With support from the California Arts Council, NAKA will sustain its programs, staff and operations from July 2023 to June 2025. Our programs will include: Producing LIVE ARTS IN RESISTANCE performance showcase series; touring Y Basta Ya!, a dance-theater performance and community workshop series and shines a light on the stories of Latina and Indigenous Maya Mam women and their experiences with invisibility, labor rights, domestic violence, and sexual abuse; producing Dismantling Tactic X artist residency in collaboration with SAFEhouse Arts; Co-Facilitating ongoing Circulos de Aprendizaje (Collaborative Learning Circles) with Oakland Latina and Indigenous Maya Mam (Guatemala) immigrant women – using art for healing and addressing issues such as racism and colorism in the Latine community.
-Producing LIVE ARTS IN RESISTANCE, a series of performance showcases, artist residencies and community town halls that address racial inequity & white supremacy in popular culture.
-Creating and touring experimental performance works; including Y Basta Ya!, a dance-theater performance and community workshop series and shines a light on the stories of Latina and Indigenous Maya Mam women and their experiences with invisibility, labor rights, domestic violence, and sexual abuse.
-Research residencies in Japan and Mexico as part of NAKA’s work in community-based ritual practices.
-Producing Dismantling Tactic X artist residency and multidisciplinary performance project convening a cohort of radical, social-practice artists who center their work on the topic of race and white supremacy.
-Co-Facilitating ongoing Circulos de Aprendizaje (Collaborative Learning Circles) with Oakland Latina and Indigenous Maya Mam (Guatemala) immigrant women, using art for healing and addressing issues such as racism and colorism in the Latine community. We have co-presented two Mam cultural festivals in Oakland.
-Ja weya ob’aj wij, ex weya nchemaj/Mi Historia, Mi Telar/My Story, My Weaving narrative-based dance-theater performance project integrating personal and collective narratives, movement, textile art, and poetry into a full-length touring dance theater performance project featuring the voices and visions of the Mam community here in Oakland.
-Pro-Bono Language Justice Access Consulting, to arts and social justice organizations who want to hire in-person or online sign language interpreters. This includes: referrals for culturally appropriate interpreters who would be a good match for the situation (including trilingual Spanish-English-ASL / Chinese-English-ASL interpreters); sharing best practices about publicity and outreach (best done by Deaf-led organizations); sharing best practices about budgeting for interpreters, necessary prep information that interpreters will need prior to an assignment, interpreter placement, lighting; advocacy for the hiring of Deaf Interpreters.