ABOUT
LIVING. HISTORY. POSSIBILITIES.
Life is Living is a seventeen-year strong celebration of Oakland life.
FOUNDERS & COHORT
Currently produced by People’s Kitchen Collective, Life is Living was founded by Oakland luminaries like Chinaka Hodge, Todd “Estria” Johnson, Joan Osato, Candice Wicks-Davis, Jenn Johns, Jeff Chang, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Jason Mateo, Hodari Davis, Keba Konte, Brett Cook, Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi, Keith “K Dub” Williams, Bethanie Hines, Rolando Brown, Miguel “Bounce” Perez, and more.
Our year-long cohort includes Keith K-Dub Williams, Bryan Massengale, Andrew Wilson, Bethanie Hines, Evan Bissell, Needa Bee, Korise Jubert, Candice Davis, Eli Jacobs Fantauzzi, YaVette Holts, Gloria Tajtaj, Brett Cook, Hodari Davis, Ismael Plasencia, Panther Skate, Khalil, Emily Butterfly, Bijou McDaniel, Jennifer Johns, Jocelyn Jackson and Joan Osato.
And it is with immense gratitude to Youth Speaks and Edutainment for Equity for producing and caretaking LIL into a foundational cultural phenomenon, that PKC now holds the honor of continuing the legacy.
HISTORY
Life is Living is a seventeen-year strong, free celebration of Oakland life. Since 2008, Life is Living has been held on the second Saturday of October to mark the ways art can mobilize for environmental justice to create a vibrant community.
LIL has brought together over an estimated 75,000 people to West Oakland’s historic Lil Bobby Hutton Park in past years. The festival has included a traveling environmental caucus & concert, an invitational Graffiti Battle, live-action sports, sustainable materials construction projects, live poetry events, free breakfast program, a science and technology fair, BPP inspired survival conference, multiple stages, outreach, and a variety of other activities. As Candice and Hodari have shared, “Our arts practices must echo and sustain the lives of the communities we engage.”
People's Kitchen Collective (PKC) works at the intersection of art and activism as a food-centered political education project. Our creative practices reflect diverse histories and backgrounds, from which we create immersive experiences that honor the shared struggles of our people. PKC believes in radical hospitality as a strategy to address the urgent social issues of our time.
PKC first collaborated with LIL in 2011 when we brought a version of the Free Breakfast Program legacy to the park to honor the revolutionary traditions of the Black Panther Party Survival Programs. For over a decade PKC has shown up at the intersection of art, food, and social justice as one of the principle co-organizers of LIL to feed the community, body and soul. We look forward to continuing the tradition of embodying all the creative, expressive, and liberatory ways we show up for each other and The Town.
