Programs
How do individual artists work together for a common goal?
Camps and Year-round Programs
Annual Summer Leadership Camps
Since 2000, we have been convening groups of 25-40 young people for a 5 to 10 day overnight experience. Workshops include, “Linking the Issues,” in which youth connect local concerns to global issues. Participants choose from core groups: dance/theater; spoken word/music; visual; or media arts/digital storytelling. To culminate, we join together in a performance that speaks to the critical issues of our time.
Dig This Story! Digital Storytelling (year-round)
The Dig This Story Digital Storytelling Program gives participants an opportunity to produce a short movie illustrating their own story. Over two to four days, participants write a narrative of their story, record a voice-over, and weave images and photographs to create a personal story.
Dig This Story began in 2006. Since then we have held weekend-long Dig This Story trainings in the Bay Area and Alaska focused on topics like urban violence, militarism, and environmental issues. The process is transformational for participants who rarely have an opportunity to share their stories.
The workshop includes technical training in computer movie editing software like Final Cut Express, Protools and Adobe Photoshop. At the completion of the program, we screen the pieces with each other and also with a broader audience in a community screening.
The digital format keeps stories alive forever, enabling us to document our collective histories. A digital story can be shared over and over again, and can also be a catalyst to action by raising awareness for the public.
If you are interested in bringing Dig This Story to your community email: maryam@artinactionworld.org.
“Turf Unity” Music Program (year-round)
The Turf Unity project continues to emerge as response to youth demands from historically disadvantaged communities who want training and resources to produce music that confronts root causes of violence while also exploring specific ways violence afflicts our neighborhoods. The music produced in the workshops promotes messages of Turf Unity through music and appeals for social justice. The project directly responds to community needs by advocating for violence-free living and offers alternatives to violence by providing resources for professional music development.
The goal of the Turf Unity project is to bring together talented young artists and 
producers ages 15-24 from all Oakland neighborhoods and Bay Area turfs to collaborate on Stop The Violence Turf Unity Songs. These songs are performed at Silence the Violence and Art in Action events and are used for various projects as a way of bringing communities together into action.
At Turf Unity workshops, participants have an opportunity to make beats, play music instruments, do lyric writing, and record in pro-tools studios for 3-full days. 
The Turf Unity gathering encourages collaboration between participating artists united through hip hop; beat production, rhymes, singing, accompanied by acoustic instrumentation. At the end of a workshop weekend each participant contributes music for the Turf Unity CD project. These tracks are often performed at hip-hop shows and events throughout the Bay Area.
Listen to samples in the Gallery.
The Turf Unity Music Project has had tremendous success, and has inspired thousands of people. 
The first Turf Unity compilation CD sold over 1200 copies in the first month, and went “gold on the streets” as well as won “Best of The Bay” by the San Francisco Guardian newspaper. The first Turf Unity show sold out, featuring over 40 rap artists and a number of community leaders like Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. The second Turf Unity project brought together over 50 artists from more than 30 neighborhoods throughout the Bay Area, including Mistah F.A.B., Dj Cochise (KRS-1’s dj) and Dj Fuse (formerly of Digital Underground). 
This Turf Unity gathering made front-page news in the Oakland Tribune as well as headline news on KTVU Channel 2.
Music produced as part of the Turf Unity project supports contributing youth artists, and has generated thousands of dollars for participating rappers and music companies. Turf Unity promotes business networking in the community and encourages collaboration between artists as a strategy for success in the music industry. 
The Turf Unity project hires youth artists from the Bay Area community to run not only the recording sessions, but also to produce the CDs, organize the shows, and coordinate tour opportunities. We’ve taken Turf Unity to the United States Social Forum in Atlanta, the Dream Reborn Green for All Conference in Memphis, the National Hip-Hop convention in Las Vegas, and the Alaska Youth for Environmental Action convergence in Anchorage.The Turf Unity project enthusiastically shares its organizing model with interested groups throughout the nation and continues to be interested in partnering with other projects with shared commitments. Turf Unity is a collaborative effort of Art in Action, Cov Records (www.myspace.com/covrecords), and the Silence the Violence movement of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.
Check out some of the music we produced at the Turf Unity Music Project, as well as VIDEOS from the project.
If you are interested in the Turf Unity curriculum to share with your community email: galen@artinactionworld.org.
COV Records:
Throughout the year, Art in Action’s Turf Unity music program operates out of Covenant House Homeless Youth Center where young musicians learn how to write and record their own music, design CD covers, make music videos, and market their work. Go to: www.myspace.com/covrecords
Green Media Arts Center:
Due to the overwhelming response to our Turf Unity Music programming and Digital Storytelling year-round programming, as well as our yearly leadership camps, Art in Action has been asked by community members to create a media arts space that could fully operate as a community organizing and leadership-training facility in Oakland.
As a result, Art in Action is initiating a solar-powered youth media center project. The Center will offer entrepreneurial, vocational, and green job readiness training for youth from historically disadvantaged communities. Center activities will include leadership development, new media, arts training, music production, community organizing skills, and green job education to Oakland youth between the ages of 18 to 25. The Center will house a business that sells and contracts the art, music, and media-related merchandise produced by program participants. Art in Action is collaborating with partner organizations to create programs that will increase quality of life and community engagement. For more info on how to get involved with the development of the Green Media Arts center contact Galen Peterson: galen@artinactionworld.org.
Performances and Workshops (year-round)
Art in Action is regularly invited to teach and perform across the Bay Area. We have performed at dozens of community events and schools. These performances have helped to build unity among our graduates, while inspiring young audiences with the power of music and art. We are down to collaborate with other community arts projects, so contact us if you have event you would like Art in Action to perform at info@artinactionworld.org
Silence the Violence Collaboration (year-round)
In partnership with Silence The Violence, a campaign of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, we are working towards building an urban peace movement in the Bay Area. Together we are promoting alternatives to violence for young people, developing youth leadership opportunities, and building community through collective art making and performance.
For more information, please visit www.BayAreaSilenceTheViolence.org