With support from the California Arts Council, BoomShake will offer intensive multicultural street drumming workshops to students in grades 4-7 at two East Oakland public schools. Students will study percussion technique, street performance, and the role of music in cultural preservation and liberation movements. They will use music to develop their creative voices and speak out about issues that matter to them, and will perform at Oakland community events and youth-led social justice actions.
BoomShake operates in 5 major program areas:
Education: we lead workshops for young children, families, youth and adults (primarily women, trans and gender non conforming people).
Performance: our performance core (made up of women/trans/gender non conforming people, primarily people of color, drawn from our community workshops) provides interactive drumming performances for Bay Area cultural and community events.
Activism Support: as Bay Area communities resist displacement, racism, and climate injustice, we lead drumming and chanting at protests and other events supporting empowerment and social justice.
Community Building: we host free events where people of all ages and backgrounds use music and movement to share their traditions and build community.
Stage Productions: we create and produce performances in which children, youth, adult students and professional performers use drumming, singing, movement, theater, and storytelling to express their communities’ struggles and victories.

