We The Arts: Civic Engagement Through Art is an ArtsEd4All project taking place from June 14 – July 4, in celebration of Civic Season 2025.
Healdsburg Jazz Festival: JUNETEENTH Celebration on the Plaza
Saturday, June 14, 2025 from 2:00 PM to 8:00 PM, Healdsburg Plaza, Corner of Healdsburg Ave and Matheson St, Healdsburg, CA 95448.
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC FROM 2-8 PM.
Featuring Orrin Evans Trio, The Dynamic Miss Faye Carol & Tyreek McDole Quintet.
Healdsburg Jazz is proud to present a diverse range of music, art, culture and education in honor of this holiday, free to the public in the Healdsburg Plaza. These three stellar bands exemplify the power of music as a liberational force. In addition, the day will feature poet Enid Pickett, KCSM’s Greg Bridges, hands-on art workshops with Andi Wong, dance and percussion workshops with Susana Arenas, interesting vendors, and much more.
Black communities throughout the nation celebrate independence every June 19 with gatherings, delicious food, and of course good music.
Our Juneteenth performances celebrate the wide range of Black music and art including gospel, early blues, New Orleans jazz, funk, R&B, spoken word, and straight-ahead modern swing. We will also have arts, crafts, and music workshops in the plaza for families and young people led by esteemed teaching artists. This is a free event, open to the public.
🎞️ WATCH Maya Angelou’s Blacks, Blues, Black! Episode 1 [positive behavior] Dr. Maya Angelou examines the influence of African American culture on modern American society with children’s games, dance, poetry, religion and the blues. She states: “The preachers and the blues singers are the poets of the black American world.”
💐 CELEBRATE Juneteenth by inviting your friends and family to share in an intergenerational poetry reading. READ A Poem called Freedom by enid pickett, Healdsburg Jazz Poet Laureate #poetryblooms
⏺️ CONFLUENCE 🎧 June is Black Music Month. To celebrate, Philadelphia International Records is spotlighting five essential albums that continue to define soul, funk, and R&B. 4 out of 5 of these classic album covers were designed by Chinese American Ed Lee, art director, designer & photographer for CBS/Columbia Records. Edwin E. Lee (1929-2008) was born in Walnut Grove, CA, located near the junction of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. The Walnut Grove Chinese-American Historic District is registered in National Register of Historic Places.
Freedom Festival: JUNETEENTH: A Staged Reading of a new play by enid pickett
Thursday, June 19 & Friday, June 20, 2025, 7:00pm – 9:00pm, New Vintage Church 3300 Sonoma Avenue, Santa Rosa CA 95405.
A Table Reading Play about love. Love of Family, Faith, and Freedom Three acts: 1865-1963-2025.
Watch the play in person or streaming live.
Tickets: General $20, Students & Seniors $10
Del Sol Quartet on Angel Island: “The Japanese Picture Brides”
Saturday, June 21, 2025, at 11:30 AM / 2:30 PM in the Angel Island Immigration Station Detention Barracks Museum.
FREE with admission to the museum. $5 adult /$3 youth.
Requires a ferry ride! https://www.aiisf.org/planyourvisit
This program by the Del Sol String Quartet, held in partnership with Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation (AIISF), explores the history of Japanese picture brides experience through music by Asian American composers and oral storytelling.
Featuring Takuma Itoh’s “American Postcards – Picture Brides”
and music by Andy Akiho & Erika Oba
Art Installation by Patricia Wakida
Family and children activities in the hospital building
Located in San Francisco Bay, the Angel Island Immigration Station served as an immigration port between 1910 and 1940.
For all immigrants, descendants, and families, Angel Island is a living landmark that symbolizes diverse experiences of detention, racism, exclusion, hope, and determination. Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation protects the historic site, elevates its stories, promotes learning, and celebrates the new beginnings and immigrant contributions that define the strength of the US to inspire a more equitable and inclusive future; one that embodies how immigrants make nations better.
🌎 LEARN about the history of Angel Island with Angel Island Insight, ArtsEd4All digital storytelling project, where you will find stories, video, exhibits and poetry inspired by Angel Island & Del Sol Quartet’s podcast Sounds Current.
Changing Perspectives on Japanese American Incarceration
Saturday, June 21 & 22, 2024, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM, Oakland Asian Cultural Center, Pacific Renaissance Plaza, 388 9th Street, Suite 290, Oakland, CA 94607
Activist and filmmaker Chizu Omori with Japanese American Memorial Pilgrimages (JAMP) presents “Changing Perspectives on Japanese American Incarceration,” a two-day conference with speakers and workshops focused on changing perspectives on Japanese American WWII incarceration history.
Registration includes lunch on both days. Tickets: $150
Speakers include: Frank Abe, Julie Abo, Jeff Burton, Rob Buscher, Hanako Wakatsuki Chong, Patrick Hayashi, Satsuki Ina, Mike Ishii, Akemi Johnson, Koji Lau-Ozawa, Andrew Leong, Katie Fujiye Nuss Louis, Hana Maruyama, Eric Muller, Kaz Naganuma, Lia Nitake, Jeff Ogata, Chizu Omori, Greg Robinson, Bekki Shibayama, Hiroshi Shimizu, Barbara Takei, Diana Emiko Tsuchida, Nancy Ukai, Jonathan Van Harmelen, Alice Yang.
This history is more relevant than ever and we still have so much to learn.
Topics will include: President Roosevelt, History of the JACL, Issei/Kibei/Nisei, Loyalty Questionnnaire, Tule Lake, Draft Resisters, Renunciants, Crystal City, Japanese Latin Americans, Monuments, Archeology, Intergenerational Trauma, Yonsei and Gosei Community Work, Importance of Incarceration for Today. (Please note that topics may change as current events change.)
For additional information or further study, please visit our online RESOURCES page: https://www.jampilgrimages.org/changing-perspectives-resources
🎞️ WATCH the 1999 film Rabbit in the Moon about Japanese Americans in American concentration camps during World War II, with your public library card or university login on Kanopy. Written and directed by Emiko Omori and produced with her sister Chizuko Omori, the film highlights resistance and other lesser told stories.
Coretta’s King by Destiny Muhammad
Thurs, June 26, 2025, 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Ruth Williams Bayview Opera House, 4705 3rd St., San Francisco, CA 94124 Tickets on Eventbrite – FREE & open to all
‘Coretta’s King’ is a bold new work-in-progress by harpist and composer Destiny Muhammed. Told through music, movement, and narrative, Coretta’s King imagines the inner voice of Coretta Scott King, an artist and activist navigating the tension between her dream of becoming a concert soprano and her role in the Civil Rights Movement. In collaboration with Zaccho Dance Theatre, this powerful performance also features Jeannine Anderson, Brian Freeman, and William Brewton Fowler.
👑 VISIT The King Center’s Coretta Scott King Rose Gallery to view artifacts from Mrs. King’s remarkable life, and tour the interactive 3D gallery celebrating the extraordinary life and legacy of Coretta Scott King.
Dreamers of Dreams Mural
#NationalMuralDay #PoetryBlooms
June 28th marks National Mural Day 2025, which is celebrated on the last Saturday of June each year.
The Dreamers of Dreams mural, painted by artist Nico Berry at 67 Woodside Avenue in San Francisco, elevates arts education in San Francisco’s public schools and celebrates the outstanding arts educators who have inspired our young people in the classroom and beyond. The imagery include large-scale portraits of SFUSD arts educators from a variety of disciplines who have had a demonstrable impact on the youth of San Francisco.
On the left side of the design there is lettering that says, “We are the music makers. We are the dreamers of dreams”. These are the first two lines of a poem called “Ode” that was written by the English poet Arthur O’Shaughnessy and first published in 1873. The poem celebrates and champions the role of the artist in society, and those lines in particular have been alluded to many times in recent popular culture.
💐 SHARE your favorite poems. ✉️ FOLD an origami envelope and enjoy a public poetry reading with friends. 🐞 SEE sister poets Nellie Wong & Flo Oy Wong read One Eye, a collective poem of American cinquains inspired by Ruth Asawa’s art, at the Dreamers of Dreams mural. #poetryblooms
In a nod to Asawa’s love of gardening, the mural includes a variety of flowers reminding us all to “give people their flowers while they’re still alive.”
READ
A Life of Art
A preview of Ruth Asawa: Retrospective, the most expansive exhibition of the artist’s work to date.
Ruth Asawa Retrospective
April 4 – September 2, 2025, SFMOMA
https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/ruth-asawa-retrospective/
This first posthumous retrospective presents the full range of Ruth Asawa’s work and its inspirations over six decades of her career. As an artist, Asawa forged a groundbreaking practice through her ceaseless exploration of materials and forms. As an educator and civic leader, Asawa’s impact on San Francisco can still be felt today.
🌎 LISTEN to stories from Asawa’s family and friends about her public art in the San Francisco Bay Area from anywhere in the world with the Ruth Asawa Public Art Tour. 🎨 MAKE something new with SCRAP at free drop-in workshops at SFMOMA.
READ
Reflections on Wayne Thiebaud from a Former Student
By Grace Munakata, painter, teacher, and Wayne Thiebaud’s former student and friend
Wayne Thiebaud: Art Comes from Art
March 22 – August 17, 2025, Legion of Honor
https://www.famsf.org/exhibitions/wayne-thiebaud
Wayne Thiebaud (1920–2021) became famous for his colorful paintings of American confections and buffets. He was also a self-described art “thief,” who openly drew ideas from and reinterpreted old and new European and American artworks. An influential teacher at Sacramento Junior College and the University of California, Davis, Thiebaud never stopped learning. He believed that art history is a continuum that connects artists of the past, present, and future. Highlighting work from across the beloved artist’s six-decade career, this exhibition features Thiebaud’s inventive reinterpretations and direct copies of famous artworks, as well as objects from his personal art collection that inspired him.
🧑🍳 HOST your own Cake Picnic with friends, there’s only one rule: No Cake, No Entry. At the special Cake Picnic, inspired by Wayne Thiebaud’s iconic cake paintings, at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, one-thousand museum-goers delivered 1387 CAKES.
Internet Archive:
Microfiche Scanning Ops
& Democracy’s Library
Ever wonder how government documents, once locked away on tiny sheets of microfiche, become searchable and accessible online? Now you can see it happen in real time.
The Internet Archive has launched a livestream from our microfiche scanning center (https://www.youtube.com/live/aPg2V5RVh7U), offering a behind-the-scenes look at the meticulous work powering Democracy’s Library—a global initiative to make government publications freely available to the public.
Live: Monday–Friday, 7:30am – 3:30pm Pacific Time (one shift, for now). Off Hours: The livestream will cycle through films and images from NASA and other public domain collections at the Internet Archive.
🚀 SHIFT your perspective with NASA’s Image of the Day Gallery
on Democracy’s Library on the Internet Archive.
“That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.” ArtsEd4All’s gallery of Blue Marble Project pics archives stories about our Blue Marble crew.
The Apollo 16 crew captured this Earthrise with a handheld Hasselblad camera during the second revolution of the moon. Identifiable craters seen on the moon include Saha, Wyld and Saenger. Much of the terrain seen here is never visible from the Earth, as the command module was passing onto what is known as the ‘dark side’ of the moon.
There’s more to explore!
Read the Civic Season Report: The Art of Changemaking for more about ArtsEd4All’s participation in Civic Season.
We The Arts: Civic Season 2022 * AIDS MEMORIAL QUILT in Golden Gate Park * A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks * JUNETEENTH Celebration in the Healdsburg Plaza * Oakland First Fridays * The Last Hoisan Poets: A Tribute to Hung Liu * SAN FRANCISCO: “The City Is The Campus”
We The Arts: Civic Season 2023 * JUNETEENTH at Healdsburg Jazz * Imagining “TOMORROW” with DWeb Camp * “A Place for Poetry” with The Last Hoisan Poets * Ruth Asawa & San Francisco’s Public Art
We The Arts: Civic Season 2024 * JUNETEENTH at Healdsburg Jazz * Juneteenth, Pride & July 4th with The Golden Gate Park Band * Music & Migration with Del Sol Quartet * Film Screening: Paper Angels @ Clarion Performing Arts Center