Since 2011, ABD/SKYWATCHERS—an ensemble composed largely of Tenderloin (TL) residents subject to housing insecurity, social isolation, and chronic illness—has been co-creating site-specific, multidisciplinary artworks that center and uplift the lives, histories, and urgent concerns of the residents of the TL. Ranging from little formal training to over 40 years of professional experience, ensemble members contribute our varied experience and skills to an arts-based platform of our own making.

Each year over 100 Tenderloin-based performer-residents come together to engage several thousand audience participants and a substantially larger audience for web-based and video production. All events are free and held in ADA-accessible spaces. Participation is also free, and SKYWATCHERS’ open-door policy invites anyone interested in joining to drop in and participate. The organization and all our programming is dedicated to expanding the boundaries of traditional performance forms and modes of engagement. We are an ever growing and changing group of co-creators that attract audiences who may rarely enter conventional arts venues, but come to see our stories spoken, sung, and moved on SKYWATCHERS’ stage. We also attract traditional arts audiences that are engaged by the works’ themes, aware they don’t see these stories in other artwork they seek out. Over the last decade, SKYWATCHERS has made works that address the slow violences of poverty and structural disenfranchisement, mass incarceration and the war on drugs, the climate crisis and clean water, and revolutionary acts of community survival.

SKYWATCHERS creates lasting impacts:
· In 2024, 8,500 people participated in/ witnessed SKYWATCHERS.
· We have built sustained collaborations with 15 neighborhood partners.
· We have built a health equity partnership with UCSF, California’s largest medical
school, and the Department of Public Health.
· At the neighborhood level SKYWATCHERS positions the arts as an integral sector
in equitable social change in San Francisco.