WHO WE ARE

The EAST BAY LGBTQ+ HEALING ARTS CENTER aka The QUEER ARTS CENTER is a grassroots, interdisciplinary collaborative of Oakland, California-based disabled, Black, Indigenous + Brown LGBTQ+ identified artists and wellness practitioners serving a global community. We are diverse across gender, sexual orientation, and relationship spectrums as well as ancestral heritage and spiritual orientations. We each are rooted in healing-justice values and maintain adherence to professional standards by continually expanding inquiry into our respective fields of practice.

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OUR MISSION

To offer creative opportunities for health equity through culturally competent, financially accessible, interdisciplinary art innovation and through marginalized LGBTQIA rights advocacy; and, to promote the well-being of the QTPOC artist community.

OUR VISION

Oakland is home to one of the most innovative and respected queer arts communities in the world.
We are also home to one of the nation's largest groups per capita of disenfranchised LGBTQ+ artists. The Queer Arts Center was founded as Spectrum Queer Media (a QTPOC-led organization est. 2009) and took on the name The Queer Arts Center aka The East Bay LGBTQ+ Healing Arts Center in 2020. The Queer Arts Center, led by Black Queer + Black Trans artists and healers, offers Oakland's LGBTQ+ artists of all ethnicities + all areas of creative genius (dance, visual art, music, film, sculptural art, theater, spoken word, literature, zines, etc.) a safe place to heal, build + support their art throughout the year.

By partnering with supportive Bay Area artists, wellness practitioners, health organizations, LGBTQIA+ groups, and art agencies, since 2009, The Queer Arts Center / Spectrum Queer Media has been able to provide life-sustaining services to over 25,000 Queer, gender nonconforming, lesbian, bisexual, gay, intersex, asexual and trans-identified people - especially artists, performers, healers, and families with children. Since the onset of the COVID Epidemic until the pause of our Food Justice program (due to funding) in January 2023, The Queer Arts Center has provided over 30,000 meals to marginalized QTIBIPOC people. Located within Oakland's historic Grand Lake neighborhood, The East Bay LGBTQ+ Healing Arts Center offers art workshops, job training, professional development opportunities + collective self-care classes.

THE SPACE
The East Bay LGBTQ+ Arts Center's Main Room has the capacity to host community gatherings and are currently available to book events (up to 85 people). The separate QTea Room (12 feet x 13 feet) offers by appointment space for medicinal tea sessions and is available for lease for wellness practitioners to schedule time with their clients.

The Miss Major Griffin-Gracy Art Gallery, curated by Kin Folkz (TGIJP Board Member), showcases art from a diverse group of artists from all ethnicities - and also prioritizes Black QT artists.

Most importantly, The East Bay LGBTQ+ Healing Arts Center is also where we maintain The Black Trans Legacy Archive and East Bay LGBTQ+ Digital Archives honoring both well-known + unsung East Bay LGBTQ+ community members. The Center houses both a digital recording and a viewing booth for anyone who would like to record or recall our East Bay LGBTQ+ history, our Oakland LGBTQ+ heritage + contribute to our legacy as a commUNITY.

WEBSITE: QueerArtsCenter.com