With support from the California Arts Council, the Joshua Tree Foundation for Arts & Ecology will host Serrano/Cahuilla elder and teacher Kim Marcus and his family for a free week-long Native Voices Camp for youth in our Quartile 1 underserved rural community. This initiative will immerse kids ages 7-12 in indigenous arts and traditions, ensuring cultural knowledge is passed on through interactive workshops on songs, dances, basket weaving, bow and arrow crafting, clothing creation, pictographs, and traditional food preparation used for daily life and ceremony by the First People of our land. This program will culminate in a community gathering, where families can celebrate the youths’ achievements through exhibitions and performances creating meaningful connections across histories and cultures.
Joshua Tree Foundation for Arts & Ecology, dba Lou Harrison House (formerly HHMA&E) is a center for culture based in an historic retreat that California composer Lou Harrison built in Joshua Tree. Lou Harrison House gives gifted artists of many disciplines a residency opportunity to perch at the intersection of art and ecology and create their best work in a fully supported and inspiring setting. We enliven our rural community with high quality public programs including performances, lecture demonstrations, exhibitions and workshops offered by our residents.
In the past three years we have worked with the Morongo Unified School District to bring our gifted global culture bearers into the schools for assemblies and to bring students on field trips to our Arts & Ecology site and Lou Harrison House where we teach each ecology through the lens of art and sound and music appreciation. HHMA&E was established in 2006 and the Arts & Ecology Center in 2016.
Without the earth there is no art! Our Arts & Ecology Center explores and demonstrates the regenerative, practical and aesthetic patterns of nature. We offer public tours and workshops that aim to inspire ecological awareness, stewardship and aesthetics. Located on eight desert acres our facilities include:
Lou Harrison House
Both the residence for artists and public place for acoustic music performances that seats 50 people, it features a vaulted great room proportionately designed as an intimate sound environment for music with a single bedroom, bathroom and kitchen.
There is also an outdoor stage with stunning desert views that seats 300 people.
Arts & Ecology Center
Houses offices and and an education center with grounds:
Includes the Sunken Circle, an earth bag structure surrounded by gardens; a permaculture site on an acre of artistically shaped earthworks that demonstrate water conservation and food production within an art adorned creative environment.

