With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Rita Hosking will spotlight public health issues, emergency preparedness, climate mitigation and civic and community engagement in the entire Upstate region with a mini-album of short, informative songs called Climate Country Radio. Using airplay from public, community and low-power radio stations and free downloads, Climate Country Radio will especially target the lowest quartile areas of the Healthy Places Index.

Serving: Butte, Colusa, Del Norte, Glenn, Humboldt, Lake, Lassen, Mendocino, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Sutter, Tehama, Trinity, and Yuba Counties

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Madelyne Joan Templeton will develop an intergenerational learning campaign during week-long community based mural camps in Tehama and Yuba Counties. This initiative will not only foster creativity among local youth, but also educate them about public health and environmental concerns related to water and energy. By engaging with these important topics, youth will gain a better understanding of how to improve the well-being of their community.

Serving: Tehama, and Yuba Counties

With support from the UCCC, The Watershed Research and Training Center and Ellen McGehee will help artists shift their relationship with fire by examining indigenous context, fire ecology, mentored site tours, and participation in prescribed burns. The cohort will work together as an artistic group to develop a concert program that shares their experience in fire-affected communities of the North State. Participant and audience curriculum will combine with music, video art, and poetry to create an immersive concert experience that inspires healing.

Serving: Butte, Humboldt, Shasta, and Trinity Counties

With the support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Monica Farbiarz, mentored by California Heritage: Indigenous Research Project (CHIRP), will co-create MAI – The Salmon Journey project, promoting environmental awareness and community engagement through intergenerational participatory arts programming. The Salmon Journey will educate and bring awareness about the environment, the Yuba River ecosystem across two counties, and the interdependence between nature and humans.

Serving: Nevada and Yuba Counties

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Daniel LoPilato will create a hybrid literary work comprised of a book-length naturalist's guide to Northern California's Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, and a series of interactive digital modules promoting public health and engagement with Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument's unique ecosystem, in both English and Spanish.

Serving: Colusa, Glenn, Lake, and Mendocino Counties

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Sierra Roots will produce a documentary on people living in homeless camps and alternative (illegal) housing. While the video is being shot, writer and journalist Tom Durkin will lead a creative team to conduct a public awareness campaign using songwriting workshops, song contests, live music, radio interviews, articles and op eds, and social media in Nevada, Placer, Sierra, Butte, Yuba and Sutter counties, calling for social justice for people without a safe place to live.

Serving: Butte, Nevada, Placer, Sierra, Sutter, and Yuba Counties

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Save California Salmon will work with Karuk, Yurok and Hoopa Valley Tribal artists, culture bearers, and a Tribal supported documentary crew to create arts based educational materials and cultural opportunities for Klamath, Trinity and Sacramento River Tribal communities and schools. The materials will support intergenerational and cross-cultural learning opportunities along with workforce development in the underserved areas of our community. Projects include traditional folk arts curriculum, topical posters, a Klamath Dam removal documentary and photo essay and comic books related to climate, fire and water. Through these various mediums we will draw attention to the importance of climate mitigation and resource management, while inspiring civic engagement around these topics.

Serving: Del Norte, Humboldt, Shasta, Siskiyou, and Trinity Counties

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Paddle Tribal Waters Storytelling Collaborative and Water Climate Trust will honor the historic un-damming of the Klamath River by lifting up voices of Native communities, particularly the multi-tribal youth who are preparing to be the first to paddle the free-flowing river and, as the multi-year restoration of the River Basin begins, develop collaboration among arts, environment, and tribal entities to sustain multi-agency coordination long after the dams come down.

Serving: Del Norte, Humboldt, Modoc, Siskiyou, and Trinity Counties

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Jess Riegel and Kira Greene will produce a series of video reports, highlighting unique challenges and attributes from communities residing in the lowest quartiles of the California Healthy Places Index, in Del Norte, Trinity, Modoc, Lassen, Plumas, and Yuba Counties. Funds will support important investigations resulting in at least 18 one-minute videos, housed on their own website, and accessible via Instagram and other free online platforms.

Serving: Del Norte, Lassen, Modoc, Plumas, Trinity, and Yuba Counties

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Corine Pearce will continue reawakening endangered Pomo weaving arts traditions by offering classes to brand-new, beginning, intermediate, and advanced weavers throughout a 7000-square-mile Tri-County area encompassing ancestral Pomo territories. Her instruction includes training in material procurement and processing, following an intergenerational “trainer of trainers” model to enable a sustainable legacy of ongoing cultural revitalization.

Serving: Lake and Mendocino Counties

With support from Upstate CA Creative Corps, the Center for the Study of the Force Majeure (CFM) will facilitate collaborations with tribal members, artists and scientists in Nevada and Placer Counties, with a focus on plants important to Washoe culture bearers. A 50-year art/science experiment by CFM at the UC Berkeley Sagehen Creek Field Station will be extended and a new Future Garden designed. We will support three master/apprentice teams of Washoe artists and 7 Sagehen artist residencies.

Serving: Nevada and Placer Counties

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Ross Travis and collaborators will inspire community action to counter the effects of climate change on youth in Mendocino, Lake and Glenn Counties through a traveling, multi-disciplinary bouffon theater piece (also filmed and edited into a documentary) that uses a powerful mix of irreverent comedy, tragedy, shamanistic ritual and interactive ecstatic play to inform, provoke and provide tools for agency and community action on this issue.

Serving: Glenn, Lake and Mendocino Counties

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Jesi Naomi and WWASH Project (Wintu We are Still Here) will ignite the livelihoods of Native artists’ ongoing cultural work; strengthening native community bonds and tribal relations to non-natives and mobilizing social justice, mental, emotional and physical health rehabilitation via traditional arts and language. Through the lens of indigenous culture bearers of the Butte-Shasta-Trinity tribal region, we draw community to Wintu Culture Center in Trinity and Redding Rancheria in Shasta, and via Workshops strive for language sovereignty.

Serving: Butte, Shasta, and Trinity Counties

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, The Creative Collective will launch a one-year workforce development and public health campaign in Glenn and Tehama Counties. The project, titled “The Work of Art,” will pair artists with under-resourced youth to co-create and install five public murals and launch one project website. The murals and website will promote activities proven to create mental and emotional health. The youth internships will sustain through 2026 using the Job Training Center of Tehama County's funding.

Serving: Glenn and Tehama Counties

With support from the Upstate California Creative Corps, eight culture bearers, with their collective experience, will lead The Black Source Project and design an app for over 80 black-owned businesses in Northern CA. This social justice project will amplify Black artists, writers, photographers, our culture, and our voices, offering guidance on fostering inclusivity and recognizing businesses that promote inclusivity through a "seal of approval" system. The platform will enhance cultural competence by providing education and feedback to improve the experience for people of color. Our app will prioritize Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) disproportionately affected by injustices. The app will also feature a digital magazine available online and printed issues to further expose Black art, businesses, and culture at local establishments.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Chico artists Zeke Lunder and Jeb Sisk will forge 1880's wrought iron salvaged from the wreckage of Honeyrun Covered Bridge destroyed by the Camp Fire, into a large pair of wild chinook salmon to be installed at the Covered Bridge Park on Butte Creek. The creek hosts one of the only runs of wild salmon left in California. The sculpture will celebrate the resilience of the salmon and recovery of the community following the devastating Camp Fire.

With support from the UCCC, The Watershed Research and Training Center and Ellen McGehee will help artists shift their relationship with fire by examining indigenous context, fire ecology, mentored site tours, and participation in prescribed burns. The cohort will work together as an artistic group to develop a concert program that shares their experience in fire-affected communities of the North State. Participant and audience curriculum will combine with music, video art, and poetry to create an immersive concert experience that inspires healing.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Butte County Local Food Network will lead an awareness campaign for public health, on why eating locally grown food is an essential component of wellbeing for people, animals, community, our local economy and the planet. Via inspiring visual art and education we will respectfully support building a community that grows food together to empower us during a collapsing food system and build an insurance policy for food sovereignty now and for the future.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, the LABELS project group will create an interactive exhibition on the role of assumptions in maintaining our social divides, especially as they relate to the growing crisis of homelessness. Using written word, visual art and film, both participants and viewers will be asked to name their assumptions on both sides of being homeless, in deciding how best to respond to this social, civic and humanitarian issue.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, our team of artists at Chico Creative Reuse will produce and host a mobile creative reuse center that features art made from upcycled materials, interactive activities and opportunities for art and makers resource exchange. Through our efforts we aim to engage the public and community leaders for increasing dialogue, advocacy and action relating climate mitigation through waste diversion and to provide a creative resource recovery model for our region.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, the M.A.T.S.U. Project, led by Tazuo Yamaguchi working in partnership with OneLife Foundation, will show the beneficial results of the arts in healing and recovery from social, economic and emotional traumas caused by environmental, public health and social injustices. Supporting individuals and communities experience the benefits of art as therapy, it will foster intergenerational learning, compassionate and supportive communities, and creative self-expression.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Jesi Naomi and WWASH Project (Wintu We are Still Here) will ignite the livelihoods of Native artists’ ongoing cultural work; strengthening native community bonds and tribal relations to non-natives and mobilizing social justice, mental, emotional and physical health rehabilitation via traditional arts and language. Through the lens of indigenous culture bearers of the Butte-Shasta-Trinity tribal region, we draw community to Wintu Culture Center in Trinity and Redding Rancheria in Shasta, and via Workshops strive for language sovereignty.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, culture bearer and artist Richie Ragudo, will build an awareness campaign, “Building Bridges for a Diverse Community,” on how community engagement creates opportunities for social justice through a countywide cultural gathering event celebrating diversity with performances and displays by local dancers, musicians, visual artists, culture bearers and traditional folk arts from various cultural backgrounds of people in Colusa County. The event will include representation and displays from community resource organizations with opportunities for civic engagement and environmental healing. A series of workshops preceding and during the event led by various culture bearers and artists will facilitate intergenerational learning.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, California naturalist Laura Leidner will install a renewable, free, and interactive seed library at the Colusa County Free Library, to increase community awareness of the environmental benefits of native plants and address food insecurity. As part of this experiential art project, Leidner will organize workshops in partnership with other culture bearers and create an interpretive exhibit to help beginning gardeners start their own food gardens and introduce native plants to public green spaces. With an accessible repository for vegetable, herb, and native seed, Leidner intends to spark cross-generational discussion on gardening in a changing environment while deepening connections to agrarian roots.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Daniel LoPilato will create a hybrid literary work comprised of a book-length naturalist's guide to Northern California's Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, and a series of interactive digital modules promoting public health and engagement with Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument's unique ecosystem, in both English and Spanish.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, artist Mark Vargo will create seven "Preservation Stations: Windows Into Our Wildlife" interactive collage sculptures as part of an awareness campaign focused on preservation of local endangered, vulnerable, and protected species to be housed within the seven Colusa County Free Public Libraries within the lowest quartiles of California HPI. A series of public worships on collage making will serve to collect local original art to be included in the sculptures along with descriptions, local poetry and other written expression displayed in Spanish and English as part of engaging the community, heightening awareness of environmental issues and facilitating intergenerational learning.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, artist LK James will offer a series of printmaking workshops to adults and children in community centers in rural Colusa County to help those least represented unlock their creative voice and use it for self-advocacy and their community. Visual communication skills are inherent in the basic principles of printmaking and these skills can harness the power to raise awareness for issues, challenges and solutions.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Marcia Morgan will create an animation video and book to focus on nature and the imperiled pollinators, and gather educators and students to participate in an educational Pollinator Fair. The video will incorporate original illustrations and animation, with a storybook on nature. Together, they will create awareness for the vital work of pollinators and their relationship to our own food future well-being, and shed light on steps we can take to help them.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Terri Glass will create Plea for Wildlife, a series of poems to bring public awareness of the endangered wildlife in Del Norte County. She will invite the community through readings, discussion and public display of her art to encourage conservation of these endangered species for regeneration of a more biodiverse and healthier environment. This will engage those most touched by this environmental threat, those of our county’s low-ranking quartile of the California HPI.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Kara Starkweather, Lauren Godla, and Jessica Swanson will collaborate as dance and video artists to document the monumental removal of the Klamath River dams and investigate the potential precedent this could set for other Northern California Rivers. Using vertical dance as a tool to explore the environmental and cultural significance of restoring these rivers, we will activate communities to engage in this ongoing conversation.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Daniel LoPilato will create a hybrid literary work comprised of a book-length naturalist's guide to Northern California's Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, and a series of interactive digital modules promoting public health and engagement with Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument's unique ecosystem, in both English and Spanish.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Ross Travis and collaborators will inspire community action to counter the effects of climate change on youth in Mendocino, Lake and Glenn Counties through a traveling, multi-disciplinary bouffon theater piece (also filmed and edited into a documentary) that uses a powerful mix of irreverent comedy, tragedy, shamanistic ritual and interactive ecstatic play to inform, provoke and provide tools for agency and community action on this issue.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, The Creative Collective will launch a one-year workforce development and public health campaign in Glenn and Tehama Counties. The project, titled “The Work of Art,” will pair artists with under-resourced youth to co-create and install five public murals and launch one project website. The murals and website will promote activities proven to create mental and emotional health. The youth internships will sustain through 2026 using the Job Training Center of Tehama County's funding.

With support from with Upstate California Creative Corps, Centro del Pueblo Movimiento Indigena Migrante will form a sustainable arts and Latinx culture program, promoting diversity and community advancement in Humboldt. Artistas Santuario, a community of artists and cultural bearers, will lead traditional and innovative workshops and events at Sanctuary Gardens to transform the social landscape.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Outer Space Arcata will implement “Cistem Failure”, a youth-led drag performance, that will foster creativity and resilience while increasing visibility and community support for vulnerable youth artists in Humboldt County. Through mentorships, monthly workshops and a quarterly recorded and live streamed event, youth will have opportunities to develop performance skills while engaging with a diverse community to address critical social justice concerns affecting young people in the LGBTQIA2S+ community.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, ColorMaiz will promote healing from intergenerational trauma and create spaces in the community for the converging of artists and creatives. Individuals will be able to explore the definition of safe space as they express themselves through art. Programming will take place in itinerant laboratories for artists and in workshops providing information around mental and physical health for the BIPOC, 2S/LGBTQ+, and neurodiverse communities. ColorMaíz will empower local underrepresented artists by providing spaces for inclusion and introspection, providing free access to spaces and public events and opportunities for creative expression and mental health education to under-resourced communities in Eureka and Fortuna.

With support from the UCCC, The Watershed Research and Training Center and Ellen McGehee will help artists shift their relationship with fire by examining indigenous context, fire ecology, mentored site tours, and participation in prescribed burns. The cohort will work together as an artistic group to develop a concert program that shares their experience in fire-affected communities of the North State. Participant and audience curriculum will combine with music, video art, and poetry to create an immersive concert experience that inspires healing.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Playhouse Arts, the Northcoast Environmental Center and Arcata House Partnership will work with the houseless community on “Our Space”. Employing various art mediums, this project will address social and environmental justice concerns by bringing awareness to the overlapping flaws in our system that leave people behind and damage our environment. “Our Space” will provide support and creative opportunity for those most impacted by the social conditions highlighted in the Healthy Places Index, allowing houseless, housing insecure and housed artists to have artful conversations while diverting trash from the wastestream into the artstream.

With support from the Upstate California Creative Corps, Daniel Nickerson & Tayloranne Finch will address environmental and public health in rural communities by producing a rustic multimedia puppet performance. The show will invite rural youth to creatively engage with the issues facing their families and communities: a fragile environment, an unsure economic future, and limited access to social support systems. Rural resilience will be the unifying theme, encouraging youth to take an active role in recovery efforts, and in the restoring of balance to the environment. Based in the imaginary community of Cowtown, the performance will feature folkloric storytelling, marionette puppets, & interjections of live music. Nine artists total will collaborate to build the show & execute a spring 2024 performance itinerary that includes Humboldt County schools, libraries, farmers markets, theaters & other rural cultural hubs.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, the Da Gou Rou Louwi’ Cultural Center, the Wiyot Tribe, and the North Coast Repertory Theatre, together with other tribal councils, arts organizations, and government agencies, will produce an original performance, educating the larger community about the traditional Indigenous use of fire as a tool to manage land, prevent devastating wildfires, protect people and wildlife, and promote healthy ecosystems.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, local artist Rolf Kriken, the Tribal Advisory Committee to the Museums of Lake County and the County of Lake, will create a life size bronze statue of a Lake Pomo Family in Museum Park in Lakeport, our most public space. The Pomos’ rich cultural heritage and family bonds will be represented by a pre-contact Pomo mother and child with a contemporary male Pomo dancer, and will evoke resiliency, and intergenerational connections of past, present and future.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Daniel LoPilato will create a hybrid literary work comprised of a book-length naturalist's guide to Northern California's Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, and a series of interactive digital modules promoting public health and engagement with Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument's unique ecosystem, in both English and Spanish.

With support from Upstate CA Creative Corps, Middletown Art Center will install RECIPROCITY and revitalize the EcoArts Lake County Sculpture Walk in a public park and nature preserve razed by wildfire. RECIPROCITY is a framework for multiple artists and culture bearers to make meaningful work. Together, they will engage diverse people in co-creation and intergenerational learning, raising awareness for social justice and environmental issues in our under-resourced, rural Lake County.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Corine Pearce will continue reawakening endangered Pomo weaving arts traditions by offering classes to brand-new, beginning, intermediate, and advanced weavers throughout a 7000-square-mile Tri-County area encompassing ancestral Pomo territories. Her instruction includes training in material procurement and processing, following an intergenerational “trainer of trainers” model to enable a sustainable legacy of ongoing cultural revitalization.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Ross Travis and collaborators will inspire community action to counter the effects of climate change on youth in Mendocino, Lake and Glenn Counties through a traveling, multi-disciplinary bouffon theater piece (also filmed and edited into a documentary) that uses a powerful mix of irreverent comedy, tragedy, shamanistic ritual and interactive ecstatic play to inform, provoke and provide tools for agency and community action on this issue.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Christopher LaMarr will create film curriculum through the Native Elder Youth Curriculum Film Project. The Project will create film curriculum by having local Native American Youth interview local Native American Elders about the history of Native Americans' impact and experience in Lassen County. This film will form a key part of an awareness campaign by the Susanville Indian Rancheria, and will be shared broadly across generations, supported by Lassen Union High School District; as well as shown at film festivals.

With the support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Indigenous artists of Coastal & Northern Pomo (Antoinette Ascencio), Southern Pomo (Michael Racho), and Tongva-Chumash (Monique Sonoquie) descent, will engage Tribal and rural communities, bringing community awareness about the importance of conservation and climate in relation to Traditional arts and environmental sustainability to support the well-being of current and future generations.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Daniel LoPilato will create a hybrid literary work comprised of a book-length naturalist's guide to Northern California's Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, and a series of interactive digital modules promoting public health and engagement with Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument's unique ecosystem, in both English and Spanish.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Deep Valley Arts Collective will provide people recovering from substance abuse with a series of guided art therapy workshops. Working with established substance abuse programs and organizations, a series of collage workshops culminating in a gallery exhibition, a book, and a multimedia art presentation we, will form community bonds, build resilience, and create awareness for public health resources.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Corine Pearce will continue reawakening endangered Pomo weaving arts traditions by offering classes to brand-new, beginning, intermediate, and advanced weavers throughout a 7000-square-mile Tri-County area encompassing ancestral Pomo territories. Her instruction includes training in material procurement and processing, following an intergenerational “trainer of trainers” model to enable a sustainable legacy of ongoing cultural revitalization.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Jenn Procacci and Michelle Peñaloza will create Round Valley Reader, a community focused publication showcasing the trajectory of Round Valley, and exploring imaginings for the future of our rural community in the face of climate change, wildfire pressure, economic and social justice challenges, and the hardships that are associated with being in the lowest quartiles of the California HPI. With joint experience in engaging communities through journalism, storytelling, creative writing and documentation, two artists will explore the past, report the present, and work with the community to imagine our collective future using these methods.

With support from the Upstate California Creative Corps, Willits Center for the Arts will curate and marshal a Mendocino County Artists Corps of 19 Local Artists and Culture Bearers who will provide after school dance and art workshops, monthly art history lectures for youth and elders, arts summer camps, monthly dance and visual art workshops and programming targeted to uplift and engage youth, families and seniors as part of a campaign to raise awareness for increasing mental health outcomes, civic engagement and social justice opportunities in a community which struggles in these areas, as highlighted by our performance in the lowest quartiles of the California Healthy Places Index.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Ross Travis and collaborators will inspire community action to counter the effects of climate change on youth in Mendocino, Lake and Glenn Counties through a traveling, multi-disciplinary bouffon theater piece (also filmed and edited into a documentary) that uses a powerful mix of irreverent comedy, tragedy, shamanistic ritual and interactive ecstatic play to inform, provoke and provide tools for agency and community action on this issue.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Agave Baroque will conduct a year-long virtual and in-person residency at Surprise Valley Culture and Arts during which they will engage with local musicians across multiple generations, who will study and perform music composed by women and composers of color over the past 500 years, culminating in a free, public concert in Cedarville as part of a campaign of awareness for social justice issues, which will also include social discourse and series of radio programs on each of composer, broadcast on community radio, KDUP-FM.

With the support of California Creative Corps, Shawn-Paul Gilbert will develop a series of large scale oil paintings depicting California Wildfires; highlighting human involvement and human cost, while creating public awareness for the health risks of fire and smoke to the land and peoples of California and creativing awareness for critical environmental issues such as water conservation and the consequences of drought and forest management.

With support from Upstate Creative Corps, BIPOC artist Brandon Greathouse will lead a social justice awareness campaign for artists in affordable housing in the High Sierra. Through stirring podcasts and community engagement, Empowering Voices will lend agency to those seeking relief from California’s workforce housing crisis, as they find creative ways to breathe life into a world of impossible odds—solving everyday problems and contributing to the social fabric of an area threatened by gentrification.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Jared Witkofsky will create a comic book telling the true story of his experiences living with neuropathy and navigating life and the medical system with a disability. The comic will spread critical information about the lived experiences of the disabled community and where to access vital services.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, artist Love Andreyev will create a mural depicting the interconnected web of food justice work in the Truckee-Tahoe area as part of an awareness campaign for public health. In close collaboration with Slow Food Lake Tahoe and Sierra Community House – two local nonprofits that serve an area in the lowest quartile of the California HPI – Love’s work will drive communal engagement and awareness for Ecology of Care.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Wolf Creek Community Alliance will employ composer Alexis Alrich to write an anthem for Wolf Creek, centering local musicians and residents as part of the creative process. Alrich will walk the creek and interview scientists, historians, Nisenan Tribal members, artists and poets. Wolf Creek Alliance will host educational workshops and a final concert featuring the anthem, building awareness, inspiration and agency, and giving voice to Wolf Creek.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, The Story of Land, Water, and People will build on the foundation of California Heritage: Indigenous Research Project (CHIRP) ’s Visibility through Art initiative by coordinating collaborations among artists and Tribal culture bearers to increase public awareness and engage the public related to environment-related issues including water, land and social justice.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, BIPOC culture bearer Jai Hanes will design an anti-racism youth program for Black, indigenous and Asian youth and their allies. Working with a local mentor, Haines will achieve this through education of history, culture, family engagement and intergenerational learning; partnerships with other cultural awareness groups; and development of community-based curriculum.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, The Poetry Crashers will create Postcards from Earth!, an awareness campaign centered on the effects of climate crisis, and practical ideas for planetary healing close to home. With collective experience in facilitating intergenerational learning through poetry, performance and publishing, The Poetry Crashers will engage the many voices of those most touched by environmental injustices—in areas within the lowest quartiles of the California HPI.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Say Something! will use writing, spoken word, and storytelling as liberatory tools to engage LGBTQIA+ youth on Nisenan Land in Western Nevada County in a creative process of self-discovery and community building. Centering young queer voices will create courageous sanctuaries where historically silenced individuals can explore self-expression, own and share their stories, find solidarity in belonging, and build bridges across differences.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, singer-songwriter and community activist Michelle Amador embarks on transformative Solidarity Sessions, a series of 12 events that build cultural solidarity through music, foster critical discourse, and drive social change. Michelle will deliver six mesmerizing performances of newly created music that examine critical social issues, inviting post-show discussions with 30 fellow BIPOC community members, and providing opportunities for 18 artists to share perspectives through "open mic" artistic/performance responses. Additionally, Michelle will collaborate with 36 artists, facilitating six sessions where artists develop impactful plans for partnering with their chosen social causes in Nevada County. Programs will prioritize artists from the regions in the lowest percentage quartile of the CA HPI index.

Con el apoyo de UCCC, la artista Paola Bragado propone un trabajo, que incorpora mujeres migrantes que trabajan en Tahoe a diversas actividades ofertadas a los turistas asociadas a la fusión cultural, bienestar o al descanso- lugares no frecuentados por trabajadoras migrantes. La práctica en común de deportes como esquiar o trabajos artesanales como la cerámica y bordado como manera de integración y salvaguardar su identidad, generando espacios físicos y emocionales contra la exclusión y el racismo.

With the support of UCCC, artist Paola Bragado will introduce migrant women working in Tahoe to activities rarely available to them, through an awareness campaign which exposes them to cultural fusion, wellness and rest, spaces that are generally inaccessible to them. Social practice arts, self-advocacy, and arts will support integration, while safeguarding identities, and generating safe physical and emotional spaces that work against racism and exclusion.

With support from the Upstate California Creative Corps, Blue Line Arts will partner with contemporary place-based artist and culture bearer Tiffany Adams for a visual arts and curatorial residency project uplifting Indigenous artists. Adams, who is Chemehuevi/Koyoomk’awi/Nisenan, will curate and interpret a group show with, by, and for Indigenous artists, develop her own solo exhibition with a performance piece as a participating resident, and plan an Indigenous Art Market event to engage the regional community around issues of social/restorative justice, civic engagement, and environmental protection through the lens of Indigenous peoples.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Astrid Mendieta will create a coloring book and facilitate art workshops for vulnerable communities at Kings Beach, in the lowest quartile of the California Healthy Places Index. The coloring book will be bilingual in English and Spanish and will tell Señor Taquito's story through his healthy lifestyle practices. Community workshops will teach acrylic painting with local produce, with wild plants and plant roots as a focus, symbolizing the importance of wellbeing, ancestry, family and community.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Troy Corliss and Sara Smith will produce a community developed art project that focuses on an interpretive study of the human / open space interface surrounding Kings Beach, partnering with The Boys and Girls Club, S.W.E.P., Sierra Community House and Gateway Mountain Center. The project will include an intergenerational learning component through drawing and journaling from direct observation as well as graphic design skills needed to compose larger compositions intended for the fabrication of sculpture.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Almanor Recreation and Park Department, in partnership with a local muralist, a team of high school art students, and the Maidu Summit Consortium will design and create two public murals adjacent to a new community garden. Through cross cultural discussions and inter-generational learning opportunities these community members will design murals that promote healthy lifestyles through outdoor activity, healthy eating, social interaction, and the lasting relevance of native culture and community history. These murals will be installed by and for communities in the lowest quartile as indicated by the HPI.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, artists Liz Swindell and Tina Thorman will collaborate with community members of all ages and teach them how to design, prep and paint a mural in downtown Quincy, the County seat. The mural —in the shape of Plumas County and painted on Main Street adjacent to the County courthouse — will be in one of the most highly visited and visible areas in the county, making it accessible to the constituents of the county, including those from our most underserved areas. As the rebuilding of the community moves forward the mural will include imagery illustrating the strength in diversity of the area. The collaborative aspect of the creation of this mural will solidify county-wide pride and unity, bringing awareness to those concerns which most affect us including healthy lifestyle, resource management, and resiliency.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Coral and Trent Cash will create awareness around environmental issues by capturing the real-life stories of those most directly affected by wildfire and the changing climate of California. These stories will then be shared with others in the community through the development of a graphic novel and board game. To promote accessibility to the areas of highest need the graphic novel and game will be distributed through several outlets including schools, libraries, social media, and a community event. This will strengthen civic knowledge and encourage civic engagement through the principles of forestry and fire ecology, and how policies affect them.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Lost Sierra Food Project will employ visual artists in residencies to create artworks and host free community-based workshops — focused on a variety of traditional arts and modern mediums through inter-generational learning — designed to bring awareness to the environmental issues of food security and the importance of resource conservation as it relates to ecological farming in Plumas County. To promote accessibility and community engagement throughout the region the works created will be shared in a traveling exhibition, inviting the audience to engage in deeper dialogue around the ties between food access, community, and a healing relationship to the land.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Corinne West will compose and produce an original 5-song project, culminating in five free community-based concerts. Each song will address issues specific to the county and related to the needs of the community ranging from wildfire displacement and climate mitigation, watershed health and resource management, to social justice and mental health. West’s focus to bring awareness to these issues and catalyzing personal empowerment through a song circle that promotes intergenerational and cross-cultural learning.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Viva Downtown Redding will host an Artist Residency of 33 creatives connecting Redding Cultural District residents to core issues of social justice and public health in partnership with Healthy Shasta and the Downtown Resident Coalition. Together they will show how active, accessible participation in the arts has visible and transformative health outcomes for community members residing in an area in the lowest quartile of the California Healthy Places Index.

With the support of Upstate California Creative Corps, Radley Davis (Pit River), Jonathon Freeman (Choctaw/Chichimeca), and Sky Scholfield (Wintu/Pit River), will conduct the Indigenous Summer of Interviews (ISI). ISI aims to empower under-resourced Native American youth, capture invaluable wisdom from elders and leaders, provide skills and paid employment opportunities, and instill a sense of ownership over their community's history and culture, thereby addressing health equity.

With support from the UCCC, The Watershed Research and Training Center and Ellen McGehee will help artists shift their relationship with fire by examining indigenous context, fire ecology, mentored site tours, and participation in prescribed burns. The cohort will work together as an artistic group to develop a concert program that shares their experience in fire-affected communities of the North State. Participant and audience curriculum will combine with music, video art, and poetry to create an immersive concert experience that inspires healing.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Jesi Naomi and WWASH Project (Wintu We are Still Here) will ignite the livelihoods of Native artists’ ongoing cultural work; strengthening native community bonds and tribal relations to non-natives and mobilizing social justice, mental, emotional and physical health rehabilitation via traditional arts and language. Through the lens of indigenous culture bearers of the Butte-Shasta-Trinity tribal region, we draw community to Wintu Culture Center in Trinity and Redding Rancheria in Shasta, and via Workshops strive for language sovereignty.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, local artist Marjorie Voorhees, of the Paiute Nation, will create the Headwaters Stained-Glass project. In the wake of the climate crisis, Sierra County watershed communities have been among the most affected communities within the lowest quartiles of the California HPI. This project will create an intergenerational public awareness installation that will boost civic pride while reflecting the environmental importance of watersheds that originate in our rural county and that are essential to the health of the entire State of California.

With support from the California Creative Corps, the Sierra County Land Trust will work with nine artists and writers long inspired by the Sierra Buttes and Lakes Basin to publish a book of photography, art and writings, together with a culminating exhibition along the themes of: 1.) How will preserving our high elevation forests and watersheds buffer climate change impacts in California?, and; 2.) How can we do our part locally by protecting the iconic Sierra Buttes and Lakes Basin of Sierra County?

With support from Upstate Creative Corps, Colectiva Seeds of Ancestral Renewal (SOAR) aims to increase wellness and health equity at the intersections between Siskiyou and Modoc Counties by offering a series of free and bilingual seasonal Wellness Gatherings in Dorris, Tulelake, and Alturas that are centered on traditional ways. Although open to all community members, our hope is to cultivate spaces that center the Spanish-speaking, Latin@/Hispanic, and Indigenous community experience and to provide opportunities for engagement in cultural arts practices and arts-based healing.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, The Klamath-Siskiyou Art Center will create awareness for the effects of environmental change and climate crisis, along with new avenues for civic engagement, in the most remote reaches of Siskiyou County in Karuk Aboriginal Territory. With collective experience in facilitating intergenerational and multicultural learning through poetry, performance, music, visual art and event production, artists and culture bearers will engage the voices of those living in areas of our region who score in the lowest quartiles of the California HPI and who are at risk for environmental and economic hardship.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, director Kate Jopson will create a series of short online films to demystify how data about the Klamath Watershed is collected and how that data impacts the water use and livelihoods of residents in Scott Valley and the Mid-Klamath region of Siskiyou County.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Autie Carlisle will create twelve episodes of Shasta Stories, a docuseries highlighting the diversity, history, and fortitude of individuals and communities in Siskiyou County. The series will create awareness about racism, ageism, and the environment; examined with the intent to create active change in the community to increase equity and environmental healing into the future. We will host 16 free community events and offer episodes online.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Madelyne Joan Templeton will develop an intergeneration learning campaign during week-long community based mural camps in Tehama and Yuba Counties. This initiative will not only foster creativity among local youth, but also educate them about public health and environmental concerns related to water and energy. By engaging with these important topics, youth will gain a better understanding of how to improve the well-being of their community.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Culture Bearers of Tehama County will hold a Native American Cultural Celebration on September 23rd, 2023 in Red Bluff, CA. We will have Native American drummers, dancers, storytellers, vendors and a traditional games demo. We are partnering with local tribal organizations and other community organizations to provide resources and health services (like COVID vaccines). We are honoring the local Paskenta Nomlaki Tribe, original inhabitants of this land.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, The Creative Collective will launch a one-year workforce development and public health campaign in Glenn and Tehama Counties. The project, titled “The Work of Art,” will pair artists with under-resourced youth to co-create and install five public murals and launch one project website. The murals and website will promote activities proven to create mental and emotional health. The youth internships will sustain through 2026 using the Job Training Center of Tehama County's funding.

With Support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Associated Hayfork Artists will engage community to vision a more positive future for Hayfork, using the artistic process to dismantle issues around race, poverty, and rural access. By creating an inclusive environment for conscientious artmaking, we will celebrate identity and use artistic expression to connect contemporary manifestations of oppression to historical contexts, develop a deeper understanding of our lived experiences and a stronger cultural identity for Hayfork as a whole community.

With the support of California Creative Corps, Kalah Wooten, Kacey Collins, Angel McMarrow, Casey McWilliams, and Jennika Flinck, will create an educational art mural to raise awareness of the non-native species on local ecosystems. The 400 sq ft mural, using various mediums, will highlight the differences between native and non-native flora. With collaboration, this project aims to educate the community and inspire a sense of collective responsibility towards the environment.

With support from the UCCC, The Watershed Research and Training Center and Ellen McGehee will help artists shift their relationship with fire by examining indigenous context, fire ecology, mentored site tours, and participation in prescribed burns. The cohort will work together as an artistic group to develop a concert program that shares their experience in fire-affected communities of the North State. Participant and audience curriculum will combine with music, video art, and poetry to create an immersive concert experience that inspires healing.

With support from the Upstate California Creative Corps, Randolph Sanchez will create a new handcrafted sign for the Nor Rel Muk Wintu Tribe. The Trinity River Natives’ Cultural Center is a new gathering place for the Nor Rel Muk on their ancestral lands along the Trinity River located in Big Bar, California. With the help of tribal liaison Amanda Gibbs, Randolph will design, create and install a signpost for the vital cultural center that houses not only tribal offices, but also is the center for cultural learning and ceremonial gatherings. Methods include wood carving techniques for animals and birds, hand painted lettering on a prepared metal background, construction skills, and log wood posts for installation. This multimedia project is a signpost for future generations. Enhancing the visibility of the underserved Native American population of Trinity County. Healing intergenerational trauma, revitalizing spirituality and the ancestral knowledge of how to protect the environment.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Brady McKay and Taylor Aglipay will form a countywide all-inclusive "upcycled" percussion/vocal ensemble. This all ages ensemble will provide opportunities for intergenerational learning while addressing health equity and environmental issues. Rehearsals will be held throughout the region to promote accessibility to the most underserved portions of the community. The project will include live performances and culminate with a professionally produced music video to be distributed across social media platforms, with the cooperation of several local organizations. Filmed in various locations throughout the county, the music video will feature the beautiful landscape and diverse people of Trinity County.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Jesi Naomi and WWASH Project (Wintu We are Still Here) will ignite the livelihoods of Native artists’ ongoing cultural work; strengthening native community bonds and tribal relations to non-natives and mobilizing social justice, mental, emotional and physical health rehabilitation via traditional arts and language. Through the lens of indigenous culture bearers of the Butte-Shasta-Trinity tribal region, we draw community to Wintu Culture Center in Trinity and Redding Rancheria in Shasta, and via Workshops strive for language sovereignty.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, the Eco-Explorers will utilize multiple art forms to create movable mural environments that showcase their understanding of green spaces. Creativity and personal expression blossom in sculpture, painting, and recycled art projects. Intergenerational interaction brings together culture bearers, diversity icons and artists resulting in an appreciation and advocacy to protect community green spaces in areas within the lowest quartiles of the California HPI.

With support from the Upstate California Creative Corps, and working with a mentor, the Alliance for Hispanic Advancement will create a program in Yuba and Sutter Counties to teach youth the art of Mariachi music and Ballet Folklórico. The Mariachi Project will draw together culture bearers and arts educators at local cultural festivals, service clubs, libraries, and museums, help to break down social justice barriers while supporting learning among all ages among a LatinX community living in the lowest quartiles of the California HPI, and representing 30% of the local population.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Madelyne Joan Templeton will develop an intergeneration learning campaign during week-long community based mural camps in Tehama and Yuba Counties. This initiative will not only foster creativity among local youth, but also educate them about public health and environmental concerns related to water and energy. By engaging with these important topics, youth will gain a better understanding of how to improve the well-being of their community.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corp Tom Galvin will create a song cycle of twelve songs reflecting historical events and the mistreatment of the powerless by the powerful occurring in the Yuba Sutter area from the time of the gold rush to the present day. Heroes and Victims represent the general theme connecting all the songs. One song, The Beckwourth Trail celebrates the blazing of the Beckwourth Trail by James Beckwourth, the mixed-race son of a slave owner and a slave. Although of ambiguous moral behavior, Beckwourth helped link gold in the Sierras to prosperity in the outposts in the valley that would eventually become Yuba-Sutter. Heroes like Steven J. Fields, first judge and mayor of Marysville, later appointed to the Supreme Court, are the subjects of Going to Build a City Right Here. At this same time in history, white settlers in Oroville slaughtered most of the Yahi Tribe. Ishi, the sole survivor and hero of the song of the same name, emerged from the woods and walked into Oroville to eventually be hailed by the white academics who honored his quiet dignity and strength. California Gold tells of one of the few survivors of the Donner Party who, like Ishi, was left without family but later lived a life of kindness and quiet dignity and who gave Marysville its name. Victims of the Donner party are honored in the song Here Come the Wagons. Later in our history, the story of victims of Japanese internment camps are honored in the song Arboga Memorial. Later still, heroic efforts by factious groups to find common ground in allocating water fairly are celebrated in the song Yuba River Accord. Oppressive behavior by white settlers towards Native Americans and, later toward Japanese Americans are counterbalanced by those among us who have risen above themselves for the common good of our community.

With the support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Monica Farbiarz, mentored by California Heritage: Indigenous Research Project (CHIRP), will cocreate MAI – The Salmon Journey project, promoting environmental awareness and community engagement through intergenerational participatory arts programming. The Salmon Journey will educate and bring awareness about the environment, the Yuba River ecosystem across two counties, and the interdependence between nature and humans.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Jess Riegel and Kira Greene will produce Report Card a series of video reports, highlighting unique challenges and attributes from communities residing in the lowest quartiles of the California Healthy Places Index, in Del Norte, Trinity, Modoc, Lassen, Plumas, and Yuba Counties. Funds will support important investigations resulting in at least 18 one-minute videos, housed on their own website, and accessible via Instagram and other free online platforms.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Marc Flacks will adapt the screenplay for Salt of the Earth (1954) into a play that will be staged in the Spring of 2024. Salt of the Earth was produced by blacklisted artists during the McCarthy era. The story, about Mexican American miners and their ethnic, class, and gender struggles, will be reshaped for a new generation of American viewers and staged for the first time. The production will include community members as co-creators.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Director Shon Harris will create the film, The Road to Resilience, to generate awareness, support, and understanding of the plight of homeless people in our community. With a storyline inspired by detailed interviews and direct participation of those experiencing homelessness within the lowest quartiles of the California HPI, the film will drive public sentiment, foster intergenerational learning, inspire resilience, and spur politicians to action.

With support from Upstate California Creative Corps, Emiliano Gomez will create Work Week, a series of reportage for public awareness, health, and mutual understanding in a community that is among the lowest scoring on the CA Healthy Places Index. Searching for unspoken or unheard truths that impact the urban areas of Yuba and Sutter Counties, he will spend a week's days and nights with unseen community members: a grocery clerk; a neighbor who has lived on the same corner for 70 years; an owner of hectares of orchards; a forklift driver; an ER doctor; home-owning high school sweethearts; the recently un-homeless and newly un-housed; whoever needs to speak but hasn't gotten to or been given the opportunity.

With support from the Upstate California Creative Corps, the Yuba Sutter Rotary Night Club, in collaboration with the Blue Zones community wellness project and the Partnership for Health Equity and Inclusion will conduct a 48 Hour Mural Marathon, Health and Art Festival to bring awareness to all four CCC program goals in one of the lowest scoring regions on the HPI scale. Five 20’x22’ exterior wall murals will be created in 48 hours by five different artists on the side of the historic Sutter Theater in Yuba City. Murals will be pre-selected from submissions from CA artists using compliance with the goals and artistic excellence as the guide to participation. The weekend-long event will include exhibits by local county and city health agencies, the Blue Zones Project and others with local artists displaying relevant work and an area for students to create a guided mural project on the same program themes.