The Oakland Artists Project
The Oakland Artists Project is a living archive that seeks to chronicle and present
the lives and locations that have shaped Oakland’s emergence and ever-evolving role
as a hub for creativity and innovation in the arts. As such, the site is an online
encyclopedia that captures and makes available for a global audience the past, present,
and emerging shape of literature, visual arts, music, dance, and theatrical performance
in this unique city. As the project works to chronicle the depth and breadth of Oakland
arts across forms, it by definition captures the complexity and diversity of this
community, now and in the past.
This interactive, evolving record of Oakland artists and their work was created by
Mills College students through the “Oakland Writers and Artists in Community and Context”
course taught by Professors Ajuan Mance and Kirsten Saxton. This course is part of the We Are The Voices: Poetry, Performance and Public Humanities project supported by the Mellon Foundation. The grant connects Mills College students with local and national poets, performers,
writers, and scholars to collaborate around transformative art and critical scholarship.
The website developer is Mills College alumna Kristin Jones.
Mills College students immersed themselves in archival materials, community histories,
and personal interviews, to showcase the artists of Oakland, from those who achieved
international renown to those whose lives and work have been all but erased from memory.
The Oakland Artist’s Project gives special attention to those missing from, or hidden
within, standard accounts.
The Oakland Artists Project imagines and presents Oakland artists as embedded in place,
centering their lives and work in relation to the city and its temporal histories.
This curated archive includes narratives and documents/images focused on the artist’s
relationship to particular “haunts” or places in Oakland. The site is bounded by the
geographical borders that currently define the city of Oakland. Though the project
confines itself to the present city limits, it seeks to include artistic practice
dating back to the earliest presence of people in the region, long before the concept
of Oakland proper had been conceived.
In a moment when the heart and soul of Oakland’s art and cityscape are rapidly changing,
we hope this site helps to create a sustainable and responsive archive whose growth
and change over time will reflect the ever-changing landscape that incubates and sustains
its artistic creations and creators.
