Contact:

Eduardo Robles
Director of Communications
eduardo@caforthearts.org

For Immediate Release

October 21, 2026

California for the Arts (CA for the Arts) is proud to announce the five cohort members of the third Grassroots Artists Advocacy Program (GAAP). Building on two previous fellowship cohorts totaling ten, and with many now exercising greater civic power through their participation, GAAP continues to advance artist-centered advocacy for systemic change in San Francisco and Oakland. With expanded philanthropic support from the Walter & Elise Haas Foundation and the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, the third cohort brings together five new fellows whose work advances democracy-strengthening and community self-determination approaches to change.

Working across dance, painting, poetry and music, curation, festival production, architecture, and installation, the 2026 fellows share a central question of what it will take for artists and culture bearers to remain rooted in San Francisco and Oakland, and their prospective advocacy efforts approach it from five directions: age equity in cultural policy and funding, durable investment in Black cultural infrastructure in Deep East Oakland, fairer permitting for the free cultural festivals that anchor San Francisco's neighborhoods, affordable housing for artists near the city's cultural districts, and artists' rights in the age of generative AI.

"Artists and culture bearers hold deep knowledge about what their communities need, yet they are too often left out of the rooms where decisions are made," said Julie Baker, CEO of California for the Arts. "GAAP is the first program of its kind to invest directly in grassroots artists as policy advocates, and this third cohort shows what becomes possible when we do. These five fellows are taking on questions every California community will face, and the models they build in San Francisco and Oakland will help guide us as we bring GAAP to more regions of the state."

The Grassroots Artists Advocacy Program is making waves statewide, with growing interest in expanding this change-centered framework in Southern California and the Central Valley. The GAAP Fellows will complete a nine-month curriculum focused on building impactful advocacy plans that create lasting change for artists and cultural bearers. Fellows will learn the foundations of effective advocacy, build relationships, learn from successful advocates, and engage with policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels. The cohort will meet regularly as a community of practice and attend the CA Arts & Culture Summit and Arts Advocacy Day in Sacramento, April 28-30, 2027.

Cohort 3 is united by a belief that artists bring a distinct kind of expertise to civic life, and that advocacy can be as relational and imaginative as the art itself. Many of the new fellows have participated in advocacy efforts in response to urgent threats, from eviction fights in the Mission District to campaigns over how the San Francisco Arts Commission pays its grantees, and now want to build infrastructure that lasts beyond any single crisis. Their advocacy ideas focus on policy translation and shared leadership. They imagine plain-language guides that help artists better navigate existing laws and systems, and that pay culture bearers to participate in decision-making. Cohort 3 members will build coalitions that link cultural organizations with labor movements for housing, aging, and tech. Several of them imagine rehearsal rooms, festivals, and community gatherings as places where artists and policymakers meet as collaborators. This new cohort is prepared to treat cultural expertise as civic expertise. Beyond policy wins, they'll measure success by how many more artists are prepared to speak for themselves. We say that the GAAP selection process is like putting together a puzzle. These five artists fit together amazingly well.

"I've spent more than thirty years in Bay Area arts, and for most of that time I watched artists only show up for advocacy when something was about to be cut," said Ted Russell, Program Consultant Lead at California for the Arts. "GAAP grew out of a different idea. We go deep with five advocacy fellows at a time. The cohort effect is powerful. With this third group, we now have fifteen artist advocates across San Francisco and Oakland. That network grows stronger with every cohort, and over time artists and culture bearers will change the systems they depend on."

The 2026 GAAP Fellows are:

Rodrigo Ehecatl Durán (he/him/his) is a cultural leader, community advocate, and Director of Carnaval San Francisco, the producer of California's largest and longest-running multicultural parade and festival. A native San Franciscan and the son of Mexican immigrants, Durán has dedicated his career to advancing cultural preservation, community engagement, and equitable representation for communities of color.

Before becoming Director of Carnaval San Francisco, Durán served as Marketing Director for the Calle 24 Latino Cultural District, where he supported local businesses, artists, and cultural institutions in the Mission District. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he helped coordinate Mission Food Hub operations that provided thousands of families with culturally relevant groceries each week. Through Carnaval, he continues to celebrate and sustain the vibrant Latino, Caribbean, and African Diaspora traditions that define the San Francisco Bay Area's cultural life.

Since 2022, Rodrigo has served as a KQED Community Advisory Panel member. From June of 2023 to May of 2025, he served as a Commissioner for the San Francisco Human Rights Commission.

He is a proud husband to a benevolent Nicaraguan woman and a fortunate father to an inquisitive daughter.

NiQueen Jones (she/her) is an Oakland-based multidisciplinary artist and cultural worker whose practice explores the histories, living traditions, and evolving futures of the African diaspora. Her lifelong artistic practice spans creative writing, music, dance, and community organizing.

NiQueen serves as the Cultural Arts Network Weaver & Partnerships Manager with the Brotherhood of ElderNetwork, stewarding the Black Cultural Zone Collaborative. In this role, she is the architect of the 40x40 REACH Grants Program and the 40x40 Living Practice series, initiatives that expand opportunities for artists, foster connection, and strengthen Deep East Oakland's creative landscape. She is also a member of Artist As First Responder (AAFR) Collective, and a former teaching artist and administrator for The Peoples' Conservatory.

Her work is rooted in the belief that arts and culture are essential to individual and collective well-being, self-determination, and the ability to imagine new possibilities.

Shrey Purohit (he/him) is a San Francisco-based painter, curator, and arts advocate from Mumbai, India. He moved to San Francisco in 2018 to study at California College of the Arts, earning his BFA in 2020. His paintings explore the city’s streets and everyday life through questions of labor and belonging.

As Exhibitions and Partnerships Manager at ArtSpan, he leads exhibitions and builds partnerships that connect Bay Area artists with audiences, sales, and paid opportunities. He oversees the SF Open Studios Exhibition, presenting more than 300 artists, and has produced shows at the Ferry Building, Mission Bowling Club, City Hall, and neighborhood venues across SF. He managed the Excelsior Art Initiative for two years, placing public art in local businesses and distributing $25,000 in artist stipends. His work spans curation, fundraising, community outreach, budgets, and program management.

Purohit also founded Ingleside Gallery, which has shown more than 100 artists, with a focus on AAPI, queer, and immigrant artists. In 2026, he received a San Francisco Arts Commission Arts Impact Endowment grant for “Unsung SF: Portraits of the Working City.” In these roles, they work to make artistic opportunity more accessible and help artists stay in the communities they shape.

Liv Schaffer (she/her) is a social practice artist, choreographer, educator, and intergenerational practitioner working at the intersection of the arts and aging services. Her body-based research centers intergenerational dance as a methodology for strengthening social connection, cultivating belonging and care, advancing age equity, and imagining pluralistic futures.

Liv is a faculty member in the Performing Arts and Social Justice Department at the University of San Francisco, where she teaches contemporary dance and directs Dance Generators, the university’s intergenerational dance company. As Intergenerational Director with EngAGE, Inc., she designs programs that foster reciprocal relationships across generations within affordable housing communities throughout California and Oregon. She has served as a Community Engagement Artist with Jacob’s Pillow since 2014.

Liv holds a BFA from the Alonzo King LINES Ballet Program at Dominican University. She is a 2026–2027 Eisner Prize Fellow, a 2026 Belonging Innovation Lab Narrative Fellow, a 2025 LABA Bay Area Fellow, and a 2021 CoGenerate Gen2Gen Innovation Fellow.

Shreya Shankar (she/they)'s creative practice is where ancestral forms and futurisms meet across the mediums of design, policy, mythology, futurism, and worldbuilding.

Their work engages collective memory and the radical imagination, seamlessly prototyping across diverse mediums and forms to create functional ritual sculptural art objects, altars, sets, literary and visual art.

With degrees in Environmental Policy, Urban Planning, and Architecture from UC Berkeley and CCA, Shreya Shankar draws from spiritual ecology, folklore, and foresight to explore the rich territory between ancestral cosmologies and liberatory near-futures.

The five GAAP Fellows were selected through an open application process, with a CA for the Arts review panel prioritizing cohort diversity, representation of San Francisco and Oakland communities, and collective impact potential for policy change and advocacy.

GAAP continues to be supported by the Kenneth Rainin Foundation and the Walter & Elise Haas Foundation.

About California for the Arts

CA for the Arts is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary advocacy service organization focused on building resources and public awareness of the value and impact of arts, culture, and creativity across California.