Oakland: A Playground For Creatives

by Ari Takata-Vasquez

A big part of why I love Oakland is the creative community; we have tons of artists, musicians, and designers. You can't go far in Downtown without coming across a gallery opening or a venue featuring live music. While creative opportunities abound in Oakland, my favorite way to engage with the community is via city interventions. We're participating in a few exciting events involving urbanity and design! 

Oakland's Fox Theater is just 3 blocks from the shop.

Our new neighbors, SPUR

 I'm so excited to have SPUR Oakland as our new neighbors! If you aren't familiar with SPUR, they are a member-supported nonprofit promoting good planning through government, research, education, and advocacy. Basically, they're city-planning bad-asses. They're in the final phases of building out their beautiful space next door. You can help them finish their building by donating to their campaign here

SPUR's new home next door at 1544 Broadway.

Their open house event is Wednesday 1/27, and you should be there. They put out a call for Oakland artists for their open-house and will featuring performance and visual art. I'll have a few of my art piece up during the open house so be sure to check it out. At the event, they'll have a presentation from Our City, another non-profit about city-ness that brings us to another project in the works.

Public Design Fair

We're producing an art installation for their Frank Ogawa Plaza public design fair put on by Our City from February 4-6th. Our installation is a structure with a floating mesh that undulates and flows based on users interaction with them. Right now we're working on a scale model so we'll have more updates in the coming weeks.  In the meantime, here's a sneak peak:


What's your favorite part of being creative in Oakland? 

Until next time!

Ari