ABOUT US
PLACE is a community and educational hub located on Huichin Territory – Ohlone Chochenyo Native lands (in North Oakland). Seeing regenerative solutions in practice invites and empowers others to take action in their own lives, neighborhoods, towns, cities, and bio-regions.
As an educational and maker-space organization, we have been extending community space as a tool and resource for healing, organizing, and co-creating art, visions, and equitable systems. This includes everything from community organizing, regenerative building, political education, cooking and medicine making demonstrations, hands-on gardening, solidarity fundraisers, cultural gatherings, spiritual ceremonies, song circles, community clay making, dance workshops, meditation classes, film screenings, local concerts and jams, and many other things that paint the intersectionality of the movement.
We honor the diverse backgrounds, paths, and lineages that have led up to us connecting with PLACE. We respectfully acknowledge that we are on Native lands, and that the San Francisco Bay Area is experiencing patterns of housing development and displacement that fuels a racial wealth gap. It is important for the arts, community, and eco-environmental work we hold space for to be grounded in a framework that does not perpetuate white supremacy, settler colonialism and systemic discrimination, violence, and erasure.
In solidarity, PLACE will explicitly prioritize holding community space for groups and individuals that are led by and serve Native, Black, People of Color, local, low-income, immigrant, and LGBTQIA2S+ communities.
We believe that it is crucial to collectively uplift the power and voices of frontline community climate “solutionaries” who experience the most direct relationships within extractive and oppressive systems. Ally individuals and organizations are also welcome to use this space as long as their intentions are in alignment with the values and principles named here. The funding we receive from more resourced communities helps us provide free and low cost space and community programming to communities with access to less financial resources.
OUR VALUES
As a community, PLACE is deeply committed to a decolonized vision of community and connection to one another and our planet. We work to center those most impacted by colonial and capitalistic marginalization to realize this vision for justice and equity.
We see that amidst all of our critical movement building, there is a need for deeper work towards collective liberation. We strive to create an open and honest environment that actively confronts the state of our unstable economic, environmental, and political climate.
We believe that authentic relationships between diverse groups of people come from the hard work of trust building. It is crucial to our work at PLACE to have many perspectives present in our community. We are committed to embracing the tough conversations that are necessary in order to grow as individuals and as a collective.
We are passionate about growing and sharing food and plant medicines, cultivating common spaces, uplifting art, music, culture, and ancestral knowledge, and upholding values of justice and cooperation.