Every summer, CA for the Arts closes its doors on Fridays in July and August, giving our team the opportunity to do something we often overlook: step away, reconnect, wander, rest, and experience culture on our own terms.

This summer, our team embraced the season in many ways: attending conferences or community projects, going into town or the city, or simply spending time in nature. Some of us traveled, while others stayed close to home. Some sought inspiration, some found rest, and others simply followed their curiosity.

 Here’s a glimpse into how  team members spent the Summer, along with the art, culture, people, and places that left a lasting impression on us.

Staff Retreat in Santa Barbara

Last month, the CA for the Arts dream team came together for our annual staff retreat in beautiful, historic Santa Barbara. As a fully remote team, this time together deepened our collective purpose, strengthened how we work, nurtured our culture of care, and reconnected us with the statewide mission that drives our work.⁠
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From Nevada City, Sacramento, Oakland, Fresno, the Inland Empire, and Los Angeles, we came together to question our processes, challenge our assumptions, and dream bigger about what’s possible. Most importantly, we asked: Are we creating the impact our California communities need, and how can we deepen regional representation?⁠
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Because our work is more than programs, campaigns, or policy. It's about expanding access, advancing equity, and building a California where arts and culture are a powerful force for justice, belonging, and thriving communities. We left with more than ideas and organizational connection. We left rooted, energized, and ready to turn our collective purpose into greater social impact across California.⁠
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Thank you to Center Stage Theater for hosting us!

Teri Ball, Senior Project Manager

Attending the Theatre Communications Group Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico—themed Pa’lante: People Practice Power—was a wonderful way to kick off my summer. It offered an inspiring mix of learning, networking, and experiencing the local culture.

The event began at the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras campus with a day-long advocacy intensive. Advocates, artists, and educators from both the local community and the mainland led an engaging dialogue with students, educators, and cultural leaders on how education, advocacy, and collective action are driving the future of theatre. Listening to such diverse perspectives and learning about both shared challenges and creative solutions was truly enlightening.

Over the next few days, I participated in several sessions focused on the impact of AI, covering topics from establishing an organizational AI framework to shaping AI policy within the arts. Other topics included what it means to center care in our work, care for artists and the community, and a great session of creative resistance with examples of how artists are responding to rising authoritarianism through both creative practice and cultural organizing. These are topics we concentrate on every day, and it was exhilarating and motivating to explore them with theatre makers from organizations of all sizes across Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland. A great reminder that the challenges are so similar for all of us, and inspiring to see how others are facing them. 

Ted Russell, Program Consultant Lead

This summer, I used my Fridays to lean into community work, and some weekends away. As Program Consultant Lead for the Grassroots Artist Advocacy Program (GAAP), I spend much of my time supporting artists and culture bearers to build power and create change. Summer Fridays provided opportunities to step outside that role while staying connected to the work that keeps me grounded, including my volunteer role on the steering committee of the advocacy-focused Oakland Arts & Culture Collaborative.

One especially meaningful experience was participating in Joël Tan’s Arts as Apothecary retreat at Commonweal’s restorative campus in Bolinas. As a Californian, the sweeping coastal landscape, with red-tailed hawks overhead and pelicans gliding over the ocean, is my jam. More importantly, the retreat connected deeply with my life’s work supporting art, creativity, and culture as powerful sources of healing and connection. That July weekend was a rare opportunity to be part of a new movement imagining how the arts can be placed at the heart of solutions for health, the planet, and democracy. I came away reminded that this work isn't just what I do; it’s about my core values of community & connection, and the human-centered practice that keeps calling me.

Jennifer Kuo, Special Initiatives Consultant

This summer, I had the opportunity to connect with communities through service, creativity, and the growing field of arts and health. Through my involvement with Sisters in Public Health, I volunteered with A Sense of Home, a nonprofit that creates welcoming homes for individuals who have experienced displacement. From helping stage home designs for individuals impacted by the Los Angeles wildfires to supporting behind-the-scenes tasks, it was a meaningful opportunity to give back and contribute to a sense of comfort, belonging, and community.

I also co-hosted a National Organization for Arts in Health (NOAH) Meetup in Los Angeles, bringing together NOAH members and others interested in arts and health. Hosted at The Art of Elysium, the afternoon included speed networking and a hands-on service activity assembling art kits with supplies provided by Give Kids Art. It was wonderful to create space for new connections while giving back through the arts - a fitting way to spend the summer!

Julie Baker, CEO

This summer was a wonderful blend of meaningful work, joyful moments, and deeply needed rest.

A true highlight was the Art as Apothecary retreat at Commonweal in Bolinas. Gathering with colleagues to reflect on the intersection of arts, health, and democracy was immensely grounding. Amid meditating, watching shorebirds, and gazing at the ocean, I realized how much I’d been holding onto—and how restorative it is to simply slow down.

There were plenty of lively moments, too. Watching legislators trade policy for softball at the CA State Legislature’s game was a delight, and our team retreat in Santa Barbara brought us together to share joy while planning for California's future.

Above all, I cherished the quiet rhythm of Summer Fridays: peaceful walks with friends, playfulness with my grandkids, and lost hours in a good book. Giving myself permission to pause, recharge, and reconnect reminded me that taking time to refuel is what truly sustains our vision and purpose.

Tracy Hudak, Director of Policy and Advocacy

Our summer slow down offered me the opportunity to attend the PolicyLink Summit 2026 in Washington DC. The theme, or really the call, was "We Are The Founders: Writing the Unfinished Story of Our Democracy."  And in this calling were conversations and workshops that stimulated a collective visioning for a thriving mulitracial democracy with arts and culture at the core along with equitable economies, climate resilience and just, effective governing. The conversation was fearless. We are at an inflection point, a time of destruction and renewal. Our nation has undergone several “foundings,” from the Declaration of Independence to the writing of the Constitution, to the post-Civil war amendments (13th, 14th and 15th) and the Civil Rights Act. We require yet another reimagining and realigning. Emceed by civics media superstar, Baratunde Thurston, the conference featured speakers and leaders working on civil rights, economic justice, the indigenous roots of our democracy and more. Key takeaways: this founding moment requires holding discomfort, bridging differences, working with imperfection and personal transformation - a capacity to hold others in love and act, not just talk. 

So much of this conference resonated with our Arts, Culture & Creativity Month theme: Joy • Action • Power. Summit leaders emphasized the essential role of the arts in this work, so much so that the arts working group was the largest contingent. A big shout out to all the California leaders who were there! And we were fed with art: daily art-making activities and dancing, poetry, a concert by John Baptiste and the commissioning of an inspiring orchestral work to close the Summit. As PolicyLink CEO Michael McAfee shared in the closing plenary, “art is our way of coming into relationship with ourselves and each other,” and it will make our shared vision "delicious, irresistible and real.” PolicyLink offered a Governing for All Blueprint for moving towards the vision - a working draft with an invitation to help form it. Take a look here. And let me know how we can honor and build on the work you do that contributes to our democracy’s promise.

Behind the Scenes with NeFesha Yisra'el, Director of Programs

This summer, I had the opportunity to travel and gather with arts and culture leaders in two very different, but equally inspiring spaces. In June, I attended the Americans for the Arts Conference (AFTACON) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One of the things I appreciated most was how intentionally the conference engaged Albuquerque and invited us to experience the city’s creative community. From an evening with the National Institute of Flamenco to the High Desert Showcase, I experienced the art, culture, and creative energy of Albuquerque in ways that felt joyful and deeply connected to place.

In July, I attended the Center for Cultural Innovation’s A Better Future is Possible convening in Berkeley. The gathering created space to imagine what a better future can actually look like and to think more expansively about systems change. Together, these experiences reminded me of the power of gathering, place, imagination, and creativity to help us envision and build what comes next.

Eduardo Robles, Director of Communications

Summer has given me many unforgettable moments (including my daughter’s quicenañera!), but few have felt as meaningful as reconnecting with my family's history through the Markings project organized by the remarkable Los Angeles-based youth organization, Heart of LA (HOLA). 

Markings is a public humanities project led by HOLA's Visual Arts Department that presents the stories, cultural practices, and lived experiences of Indigenous communities in the Westlake, MacArthur Park, and Pico-Union neighborhoods of Los Angeles. The project includes public art, cultural placekeeping programming, community archives, cultural asset mapping, and digital storytelling, all of which help capture and showcase Indigenous stories of place.

My parents, of Zapotec heritage, lived a diasporic cultural life in these LA neighborhoods during the 1970s and early 1980s after immigrating to the United States. I spent my early childhood in these neighborhoods before moving to Southeast Los Angeles in the latter half of the 1980s. With this part of my family history in mind, Nara Hernandez, HOLA's Senior Creative Director, invited me to contribute an intergenerational oral history reflecting on the Zapotec diaspora experience in Los Angeles.

This invitation has been a blessing, allowing me to revisit my family’s history. I spent the summer digging through old family photos, chasing down memories, and piecing together five decades of my family’s life in Los Angeles. Part media archaeology, part cultural research, it has been a deeply fulfilling exercise in remembering and memory-making alongside my parents and children.

My 11-year-old daughter, Naya Itzel, was also fortunate to enroll in HOLA’s Summer Art Camp, with weekly classes throughout July. This gave me the chance to spend time in the neighborhood while she immersed herself in HOLA’s signature visual arts program. Watching her discover the neighborhood through art-making and cultural activities, while I rediscovered it through my family’s history, made the summer feel especially full circle.

A decade ago, I had the privilege of interning at HOLA, so returning felt especially meaningful as I reconnected with the space, its staff of artist educators, and its visionary arts leader, Nara Hernandez. Summer Fridays gave me the gift of time to immerse myself in this community and to be inspired by what cultural investment and advocacy can make possible for artists, young people, families, and communities.