Never miss local events! Sign up for Berkeleyside’s arts and culture newsletter, The Scene. And check out our roundup of affordable things to do anytime in Berkeley.

Last summer, Berkeley announced that it had chosen 11 artists from a pool of more than 50 to receive civics art grants worth $4,000 each. The grants, which are awarded annually to artists living in Berkeley, support the production of an “original project,” and require the artists to a public presentations of their new work in Berkeley in a way that engages audiences “in a meaningful way.”

Applicants for the grants have not always been so numerous. In 2015, Berkeley hired an arts consultant to figure out why so few Berkeley artists applied for its arts grants and why artists said they often felt isolated and unsupported. (During that fiscal year, only two individual artists applied for civic arts grants. Most applicants were larger arts organizations.)

“I haven’t applied for an Arts Commission grant in a long time because I felt I was being asked to do things that were irrelevant to my work, that would be ‘new’ projects,” one anonymous Berkeley artist is quoted as saying in the consultant’s report. “This feels intrusive. I need to deepen what I already do.” 

The following year, the city overhauled its civic arts grants program, ditching what it conceded was its “cumbersome” application process and splitting grant funds into three different pots so that individual artists and small groups would compete for funds amongst applicants their own size — instead of being pitted against high-budget arts organizations, according to city records. 

For the 2025-26 grant cycle, Berkeley has increased its grant amount to $5,000, which can be used to cover anything from living expenses to art supplies and studio fees. The city plans to select 10 grantees. 

To be considered, artists must work in film, new media, multi- and interdisciplinary arts, social practice or the visual arts. (The 2024-25 cohort was chosen from different categories that included dance, folk and traditional arts and music.) Applications for 2025/26 close Feb. 19.  

Berkeleyside spoke with four artists who received individual artist project grants for 2024 — ChingChi Yu, Milani Pelley, Martín Perna and Cordy Joan —  to hear about the projects they’re working on, which range from free dance classes at libraries to a James Baldwin-inspired audio project to commemorate the late writer’s 100th birthday.

Free wellness dance classes at the library

It’s Friday afternoon and a group of eight women are seated in chairs in a meeting room at the back of the Berkeley Public Library’s North Branch, lifting their arms above their heads and slowly stretching their torsos — first left, then right. 

Guiding them through a series of meditative warm-up exercises is the cheerful Berkeley dance instructor ChingChi Yu, who is teaching a series of free community wellness dance classes in Berkeley using city funding. She’s holding the classes at two Berkeley Public Library locations — Central and North Branch — and the South Berkeley Senior Center. 

“Imagine… you’re holding a very small energy ball in front of you, so every time you breathe in, the ball goes up towards your body,” Yu tells the group as a plucky, upbeat soundtrack plays in the background. They repeat the exercise eight times. 

No prior dance experience is necessary and anyone is welcome at the classes (though the South Berkeley Senior Center classes are meant for those ages 55 and older). In fact, you don’t even need to stay through the whole class — one time, a mail carrier dropped in briefly during a break, said Yu, who’s a South Berkeley resident.

It’s a labor of love for Yu, who started teaching the free classes last fall and will have taught more than 70 sessions by June, when her grant period concludes. She also plans to teach bonus choreography workshops — also free — on Feb. 8, 15 and 16 at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center in South Berkeley. 

Her goal? To “spread the joy of dancing,” Yu said. “Everybody can dance. You can move, you can groove.”

Yu, who is in her 60s, and has been dancing for over four decades, attributes her love of the art form to her mother, who used to wake up around 4 a.m. daily for casual 5 a.m. dance sessions with their neighbors. 

Before moving from Taiwan to the U.S. in 1986, Yu worked as a nurse and medical clerk in intensive care while performing in the Lan Ling Theater. She fell in love with choreography while a Cal student studying linguistics and dance, and after graduating she became the resident choreographer of Asian American Dance Performances, reportedly the first Asian American dance organization when it was founded in 1974. 

“This is not the type of choreography I do when I do my work,” she added. “This is for fun.”

A ‘love letter‘ to Black women’s bodies

For her city-funded project, Milani Pelley, a mother, poet and educator who was born and raised in South Berkeley, held a series of 17 informal interviews with Black girls and women, which she calls “curious conversations,” and is turning her findings into a “literary arts love letter” about Black women, their bodies and female blood. 

A mentee of Berkeley poet laureate Aya de León, who now facilitates literary arts workshops at Berkeley public schools, Pelley uses her poetry as historical documentation and self-expression. She plans to give a public presentation of her work at 2:30 p.m. April 12 at the Berkeley Public Library’s Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch.

The event, titled Loving Black Women’s Body Showcase, aims to encourage self-love and inclusion, and will feature her poetry, artwork compiled from an open call for art (on the theme of loving black women’s bodies) and an open mic. 

Pelley said she was drawn to the topic because of her prior work as a fellow for Parenting for Liberation, an organization that helps Black parents heal from trauma and build joyful Black families in community. After holding several “curious conversations” with other Black parents, “an undeniable theme arose,” she said. 

“There are teens and preteens in Berkeley who are girls who are getting bullied about their body [and] who are not feeling safe about their body in school,” Pelley said.“How can I hold for others and hold space for myself as well, which is difficult as a…Black mother?”

“This is not just an issue for Black teenage girls in Berkeley, but also Black women,” Pelley wrote in her application. “I need, and Berkeley needs, a place for Black girls and Women to celebrate their bodies.” 

Deep-dive into James Baldwin’s life through sound

Martín Perna’s project honors the legendary writer and Civil Rights activist James Baldwin who was born in Harlem a century ago.

Perna, a Grammy-nominated composer, musician and musical producer who moved to Central Berkeley in 2018, plans to spend eight weeks delving into archival tapes and recordings and re-arranging Baldwin’s writings as a polyphonic choir, inviting multiple collaborators to read out excerpts at the same time in a choral style. It’ll be set to a jazz soundtrack. It’s a practice that he and the visual artist Courtney Desiree Morris — his wife, close collaborator and a UC Berkeley professor — have been developing together. 

The project builds off the ideas of Butch Morris, who pioneered a unique structured improvisation method called “conduction,” in which musicians in an ensemble communicate through a series of hand gestures and do not follow a written score.

The goal, Perna said, is to produce a 1.5 to 2-hour-long sound work split into movements focusing on major themes in Baldwin’s work — love, rage, desire, the violence of white supremacy, the Black church, Harlem, the South, international solidarity, as well as Baldwin’s personal life. The project’s title is “Testify: A Centennial Soundscape for James Baldwin.”

For Perna, Baldwin’s writings from decades ago are eternal. The violence of white supremacy hasn’t ended, he said, and the U.S. continues to back wars around the world, “poisoning” the lands upon which they are fought on. He said that while Baldwin seldom addressed technology (at least to his knowledge), there are crucial lessons that can be learned from studying Baldwin’s understanding of the role of artists — especially in the age of AI and when many artists struggle to afford living costs.

The performance will be recorded and made available online and in hard copy at the Berkeley Public Library, with an accompanying guide to the sources of the speeches, sounds and an explanation of his methodology and practice, he said. Later this year, he plans to give a public presentation of the work in Berkeley and take part in a moderated Q&A session. Perna said he hopes his Baldwin-centered project will inspire listeners to “read his books and “act with a stronger conscience.”  

“It’s a way to musicalize the work of writers and create a new way of honoring them and grieving them and breathing their words into the air,” he said. “This is just one of many experiments … It’s been really inspirational to see so many different people engaging with James Baldwin in his 100th year.”

Handmade quilts for trans people

The seeds of North Berkeley textile artist and oral historian Cordy Joan’s Transmissions Quilt Project were planted in 2020, during pandemic shutdowns, in the form of informal gift deliveries to Joan’s loved ones. 

Thanks to the city’s $4,000 grant, support from West Berkeley’s Kala Institute and other donations, Joan’s project has grown into a two-year-long, cross-disciplinary effort involving interviews, audio editors and many quilters and artists working across different media. The concept, however, has stayed the same: give quilts to trans people to remind them that they belong.

“Quilts can be all sorts of things but at their simplest they are… something to keep us warm… something to keep us safe when we sleep…something that represents freedom or a yearning for it,” Joan has written. 

Joan has selected 16 trans recipients who were nominated by community members and will each receive a handmade quilt.

The recipients will each select a friend to interview them, three trans artists to make art inspired by the interview, and finally a quilter to design a quilt based off of the interview-inspired art pieces.

Joan has set an ambitious goal of interviewing 20 trans people, who will each receive a handmade quilt. The recipients will each select a friend to interview them, three trans artists to make art inspired by the interview, and finally a quilter to design a quilt based off of the three interview-inspired art pieces.

Joan said all 16 interviews were done, 24 art pieces have been completed, with more on the way. Six quilts — made by a team of trans artists scattered across the U.S. and Canada — were in progress. Joan recently finished their first quilt for this project and plans later this week to deliver it to its recipient.

Joan plans to exhibit their project, including several quilts, art works and audio interviews (which will be preserved in an oral-history archive), at the Berkeley Public Library’s Central location in June. There may also be several in-person “quilting bee” events — in which quilters gather in a circle to place the final stitches, though specific details were not yet available. 

Joan is continuing to fundraise for the project, as they would like to compensate all participating artists for their time. They estimated that each quilt costs about $2,000 to produce, including labor costs. 

“So often trans stories and projects, especially from the outside, kind of are about spinning a [terrifying] trans narrative —  there’s certain notes that are pretty frequently struck,” Joan said. “The hope of the interview is that it’s just what a friend talks about with their best friend, what makes them laugh.”

Joan said they were drawn to quilting as an art form because it’s been used to mark major life transitions across different cultures. Quilts, they added, have the special ability to help people feel connected to those who came before them. 

“There’s [a] long line that extends both backwards in time and horizontally through space that connects us to a lineage of queer people taking care of each other and textile projects that are trying to do that,” Joan said.