APICC is proud to host Tayo'y Amoy Araw! We Smell Like Sunshine! as part of CHINATOWN: OUR FUTURE IS NOW! an outdoor showcase taking place at Portsmouth Square on May 30th, 2021 for the 24th annual United States of Asian America Festival: Forging Our Futures - SoMa & Chinatown. 

APICC is also excited to showcase Tayo'y Amoy Araw! We Smell Like Sunshine! as part of the outdoor showcase at Kapwa Gardens in the SoMa on June 5, 2021 for USAAF 2021.

Tayo'y Amoy Araw! We Smell Like Sunshine! builds an archive examining the role of community power in anti-displacement organizing to advocate for our right to open and green spaces and sunlight. The project examines the multiracial, intergenerational, and cross-class grassroots efforts in protecting San Francisco SOMA's Victoria Manalo Draves Park, and Chinatown's Portsmouth Square Park, from encroaching luxury development, led by neighborhood-based organizations like SOMCAN (South of Market Action Network). Presently, the park remains unshadowed by towering buildings through the Prop K Sunlight Ordinance, passed in 1984 out of concern for building shadows and related ramifications impacting community health.

REGISTRATION INFO

This event is occurring at Portsmouth Square, Victoria Manalo Draves Park and Kapwa Gardens.
Registration for all events are free and open to the public. 
ASL interpretation will be provided at Portsmouth Square and Kapwa Gardens.

PORTSMOUTH SQUARE

May 30, 2021 at 3:30pm - 5:45pm 

REGISTER HERE

Cyphers and Solidarity, a collaboration between Jai Severson, Erina Alejo, and friends including: DJ Varsha, Gail Burks, Shayna Vu, Mers Tran, Tori Villamil, and Al Quin Ang.

VICTORIA MANALO DRAVES PARK*

June 5, 2021 at 1pm - 2pm

REGISTER HERE

KAPWA GARDENS*

June 5, 2021 at 3pm - 7:30pm

REGISTER HERE

*K-Pop-Up's Francesca Balagtas and Keeley Arnold, in collaboration with Erina Alejo's "Tayo'y Amoy Araw! We Smell Like Sunshine!", will teach a kpop dance workshop as a form of public intervention at SOMA Pilipinas's Victoria Manalo Draves Park and Kapwa Gardens. Both workshops will take place on June 5, where participants will learn a routine from "Hola Hola" by KARD. Registration required per each event.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Erina Alejo (@erinacalejo) is an artist, researcher, and educator who constructs archives on labor, displacement, family, and communal history. Their lens-based ethnographic works incorporate performativity, social practice, and public space to center care, community action, and cultural preservation through their experience as a third-generation renter in San Francisco.

Jai Severson (@mxpluvement) is a neurodivergent Pilipinx-mixed-white, non-binary dancer-researcher associated with the Bay Area Disabled Dance Collective (BA-DDC; @bay_area_disabled_dance).  Jai is also the Bay Area Prince of the Kiki House of Peaches, a house family in the California Region of the “kiki scene” (which is a community-fostering and training side of the Ballscene the culture that vogue comes from). Jai and their friends and colleagues from various street and club dance cultures together present: Cyphers and Solidarity, a brief look into the various games that dancers use to relate to each and the intertwining  those games have with community building. Collaborators include: DJ Varsha, Gail Burks, Shayna Vu, Mers Tran, Tori Villamil, and Al Quin Ang.

K-Pop-Up is a San Francisco based kpop cover dance class open to all ages! Our mission: to bring together kpop lovers and dancers across the Bay Area to grow a welcoming and inclusive community where we can share our kpop fandom. Catch our virtual classes currently on twitch.tv/kpopupsf every Thursday at 7:30pm PST and Saturday 12pm PST. We are currently in planning stages for reopening in-person classes hopefully in the summertime. Stay tuned!

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1. A mass of people looking at the camera atop a grassy field, with a backdrop of trees and open sky. Youth and educators from FEC Galing Bata, YMCA, West Bay, United Playaz; staff and community part of SOMCAN, Bayanihan Equity Center, SOMA Pilipinas, Kultivate Labs, Bindlestiff, and more, with lawyer Sue Hester, celebrate the historic win of protecting Victoria Manalo Draves Park from a luxury housing development overshadowing the park. SOMA, April 23, 2019 at 3:40PM.
2. A boy in a red long sleeve, Andrew, raises his arm towards the camera. Behind him is a group of people reaching for candy and prizes hanging from a raised bamboo grid-- they are playing a traditional Filipino party game called Pabitin. At Natoma Block Party by SOMCAN, SOMA, September 28, 2019.
3. A girl, Maja, in a pink shirt and a pink sweater tied to her waist is running towards the frame. Behind her, a group of older kids are standing and watching an out of frame basketball game. They are all bathed in afternoon light with the backdrop of Cece Carpio's "Tuloy Po Kayo" mural for the Bessie Carmichael Filipino Education Center Middle School Campus, SOMA, spring 2017.