of arts in Oakland..

oakland artists inc

intersection for the arts

mama buzz cafe

Mama Buzz Café (2318 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA)