PROGRAMS

OroVista’s programs build artist stability, sustain cultural spaces, and strengthen cross-community collaboration—laying the groundwork for a future where cultural wealth is recognized as essential infrastructure in East Oakland.

A Cultural Platform by OroVista Arts at The Loom Oakland

Buttercup Works is a new cultural platform led by OroVista Arts, activating an outdoor site in Oakland at The Loom in the Jingletown neighborhood. Developed in partnership with The Loom, the project brings together murals, large scale sculptures and gathering spaces into a living exhibition.

Across the Bay Area, a new wave of creative activity is reshaping how artists and communities use and share space. Ensuring that this momentum reaches historically underinvested neighborhoods is critical to an equitable cultural landscape. Jingletown, shaped by its industrial past, working waterfront, and long-standing community of immigrants, artists and makers, has deep cultural assets but limited access to sustained, place-based creative infrastructure.

Buttercup Works responds to this gap by activating Jingletown as common ground for cultural expression, creative exchange, and neighborhood connection. Through accessible programming and artist-centered space, the project builds on the neighborhood’s existing creative legacy while expanding opportunities for participation, visibility, and local economic vitality. In doing so, Buttercup Works helps position Jingletown as an active contributor to the Bay Area’s evolving cultural ecosystem.

The site will evolve as a dynamic, open-air gallery that builds on existing artworks while inviting new commissions and installations that reflect the diversity and creativity of the East Bay.

Behind OroVista’s cultural initiative, The Loom is leading the retail revitalization by bringing together independent makers, creators, and food and beverage vendors to containers in the lot as an effort to establish a locally rooted, economically generative environment that supports small businesses and activates daily foot traffic. In tandem, Oro Vista provides critical cultural infrastructure, featuring four large-scale exhibition walls and a central gathering space designed for sculpture, performances, conversations, and public programming. Together, these components integrate commerce and culture, creating a dynamic, accessible hub for both creative production and community engagement.

This project is inspired by the California Buttercup, a native flower known to bloom in unlikely and challenging conditions, reflecting the capacity for creative ecosystems to take root and thrive in underinvested spaces. In the same spirit, Buttercup Works harnesses the power of art, small-scale enterprise, and community-driven programming to transform overlooked areas into sites of visibility, resilience, and shared cultural production.

The project aims to:

Transform Space
Activate underutilized land into a vibrant, accessible cultural destination in East Oakland.

Support Artists
Provide paid opportunities and new platforms for local creatives to produce and share work.

Cultivate Community
Create an inclusive environment where people gather around art, culture, and connection.

BUTTERCUP WORKS Common Ground for Art in Oakland

THREADS

Building the Creative Economy

Session 1:

“What Is the Creative Economy?”
Defining Its Parts, Purpose & Potential

Session Description

What could a reimagined, equitable creative economy actually look like?

The term “creative economy” gets used across sectors—from tech startups to nonprofit arts—but what does it actually mean? Who is part of it? Who benefits? And how do we ensure that artists, cultural workers, and community-based creators are at its center?

In this inaugural session of THREADS, we’ll unpack the definition of the creative economy, explore its interconnected sectors, and discuss how it functions within—and often despite—larger economic systems. Together, we’ll begin to build a shared language and strategy for what a sustainable, equitable creative economy could look like in Oakland and beyond.

Key Questions to Explore

  • What do we mean by creative economy?

  • Who makes up the creative economy? (Think: artists, designers, performers, craftspeople, cultural workers, educators, organizers, etc.)

  • What roles do public institutions, philanthropy, and private industry play?

  • How is creative labor valued—or undervalued—within economic systems?

  • What are the current barriers to sustainability for artists and cultural workers in Oakland?

GROUNDED IN FORM

Grounded in Form is an invitation to connect deeply with material, land, and each other to explore the social, environmental, and emotional dimensions of form. We are building a team of artists to explore art as activism and deep collaborative exchange and learning. Through this work, we elevate the voices of diverse artists and creative leaders to harness art and creativity as tools for personal, social and cultural transformation—cultivating a more unified, empathetic, and just society. We will simultaneously be creating a model for collective and inclusive problem solving where all voices are heard and represented and where all backgrounds and identities are respected as part of the solutions we create together.

Artists will walk away with:

  • New relationships across disciplines and communities

  • Expanded skills in 3-dimensional art making and collaborative thinking

  • Opportunities to create public work grounded in social, political and ecological awareness

  • A strengthened sense of how form can be a tool for cultural storytelling and transformation

ORIGIN

A Gathering for Artists, Innovators, and Social Change Leaders

Origin is a catalytic intersection of artists, cultural strategists, and movement leaders who believe in the transformative power of art and creativity as tools for social change.

This is a space for producing relationships, strategy, and shared vision. Over the course of a powerful weekend, we’ll come together to strengthen our connections, deepen our collaborative practice, and generate actionable strategies that amplify our collective impact.

Why Gather?

  • To build meaningful relationships that expand the potential of cross-disciplinary collaboration.

  • To develop strategies for working more effectively across difference, geography, and practice.

To amplify impact through shared knowledge, creativity, and coordinated action.

Together, we’ll explore how creative thinking and cultural work can reshape systems and inspire new models for living, leading, and organizing.