Grantee Database
Mi Gente CA
Grant Year
2026-27
Grant Program
General Operating Support
Award Amount
$24,000.00
Project Description
With support from the California Arts Council, Mi Gente CA will expand and sustain year-round arts and cultural programming that uplifts underrepresented creatives while building intentional, multigenerational spaces for cross-cultural connection, learning, and understanding. Grant funds will support artist stipends, program production costs, and essential operational infrastructure needed to scale our impact.
Through free and low-cost, family-friendly events—including festivals, markets, workshops, and community gatherings—we provide accessible platforms for historically underrepresented artists to share their work, build networks, and explore cultural identity across generations. In parallel, we are deepening our programming to include facilitated conversations and educational experiences that promote understanding across cultures and lived experiences.
Funding will also strengthen administrative capacity, enabling consistent program delivery, equitable compensation, and long-term sustainability while expanding access to inclusive, community-rooted creative spaces.
Organization Summary
Mi Gente CA’s core programs center on culturally rooted arts experiences that build community, support artists, and expand access to the arts for underrepresented communities across California.
Our festivals include culturally specific and identity-centered gatherings such as the MexiPino Festival, which celebrates the shared and distinct histories of Mexican and Filipino communities. We have also produced AfroLatine and Hispanic/Latine Heritage Month festivals, alongside year-round festival programming that prioritizes underrepresented creatives. While cultural celebrations are an important part of our work—supporting storytelling, history-sharing, and deeper understanding across cultures—our festivals also provide ongoing opportunities for artists to showcase their work outside of traditional heritage observances.
Our Brown Babes programming is a community-building initiative grounded in connection, mentorship, and the communal act of breaking bread. These gatherings intentionally bring people together over shared meals to foster authentic relationship-building among creatives, particularly women and nonbinary people of color. This space centers belonging, dialogue, and mutual support as essential components of creative and personal sustainability.
In addition to these core programs, Mi Gente CA also produces workshops, gallery exhibitions, dance socials, and panel discussions. These are established program areas that extend our mission by creating additional spaces for community engagement with cultural identity, creative practice, and cross-cultural dialogue, while supporting both emerging and established artists.
Across all programming, Mi Gente CA prioritizes access to the arts by offering low-cost or free experiences, compensating artists for their labor, and intentionally creating inclusive, multigenerational spaces. Our work ensures that cultural programming is both reflective of and accessible to the communities we serve.
Together, these programs strengthen local creative ecosystems, advance cultural equity, and foster deeper understanding, connection, and shared histories across communities.
Organization
Mi Gente CA
Address
5019 IRONWOOD DR
SOQUEL
95073-3032
County
Santa Cruz
Region
Central Coast
Website
