Apply Today!
PRIORITY DEADLINE: April 29, 2020
FINAL DEADLINE: May 15, 2020
We invite you to the 2020 Arts for Social Change Jam, a creative gathering for people working at the intersection of arts and social change, to come together; share our challenges and breakthroughs; nurture ourselves; support and inspire each other; explore our identities as artists, activists and whole people; figure out ways to be more financially sustainable; find intersections for future collaborations; and build a more resilient network of artist-activists (artivists).
When and where is the Arts for Social Change Jam?
Sunday, June 28 to Saturday, July 4 — at a beautiful retreat center, in the Santa Cruz mountains, California, about 75 minutes from the San Francisco Bay Area.
What is the Arts for Social Change Jam?
YES! Jams have been happening since 1999. YES! collaborates with other like-hearted peers around the world to co-create Jams where diverse visionaries and social change-makers combine their inspirations and skills to create something greater than the sum of their parts.
The Jam works on 3 three levels:
- On the personal level, it is an open space for participants to reflect on our life journeys and what makes us who we are today. It is an opportunity to deepen our purpose, ask meaningful questions, eat nourishing food, unlearn our fears and blocks, access our hearts, and open our minds to move more boldly in the world.
- On the interpersonal level, we come together to share our cultures, our creativity, our collaborative spirits, our stories and our struggles so we can deepen in our understanding of, and connection to, each other.
- On the systemic level, we become clearer about the importance of our work in the world and its potential for even deeper, more meaningful impact.
“Thank you for bringing together such a diverse and thoughtful group of souls with so much to give and so willing to receive. This experience has allowed me to open up and release years of gunky emotions that were consuming energy and getting in the way of my growth. To be given the opportunity to build such a community was new to me and I will never forget the time I spent here.”
– Jose Cortez, 21, Multi-Disciplinary artist and student at Bunker Hill Community College, Boston, MA
Every Jam is an open space for the gifts and needs of the people that show up to emerge. When a number of Jam alumni hosted Arts for Social Change Jams in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 we explored some of the following questions. This year, we anticipate deepening into them and adding yours!
- What is my story as an artist?
- How are we to be sustainable and valued for our artistic gifts?
- What does success look like for artivists? Where am I challenged as an artivist? What does it even mean to be an artivist?
- How do we collaborate as artivists across mediums, modalities, and issue focuses?
- How do we create an enduring support network of people using their creative passions for social change?
- How do our diverse identities relate to us as artists and as activists, and how do we build bridges across those identities with each other?
- What feels like the purpose and value of artist-activists in these particular times?
“I attended my first Jam in 2006 and my life was changed… This Arts Jam was just as transformational. I feel like I’ve been to the mountaintop. Once again I had the honor of meeting diverse souls who shared my calling – Artivism! I leave this experience rejuvenated and grounded. I was given space to think, to plan, to question, to create and release.”
– Monica Raye Simpson, 34, Executive Director, Sister Song, Atlanta, Georgia
Who comes to the Arts for Social Change Jam?
Because we seek to bring together as diverse a group of people as possible we are looking for a range in:
- Artistic Modalities: Musicians, Dancers, Visual Artists, Filmmakers, Creative Facilitators, Writers, etc.
- “Artist-ship” (leadership, from ‘person on the ground’ to ‘director’ and ‘founder’)
- Years of experience (from ‘a couple years into the journey’ to ‘been at it for a good part of your life’);
- Issue or work-focus (i.e. community media, local economies and globalization, indigenous issues, education, food sovereignty, cultural regeneration, interfaith, health and well-being, ecology, youth, sustainable living, human rights, etc.)
- Identity and world view (i.e. class, ethnicity, race, religion, culture, sexuality, age, etc.)
“I could not have asked for a more nurturing and inspiring group… Thank you for creating a safe space for so many voices to speak their hopes, passions, struggles, pain and shame… I believe the Jam was a micro example of what should be possible at a macro level: nurturing, slow pace, warmth, abundant love and affection.”
– Shanti Ganesh, 41, PhD, research on creativity and resilience, UC Berkeley, California
Who is organizing and facilitating the 2020 Arts for Social Change Jam?
We are lucky to have an amazing team of organizers and facilitators for this year’s Jam:
Austin Willacy is a veteran member of The House Jacks, a 5-man all vocal band with whom he has produced 10 full-length albums and completed multiple world tours. For the past 18 years, Austin has directed ‘Til Dawn, Youth in Arts’ award-winning teen a cappella group that empowers youth to find their voices in many ways. Austin is also an award-winning singer/songwriter with 4 CD’s and 2 EP’s to his name. His music is soulful and raucous, tender and comic. Austin’s music has been featured on “The Sing Off”, “Road Rules”, an Australian ad campaign and three feature film soundtracks. He’s appeared in Rolling Stone and has performed with icons such as Bonnie Raitt and up and coming artists like Jem, Vienna Teng, Rachael Yamagata and Amos Lee. He’s an organizer and facilitator for YES! and a former board member for Rainforest Action Network. He even has a side career in soundalike singing voiceovers for games including Guitar Hero and Karaoke Revolution, Austin is a renaissance man. But, who cares about all that? Because what really matters is what Bonnie Raitt told him, “You can really F*ckin sing!”
Nandita Batheja is a writer, movement artist, facilitator and deeply curious human being. She navigates the world through a forest of questions that live in her body. Her shoulders are always seeking ways to create systems–from families to nations–that allow people to live in full liberation and love. Her belly churns this question daily: how to unweave oppression from inside our cells out through our hands, actions, beings? Her knees want to know: how to show up to the immense grief of what is–how to hold each other through it, how to build strength from its depths? In her heart, she asks about the mysticism of love, the sorrow of migration, the paradox of belonging, the nature of suffering, the mysteries. As a first generation South Asian American whose work resides in the in-between, she has spent her life learning how to navigate and find power in the liminal space. These questions and more have guided her over the past 10 years as a cultural & spiritual activist, working with/in social-change sectors, schools, community groups and life.
Gino is a tree hugging, hip-hop artist and aspiring yogi creating an equitable, youth-led economy in his hometown of Oakland, California. As co-founder and co-director of Youth Impact Hub Oakland, he supports a community of purpose-driven youth of color that have launched over 70 social enterprise projects since 2010. He is a board member of La Peña Cultural Center, where he spent his childhood learning how to promote peace and social justice through the arts. Gino creates Hip-Hop music under the alias IM1 as an offering of gratitude for his ancestors, always striving to connect his unique individual experience to universal Truth.
Rehana Tejpar is a playful, embodied facilitator who accompanies organizations and communities in their movements towards greater health, equity, participatory leadership and systems change. She is passionate about creating the conditions for transformative learning and the building of living systems that invite us all to thrive in our wholeness. She is the founding co-director at bloom consulting, and an associate with The Outside and the Centre for Community Organizations. As an artist she plays in the sphere of dance-theatre, ritual performance and clown and spends a lot of time dancing in her kitchen with her six year-old daughter. She is learning how to live sustainably from the land in a collective land stewardship, and is a member of a Sufi whirling community in Montreal where she lives.
A self-identified “screw-up,” Salma Vir is currently on a journey of absolute love and gracious acceptance of all that is in fact “screwed-up.” Raised between New York City and Los Angeles, Salma has had the privilege of experiencing an expansive array of great art from great artists. At a young age, Salma realized her natural affinity and talent for dance. Salma utilizes dance to channel the intensity of her emotional life. And as time would tell, she would soon discover a knack for visual 2D arts. Salma Vir’s upbringing in a mixed-race home (Black and South Asian) continues to inspire her work as a painter, dancer, and designer, mainly exploring the messiness and pains of intersectionality, specifically, that experienced by mixed-race peoples and families. In 2015, Salma completed her Bachelors of Arts in UC Berkeley’s Ethnic Studies Department, with a minor in Global Poverty and Practice. In Fall 2019, Salma began her studies at Southwestern College in Santa Fe, NM to pursue a Masters in Art Therapy and Counseling. Salma’s interests also include the exploration and study of tattooing as a healing modality, jewelry design, and apparel design. She hopes to use visual art and dance as platforms to guide others in their own individual healing processes while challenging the dis-ease of our societal systems. Coming out as a recovering addict and recovering bulimic, Salma intends to use her own triumphs over self-destruction to facilitate honest conversations about mental health and hardship – an exercise of speaking truth to power.
“This work is so needed in these times. Bringing levity to the misery, courage to face the fears, love to confront the hate…these tools are what the world needs now more than ever, especially those of us trying to change it.”
– Jayeesha Dutta, 37, Multi-Disciplinary artists, Cultural Organizer and Entrepreneur, Mind Power Collective, New Orleans, LA
Location, Travel and Costs of Attending
The Arts for Social Change Jam will take place at the Ben Lomond Quaker Center, near Santa Cruz, CA. Participants will share rooms in doubles and triples, and delight in delicious and nutritious primarily vegetarian food for the Jam, prepared by Ruthie Praskins.
Travel costs are the responsibility of the participants, though we will help in arranging carpools from the Bay Area and nearby airports, like San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland.
The tuition for the program is $1050 which breaks down into $525 for lodging, food, and local transport and $525 for program (materials, childcare, stipends for organizers and facilitators).
We never want money to be a barrier in participating in a Jam, so we will do everything we can to make it work for you to attend. Some partial scholarships and work trades may be available. We also can create a monthly payment plan that works for you. Additional donations above the event price are welcome and help us provide scholarships to support the broad spectrum of participation on which this event thrives (they are also tax-deductible).
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to write to us at <artandsocialchangejam[at]gmail.com>
APPLY today!
We cannot wait to JAM with you!
Austin, Gino, Nandita, Salma, Rehana, & Natty
Participants from other Jams sharing their experience…
“I love the dear friendships and network of support that have been with me since the first Jam I attended in 2001. The people I met at Jams have become advisors, board members, funders, collaborative partners, and among my closest friends… I appreciate the safe space created at Jams that allows each person to take risks at their own pace and in doing so empower one another to take greater risks in our own lives and work.”
– Kavitha Rao, 35, Cofounder of Common Fire Foundation, Tivoli, New York
“Because art might be the most powerful healing force we have, along with its partner, love, I am massively grateful as an artist to have had this chance to discover, network, brainstorm new work, heal old wounds, meet amazing talent who shared their big brains, courageous hearts and powerful gifts every day.”
– Ruth Kirschner, 69, Playwright, San Francisco, CA
“(The Jam was) a time to question, pull off masks, center myself, be inspired, and love. I have never been surrounded by so many incredible young people who live and breathe their radical center. I felt gently and safely yet firmly and fiercely moved through an experience of reconnection with myself and a community of social changemakers for justice. The Jam brought me into focus for myself and the work I am doing in the world.”
– Lisl Schoepflin, 24, Co-founder, Santa Fe Museum of Languages, Santa Fe, NM
