Cal Humanities

"The understanding of a culture comes from hearing the language, tasting the food, seeing personal interactions, experiencing the traditions, and so much more in context."

— Elizabeth Laval & Candice Pendergrass, Sikh Youth Public History Project

"The understanding of a culture comes from hearing the language, tasting the food, seeing personal interactions, experiencing the traditions, and so much more when it is in context."

— Elizabeth Laval & Candice Pendergrass, Sikh Youth Public History Project

A colorful graphic illustration map of a section of Oakland, CA.

Humanities for All Spring Virtual Event Highlights

You Are Here: California Stories on the Map 
Oakland Museum of California
Humanities for All Project Grant

Although mapping and cartographic practices were historically used by governments and those in power, in recent years, mapmaking has been democratized and repurposed by communities and artists as storytelling and community organizing tools. You Are Here: California Stories on the Map leverages the Oakland Museum of California’s (OMCA) interdisciplinary strengths, using maps from the arts, history, and sciences to explore ideas about maps as a tool for communication. The exhibition helps visitors engage with maps using a critical and inquisitive eye while inspiring visitors to consider that maps are a tool that anyone can use to share ideas, information, or aspirations for a place. By comparing and contrasting different types of maps, visitors will develop a richer understanding of mapping as a cultural practice and form of storytelling, and cultivate their own abilities to read better and understand the stories in the maps that they encounter, and to tell their own story through the maps that they make.

The entire exhibit is available online here. 

Corps Conversations: Resilience, Service, and Leadership
Story for All
Humanities for All Quick Grant

Projects such as “Corps Conversations: Resilience, Service and Leadership,” organized by Story for All, will present a series of live streams about topics that matter to CA youth today. “Corps Conversations,” now underway, is a discussion series with the goal of collecting, sharing, and provoking contemplation and discussion around 2020’s pandemic, racial protests, wildfires, and economic hardships, to explore how these issues are affecting youth across the state, what solutions young people recommend, and how we can use this momentum to make progress on social, economic, environmental and racial justice issues that historically and continually oppress youth of color. On May 25 at 12 pm PDT, Story for All presents their next conversation in this series, which showcases a dialogue between youth members of the Los Angeles and San Francisco Conservation Corps and the National Corps Network’s Director of Government Relations, who is working with legislators in Washington D.C. to implement President Biden’s executive order creating the Civilian Climate Corps.

Learn more and view previous live streams at
https://storyforall.org/portfolio-single/corps-conversations/.

Students and teachers faces are in boxes on top of a green screen.
Corps Conversations Meeting, Photo Credit Jaime Croteau

 

Distanced, Together: Youth Voices of West Hollywood in Quarantine
Get Let-Words Ignite
Humanities for All Quick Grant

In Southern California, projects such as “Distanced, Together: Youth Voices of West Hollywood in Quarantine,” organized by Get Let-Words Ignite, have included storytelling and poetry writing workshops and public events reflecting on the experiences of youth during quarantine. As part of the “Distanced, Together,” project Get-Lit will unveil “PRAISE: Youth Voices in Quarantine,” an anthology of youth writing edited by Harry Hou. Over National Poetry Month, West Hollywood City Poet Laureate Brian Sonia-Wallace visited 12 classes at Hollywood High School and worked with students to create over 200 poems asking the question – “through the hardship of quarantine, what are you finding to praise?” “PRAISE” will include a public reading of works created during this project’s writing workshops that will be presented on May 27, 2021, from 5-6 pm PDT. Click here to register for this program.

We are pleased to share a poem created collaboratively by students at Hollywood High in partnership with West Hollywood City Poet Laureate Brian Sonia-Wallace.

HOLLYWOOD HIGH CLASS POEM
Written collaboratively in the Zoom chat by 22 students, ages 13-14.

Make sure you have the wits and courage.

to go through any day unscathed.

Confused and left wondering

what changed so suddenly?

My mental health is not fine but that’s ok

I will get back up and find another way.

From how dirty my backpack is, it gave me

good memories.

 

Yes, this world wide situation has changed many things.

Blink of an eye and your life will never be the same

We all have our flaws, we all make mistakes.

What I’m trying to say is that we should also calm ourselves

and give ourselves a break. It’s okay, be happy!

 

I wonder how deep the sky is.

Is this where you want to go to everyday?

 

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