​Led by BIPOC women, The Center for Cultural Power (Cultural Power) launched from the powerful roots of the Citizen Engagement Lab (CEL) Education Fund and the CultureStrike project, based in Oakland, CA.

In 2011, CultureStrike, led by Favianna Rodriguez and co-founded with Jeff Chang, was born from a groundbreaking artist delegation to the Arizona border, surrounding anti-immigrant law SB1070. As part of Citizen Engagement Lab and CEL Education Fund, we raised $60M+ for 33 start-up and social change projects (2008- 2017), including robust grantmaking. In 2020, we re-launched as Cultural Power, combining the community trust and pedagogy of CultureStrike and CEL Education Fund’s administrative engine and innovation.

Now through cohorts, fellowships, trainings, commissions, activations, partnerships and collaborations, convenings, design teams and strategy tables, we are co-creating the cultural strategy field and harnessing the power of art and narrative strategy to address migration, climate, gender/sexuality, and racial justice issues nation-wide, and growing our resource redistribution capacity. We build the cultural infrastructure and assets that BIPOC Artist Disruptors and Cultural Bearers need to effectively engage in movements for social change. We engage in a robust participatory and non-extractive Learning and Impact evaluation model; we test stories to evaluate how they persuade and mobilize audiences.

Artist Disruptors are rooted in community and work at the intersection of art and social justice. They inspire action, manifest narratives into stories and visuals that speak to their audiences and communities and use transformational creative practices to dismantle systems of oppression, question assumptions, and inspire work toward the future we need.

Culture Bearers are artists and carriers of indigenous, ancestral, and/or traditional knowledge who weave past, present, and future stewardship of land, culture, community, and spirit. They are cultural stewards and help us understand traditional ways of knowing and creating as paths to community health and healing.