With support from the California Arts Council, Home Soil Projects will produce How Do We Dress for the Weather?, a free participatory dance performance and Civic Performance Lab in partnership with The FRONT / El Salon Theatre in San Ysidro. Led by Zoya Shojaee Sardashti and Zaquia Luisa Salinas, the project will engage immigrant, first- and second-generation diasporic, multilingual, and border-impacted communities through movement practices, vocal performance, multilingual translation, collective writing, and public performance. From January to March 2027, participants will be invited to take part in up to two free Civic Performance Labs, co-create multilingual movement and text scores, and contribute to a culminating public performance, exhibition, and publication. CAC funds will support artist and arts worker fees, accessibility services, rehearsal and venue rental, production, documentation, publication, workshop materials, and community outreach.
Home Soil Projects’ core programmes include artistic education workshops, Civic Performance Labs, participation centered curatorial projects, and live performances or public interventions.
Our artistic education workshops bridge critical theory and creative practice through writing, movement, voice, and dialogue. Participants translate lived experience into performance-based research, academic writing, studio practice, and shared reflection. These workshops support artists, students, educators, and community members in developing practical tools for self-knowledge, collaboration, and social justice inquiry.
Our Civic Performance Lab is a research-led programme for performances, exhibitions, and public gatherings. Through co-designed scores, movement practices, writing prompts, and facilitated dialogue, participants explore how language, gesture, memory, and public space shape belonging. Each lab is adapted to the needs of the partner site and can result in performances, exhibitions, publications, or community-generated documentation.
Our curatorial practice supports participation centered live art and performance within theatres, galleries, public programmes, and community spaces. We design formats where audiences and participants are invited into meaningful exchange rather than passive observation.
Our performances and public interventions use embodied artistic practice to address migration, racial justice, ecological grief, gendered violence, and social repair. Across all programmes, Home Soil Projects creates accessible, community-rooted spaces where people can listen, move, reflect, and co-create new ways of responding to exclusion, inequity, and cultural change.