Episode: 103 Skywatchers Ensemble Transcript

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A transcript, lightly edited for clarity and length, follows.

VOC ABD Prods & Skywatchers Ensemble Podcast EP 103 Mix 1

[00:00:00] George Koster: Welcome to Voices of the Community, which explores critical issues facing Northern California communities. We introduce you to the voices of community thought leaders and change makers who are working on solutions that face our fellow individual community members, neighborhoods, cities, and our region.

[00:00:28] George Koster: This is George Koster, your host.

[00:00:33] George Koster: This episode is part of our series Exploring COVID nineteens impact on nonprofits and small businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area back in April of 2020 when we decided to create this ongoing series on COVID nineteens impact, first on nonprofits and then on small businesses in the San Francisco Bay area.

[00:00:52] George Koster: We like you had no idea how long the pandemic would go on and what the health and economic impact would be in our community. As we enter our second year of the global COVID-19 pandemic with record numbers of both cases and deaths, our schools, businesses and governments are still struggling to deal with the health, economic, mental, and societal impacts of the latest omicron variant.

[00:01:17] George Koster: This all adds to the ongoing uncertainty of our ever-changing indoor and outdoor vaccinated and unvaccinated protocols and the politics of the pandemic that will drive how we all come back together as a unified or fractured community. We will continue to shine a spotlight on the nonprofits in small businesses that make up the fabric of our community, along with the founders and staff who are struggling to deal with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their operations, services, and sustainability, until we can all get to the other side of the pandemic.

[00:01:51] George Koster: Along the way, we will also share with you all the amazing solutions that our nonprofits, small businesses, foundations, and government leaders are working on to help us all get to the other side of the pandemic and come together to rebuild our communities with more economic, social, and environmental equality.

[00:02:08] Anne Bluethenthal: At this point, what I feel like is that we've really made a mark as an arts ensemble by demonstrating and living the fact that the creativity that goes into this sort of art making, particularly community engaged arts practice, is essential to social change. It's not just part of it, it's essential, and we are part of the movement that is the tenderloin, and that means a great deal to me.

[00:02:36] Anne Bluethenthal: I think people see us as we are at the table and we are creating new tables, and that's meant a lot.

[00:02:42] George Koster: This episode features the voices of the founder of A BD Productions and the Sky Watchers program and Denal, along with the members of the Sky Watcher Ensemble, Sivan Allen and Joel Gates. I'm joined remotely by Ann Sivan and Joelle to share about the Sky Watchers ensembles work to create art within the Tenderloin community in San Francisco.

[00:03:03] George Koster: Welcome to Voices of the Community, Joelle Siobhan, and Anne.

[00:03:07] Anne Bluethenthal: Thank you. Nice to be here. Thank you.

[00:03:09] Anne Bluethenthal: Nice to be here.

[00:03:10] George Koster: So let's start by sharing with the audience a little bit of each of your background. And I'm gonna start with you, Anne.

[00:03:16] Anne Bluethenthal: Thank you so much, George. Well, as you said, my name's Anne Bluethenthal. I am the founder of Sky Watchers.

[00:03:23] Anne Bluethenthal: My background is really in dance and choreography, and I started an arts nonprofit that is now moving towards its 40th year. And it began as a dance company for 30 of those years. And I became, after a few decades, interested in making work that wasn't just about the things that enraged me, but working directly with folks whose lives were most directly affected by those issues.

[00:03:46] Anne Bluethenthal: That enraged me and that interest landed me here in the Tenderloin, where together we discovered that relationship and dialogue was a great foundation for art and social change, and hence the Sky Watchers program of which I am deeply blessed to be part for the last 11 plus years.

[00:04:03] George Koster: Thank you and Sivan, please share with the audience a little bit of your background.

[00:04:07] Shavonne Allen: Hi, I'm Shavonne Allen, paying homage to my ancestors. My father was born in Sharecropping, Arkansas during, I guess apartheid Jim Crow, and they came out to San Francisco during World War ii where he was a conscientious objector and he moved to the Fillmore eventually where my father met and married my mother, and I was born in the Fillmore at Mount Zion Hospital.

[00:04:34] Shavonne Allen: I was a love child, so that was one of the first times, I guess, as. Before my memory, I was displaced. I was one of the families displaced during the urban renewal, and I grew up in the Bernal Heights and mission districts of San Francisco where I went to Catholic school and I debuted at some talent shows there dancing and mostly dancing.

[00:04:55] Shavonne Allen: And I graduated from Lowell High School. I went to put myself through first person in my family to graduate from college at Cal State Hayward. I worked, went on to work in the San Francisco School District as a substitute teacher and a paraprofessional in special education, and I also went through a very tragic incident where I met and married my son's father.

[00:05:21] Shavonne Allen: I was part of a interracial relationship. He was Chinese American and I'm African American. It was a tumultuous relationship, but I had my son in 2000 where I suffered from some nerve damage and I was partially paralyzed. I was prescribed Vicodin, and that was the beginning of a long battle of addiction.

[00:05:40] Shavonne Allen: I am in recovery now and very proudly from since 2018, October the 16th, and which is just amazing. I came to return to San Francisco in 2019 for housing in the Tenderloin area. Um, I was housed in a single room occupancy, and that's how I came across Sky Watchers, where I've been for three years now, two years as a ensemble member and one year as an artistic facilitator.

[00:06:09] George Koster: Thank you, shaman. I really appreciate your sharing your story. Hey, Joel. Could you share with the audience a little bit of your background as well?

[00:06:15] Joel Yates : Sure. Afternoon. I'm the fourth of five generations African Americans in San Francisco. Um, I'm proud to say I'm responsible for the fifth generation praise here most of my life, spent time in and out of San Francisco, had exposure and involvement in the arts, visual arts, photography, singing, dancing, a lot in theater.

[00:06:34] Joel Yates : During that time, I've always written, these were practices mostly in a hobby and just for enjoyment, but just through different pro professions. And just over time, like I increased in skills and just adapted to myself, my art. As I've moved forward, I've been a resident of the Tenderloin for about a decade now, and during the first half of my time I dealt with addiction issues and health issues that led to a requirement of major lifestyle changes.

[00:06:59] Joel Yates : Part of the change was changing everything, changing the people I decided to have around me and influence in my life. Moved to a stage where in that chain is required to fill in, where I had removed pieces and that's where I was introduced to Sky Watchers. That happened to be a poster in the elevator in my building.

[00:07:17] Joel Yates : Right at the time. I decided to venture out for what I was looking for and it was actually gonna be in my building the following week or two. And so I walked into a room on Wednesday afternoon. They just had me having a writing exercise, something I was already in practice of doing. So it was a good introduction to the group and something had me, had me feel at ease.

[00:07:35] Joel Yates : And uh, I stayed and got involved in the art, which I didn't know I'd be doing as a profession and as a work I feel called to, as far as building in a community. I never saw the two being put together despite my background in San Francisco, at least for myself. And over time was invited on to be part of the staff and continue to work.

[00:07:53] George Koster: Thank you and staying with you. Joel, would you like to share with the audience some more background on Sky Watchers Ensemble itself? It's work within the Tenderloin. So for example, you guys, it sounds like you incubated through the Tenderloin National Forest. So share with the audience some background of what the Sky Watchers ensemble's doing inside of the Tenderloin.

[00:08:15] Joel Yates : Yeah, so we're actually in the 11th year of Sky Watchers and often tell people without really noticing it, I was on the, I guess on the borders of Sky Watchers, kind of an un unofficial member. It wasn't realized until I documentary, until I. See a figure in the background at this event and this and there that I've been connected with and without really realizing it, our founder actually met a couple of residents of A SRO right next door to the Tims going Forest.

[00:08:40] Joel Yates : And that's actually where Sky Watchers began with a conversation and just people coming together talking and at the time was doing public art, bringing dance to the streets to build connection with people and just have a greater engagement with the community and just bring more life to the art, more purpose to it.

[00:08:57] Joel Yates : The ladies that she actually spoke with a conversation were people I was acquainted with. We actually found out years later and was actually acquainted with my daughter, who's a 1-year-old resident right next door to to the Long Forest. Sky Watchers. Went through a lot of changes from community gatherings or open mics and drum circles to cell groups of branches of different artists throughout the Bay Area.

[00:09:18] Joel Yates : Opening up either like visual arts groups, arts discussion groups, anything according to their medium of art that they chose, and now they just wanna engage with people. I was one, I was in one of these groups, in one of the buildings. But then the Tenderloin, not knowing that these two people were a part of something bigger.

[00:09:34] Joel Yates : I actually had a conversation with them one time about it, telling 'em about this event I was gonna go to. There's actually a circumstance comment that actually be sober at the time and not really doing anything that was harming myself and just will walk by and hear some music and see people I knew in the neighborhood through other realms of association coming together on something different, something I had roots in and something I was being awakened.

[00:09:56] Joel Yates : I just remember I was a safe space and something of remembrance. That was I guess these kind of a mid transition for Sky Watchers. And during my time away from these groups, sky Watchers was actually molding into, I guess you say, into a core group or a continuous kind of core unit that were, uh, being drawn into each other.

[00:10:13] Joel Yates : And they started gathering these conversations and these stories and started creating a production for a yearly festival, which is still goes on to this day our May festival. And again, one of these festivals actually, uh, cured in my building. And I didn't even realize who they were, who it was. I was just coming into the festival and the food and the breaking bread patterned after the title of the piece, which is at the table.

[00:10:35] Joel Yates : And that's why I knew the groups to be in the gathering. Safe spaces, people breaking bread, people sharing their lives, people sharing their stories. And when I guess you say stepped in for the last day or the last time I stepped away, I started actually hearing the conversations and getting a chance to look at these people and I guess you say being reintroduced to the issues that I've been involved with and lived amongst and experienced and seeing constantly within this neighborhood and just seeing how pushing the art forward and just how forward if I continue up this tree, I can actually be part of the change that I want to increase my utility with.

[00:11:08] George Koster: Thank you. And staying with just the kind of form, if you will, of Sky Watchers Ensemble, it's a combination of community members, tenderloin, community members, as well as professional artists that are working together to mount the productions.

[00:11:22] Joel Yates : Yes. Like I said, I see it just like you said, I always like to say it's, it's a group of, a group of artists.

[00:11:28] Joel Yates : Artists are made and then professions or careers are built. And the thing is, we have members in and out who actually have seasons and lives of the Tenderloin and moved out to Tenderloin and coming back to the Tenderloin. But yeah, so it everyone has different levels of exposure. We have dancers, we have producers, we have seniors, we have writers, we have puppet masters, we have voice masters, we have mixologists.

[00:11:52] Joel Yates : Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:11:53] Anne Bluethenthal: And we have people who have an artful way of living and that's what they bring.

[00:11:58] George Koster: And going to you, Anne, could you share with the audience a little bit about the mission of Sky Watchers and the four-part value based mythology that you all have created?

[00:12:07] Anne Bluethenthal: It's a mythology and a methodology.

[00:12:09] Anne Bluethenthal: Absolutely. I, that was so beautiful, Joelle. Thank you. And I can't help but sort of go back to Joelle's introduction to his background and kind of enjoying the memory of that first day. 'cause it was so memorable when we went around, what was then a, a pretty large circle at that point. And everyone read what they had done a free write on, and he had a two liner, I think, and everybody just sort of dropped their jaws and was like, who is this new person who's bringing some kind of light of brilliance to the circle?

[00:12:40] Anne Bluethenthal: So I just had to give him that prop because it was so, it was such a beautiful moment and again, overlapping with how Joelle described this so beautifully, the evolution of Sky Watchers in the beginning really it was, I was leaving what I thought was the art world. It was certainly living the art world I had been part of in the sort of high production dance.

[00:13:01] Anne Bluethenthal: World to see what it would be like to make work that was more of buy and for the people rather than just about

[00:13:10] Joel Yates : the stuff.

[00:13:11] Anne Bluethenthal: So it was just me having conversations and quite anonymously trying to see how I could transform choreography, my years of choreography into some other kind of art form. And what emerged just emerged, I had basic principle was listen.

[00:13:30] Anne Bluethenthal: Weight, build relationships of trust. Stay curious, stay humble and see what happens. And what happened was I began to care more about the relationships as the art form than I did about producing any kind of art that I had previously known as art. And so conversation became art, gesture fell out of conversation.

[00:13:51] Anne Bluethenthal: Poetry fell out of conversation. We, we keep bringing it back to the issues that were most burning for people. Because if you sit in conversation with people long enough. The themes start to emerge. People are generally ruminating around the same ideas or the same frustrations, or the same harms or traumas or joys or celebrations.

[00:14:12] Anne Bluethenthal: And so work would just sort of naturally coalesce around ideas and then we would develop them. So what what happened was after a couple of years, after three years, I think, when I was at that point teaching in an academic setting and some students were interested in working with me in what was then Sky Watchers.

[00:14:33] Anne Bluethenthal: And I said, sure. Just come along. And they were like, well, you need to teach us. Your methodology. And I said, I don't have a methodology. And they were like, oh, yes you do. And I was like, oh, no, I, I really just sit and listen and eat pizza, bring pizza. And they helped me to name what was going on. So that's all a preamble to over the years, I then kept trying to articulate this thing that, for me felt like just a natural process of building relationships across many axes of difference.

[00:15:09] Anne Bluethenthal: And the first tenet was relational. So we call it relational, durational, conversational and structural. So the first one I've talked about, we believe that relationship is the first site of social change. And that is, that is our art also, the relationships are the art, and they're also real and they happen over time.

[00:15:27] Anne Bluethenthal: So durational, we, we don't just show up to do a piece of work and leave. We show up every week, all around the year. And that's how the trust builds. And conversational is like we've said, that, that the work, again, the art is the conversation and the art emerges from the conversation. So that's, that's the, the feeding ground.

[00:15:46] Anne Bluethenthal: It's, it's also the circle we create that. Is built on love and care for each other. What happens then? So that was relational, durational and conversational. What started to happen is that individual stories emerged and they really begged for context because no story sits in isolation. Even though a lot of people feel isolated or feel that their story is unique or feel individually harmed, those stories are connected to the structures of our society.

[00:16:14] Anne Bluethenthal: So it felt very important that we started to connect individual stories to the larger picture, the larger historical, cultural, political context, and further to then take what already emerges from those stories and to place it in the civic discourse. So that it sits in solidarity with people who are organizing or making change, so that that work can both open the hearts of people in a different way and also affect, help affect change.

[00:16:43] Anne Bluethenthal: So that's the whole methodology of relational, ational, conversational and structural, all situated on the ground of care.

[00:16:55] George Koster: Thank you, Anne. That was, that was good. A nice overview and and structure. So Sivan, turning to you, could you share with the audience from your perspective what you feel Sky Watchers ensemble's impact's been on the Tenderloin, and of course, yourself as well.

[00:17:09] Shavonne Allen: Yes, what Anne says, you know, it's so skillfully done because when I walked into the group, it had been going on for I think 10 years or eight years at that time. And I had just moved into the Tenderloin and fresh in recovery from a close to 15 year heroin and methamphetamine addiction and many other things, many other traumas that I hadn't yet examined.

[00:17:33] Shavonne Allen: And when I started, I came to the Tenderloin for a, because it was affordable, I had found affordable housing there. It's one of the last. Affordable places in San Francisco and I was working, I got into job working as an in-home care worker, as in the SROs, the single room occupancies. So all of this was very new to me.

[00:17:54] Shavonne Allen: I didn't know anyone I had, even though I was from San Francisco, I didn't have really connections with my family or any of their friends. So I'm in this environment, new and recovery, and there's a lot of open air drug dealing and using going on and, and, uh, I was invited to. One of the workshops, the artists would come to the, the Sky watcher artists would come and do workshops.

[00:18:16] Shavonne Allen: And I thought this was cool. You know, it was fun. We talked and we hung out and I got to know some of my neighbors and I was eventually invited to one of the rehearsals that happens regularly at, on another site. And when I saw the group, I said, this looks pretty cool. It was like a very eclectic group of people.

[00:18:35] Shavonne Allen: He's like, this is San Francisco, this is, it felt very good. And when I sat down and I was instantly welcomed, I get a little bit emotional because it's, we talk about these things when it, it is, I remember the feeling of the loneliness, and I think I remember one of the first things I said. Something about belonging or being a part of that was, and that, that's huge because that's what a lot of people who suffer long-term addiction, they feel very marginalized and isolated.

[00:19:02] Shavonne Allen: And so the impact of, for me was first of all finding a connection and friendship and learning how to write about the valleys. The trials and tribulations in my life as a practice, and then not knowing how these writings would be used eventually be included in parts of these beautiful, uh, performance pieces.

[00:19:25] Shavonne Allen: And in the community. When we're invited, we do a lot of collaborations with other organizations in the community. So when Sky Watchers comes, when we're invited, we're invited oftentimes for the energy and the joy, but the storytelling that we learn how to do that, I've learned how to do the truth telling.

[00:19:43] Shavonne Allen: The first time I ever talked about some of the traumas, like the, that I've experienced with addiction or learning what it feels like to be a black woman in white space, I did this, these things came out during my writings and I learned how to share 'em to, to perform them as my life story and to find out other people in the community, other women were going through the same things.

[00:20:07] Shavonne Allen: I had no idea. And over time I learned how my story and my life experience was connected to a larger picture. My understanding of the fact that I come from a red lined area in San Francisco and the Fillmore that was decimated during the urban renewal in the PAC on community. And the projects that, and the documentaries that I've been a part of have informed me, and as I'm informed, I share it with other people and, um, talk about those things.

[00:20:36] Shavonne Allen: And we grieve together, we celebrate together, and we laugh together. And one of the biggest things that we do is we learn how to, to play and experiment together. That's a big part of our healing. That's been a big part of my healing. And one of the things that was really impactful for me, and because when you come in as a new person, you don't see people, they, you don't see the transformation that's happened or I went through my own transformation, meaning growing and learning how to share and perform in front of people and show up in the community and learning who the people of the Tenderloin are.

[00:21:10] Shavonne Allen: I have lived in this SRO building where there's a lot of people who have worked all their lives, retired on fixed incomes. And a lot of addiction going on. And I didn't really know any of my neighbors. I used to see this one guy walking around with a sketch pad and drawing and doing videos and I was a little bit frightened of him actually, because I wasn't sure what kind of, uh, you know, meant what, what he was, what was going on with them.

[00:21:34] Shavonne Allen: But I invited him. I knew his creative energy would be welcomed in our sky watcher space. And over time I found out that he was actually li, he lived really right directly across from my room. And I'd lived there for three years and we never knew that. And he started coming to Sky Watchers and it was amazing.

[00:21:52] Shavonne Allen: He was battling a very serious addiction, but he would show up every Wednesday. He would be there every single Wednesday. And he had so many talents that to see someone, their brilliance, see someone come to life again and have their creativity revealed. 'cause people lose themselves. He does puppets, he does videos.

[00:22:13] Shavonne Allen: He's had an art show and that's connected him with his family and for me to witness that. He's got these gifts from Sky Watchers and his family reached out to me and invited me to Thanksgiving, and he's white Petaluma, you know, grew up in a very different environment and that's what Sky Watchers does.

[00:22:31] Shavonne Allen: It connects people who would probably pass each other through life and allows a space where we can get to know and see the individual, the human being, their spirit.

[00:22:41] George Koster: Thank you for sharing that. Joelle. Would you like to share with the audience a little bit of your take on the impact of Sky Watchers and the community and your.

[00:22:50] Joel Yates : Sky Watchers really encouraged me to really dig into my writing. You always find it easy to put the pin to the page and just my hand go. It really started just looking at, uh, my voice and my attention. And one, one of the people I met here, she actually was raised in same neighborhood. I was in San Francisco about two, two to three generations before me, and she constantly goes through a season when she tells me, you need to go ahead and write a book.

[00:23:14] Joel Yates : And she's told me enough times that I can't let it go. And so it nags me at times and I'm like, oh my God. I guess really believing it. She kind of just really believe the possibility. It's like the only thing that makes it not be here is me finishing the last page. Like Shavan said, it's really witnessing and transformation in people's lives.

[00:23:31] Joel Yates : Not just witnessing, but just, I was actually when, as soon as it started, I was thinking about one particular person when I first started, and I used to refer her to her as a lady with the dog because she was, she was always asleep. I didn't know if it was narcotic related or life situation, but it was randomly one time, I say maybe after a year or two, she sent me a Facebook friend request and I noticed that she had, there was like maybe two other Sky Watchers that were friends with hers.

[00:23:58] Joel Yates : I don't think they're still part of the group. I think one person was people I first met and she didn't come around, but she went from the lady with the dog to the lady. I don't join none of the shows. I just, yeah, I don't, I, I don't, I don't do the shows. She just hang around and I think the last time I heard that five months passed and she's in the practices and she's joining the first festival after maybe like four or five years and come to find out that she's a very knowledgeable and intelligent lady with a big heart.

[00:24:27] Joel Yates : And I think that go, that goes to the duration, it would go months and seasons wanna see her. Or if I did, it was like just standing on the sideline. Against the wall. Wall, you know, a chair pulled to the side and quiet to now only, only because of your question that I remember. That's who she was and what was going on before.

[00:24:44] Joel Yates : Because it's almost like seeing a totally new person. Everyone in the world deals with mental health. I one level another or one season or another. And on one person, one of her big battles and the hardest time, she, she always knows where there's someone. There's going to be on a Wednesday at two o'clock, and the question is not what day, what time is it?

[00:25:03] Joel Yates : Because that connection that's been made, I see, I won't go into detail, but I see just in choosing to claim their frailty and stand forward into, within the performance, taken the knee and claiming to herself that she'll overcome. And that's a lot of the stories that you hear about this neighborhood and about the move that we make with this art.

[00:25:22] George Koster: Thank you. And Anne, turning to you, you helped create the organization over the decade plus that you've been working on it. What do you feel has been some of the impacts that Sky Watchers, as the whole ensembles had on the Tenderloin and, and actually the greater San Francisco community?

[00:25:37] Anne Bluethenthal: You know, I think it's impossible to talk about impact of one's work because who am I to say about impact on other people?

[00:25:45] Anne Bluethenthal: I think that Joelle and Sivan have, have been amply eloquent about it, and I feel mostly the impact on me and in ways that I haven't really articulated before. So I dunno if I should do it on a radio interview word, but, uh, let's just say I really did not know when I anonymously sat myself down in the Senator Hotel that I would be here 12 years later.

[00:26:08] Anne Bluethenthal: I fell in love. I lost my heart. I found my calling. I found meaning beyond my wildest dreams. And more love in the, what is it, 40 square blocks, whatever, than in any other neighborhood I've lived in in my life. So I don't know. The grantors are always saying, tell us what kind of social change your art has made.

[00:26:26] Anne Bluethenthal: And I won't answer it because it's not for me to answer, but I will let other people speak to it at, I will say that one of the things on a less emotional level that feels important is that we are making art. I mean, these are like all the stuff we've said is true and is really the most important thing.

[00:26:42] Anne Bluethenthal: And there is a footprint along the way. And the footprints are also these works of art and they're all kinds of different, they're from wheat pasted posters to bus. Kiosk, full size, life-size portraits to the annual productions, to three documentary film from whatever mechanism we configure to create the art.

[00:27:02] Anne Bluethenthal: There's a lot of art. And I think one of the impacts that I felt was important was that in the beginning when I would sit in on lots of organizational meetings or committee meetings or you know, coalition meeting to learn more about the TL and what was going on, and to try to make the work relevant and to also, because it was part of my creative research to just learn.

[00:27:24] Anne Bluethenthal: I think people saw a middle aged white lady, like, what? She's an artist. What the heck is she doing here? But she didn't go away and I think they saw the art we were doing as. Cute or something, or decorative for maybe a number of years, maybe a lot of years actually. But at this point, what I feel like is that we've really made a mark as an arts ensemble by demonstrating and living the fact that the creativity that goes into this sort of art making, particularly community engaged arts practice, is essential to social change.

[00:28:00] Anne Bluethenthal: It's not just part of it, it's essential. And we are part of the movement that is the tenderloin. And that means a great deal to me. I think people see us as we are at the table and we are creating new tables, and that's meant a lot.

[00:28:15] George Koster: Thank you. And I think what I'm gonna do is ask each of you to just share examples of, uh, projects that the Sky Watchers ensembles working on.

[00:28:23] George Koster: And so I'm gonna start with you, Joelle. Can you share a little bit about the ongoing workshops?

[00:28:28] Joel Yates : So our Wednesday meetings, like I said, that's a constant, it's been a constant for many years beyond me and hopefully continuously so. Going forward. We refer to it as a circle, and that's how we come and that's how we sit down.

[00:28:40] Joel Yates : It's a safe space of confidentiality and agreement. You know, the agreement just allows the love to continue and allow, it's a space for healing. Um, space for learning, space for conversation, space, for laugh, for space, for fun. Like Shalon said, it's our play time. You know, from that play time, we learn, we, we learn about new subjects.

[00:29:00] Joel Yates : We may learn about new connections as far as the subjects and connection to ourselves, like Anne mentioned, the greater scheme of things and how it's all connected. It's in a circle. So people are directors, some people are writers, some people are speakers, some people like to play. And then, so there may be a word and somebody wants to play with that word, and then that plague gets continued and remixed for five or six weeks.

[00:29:22] Joel Yates : And at the time that song needed a recording or, or written down that word and months down the road, that word becomes a whole show piece. And then two seconds from that piece that's created from that word becomes something that we laugh about for years. But it holds the story of the chain and how that came about.

[00:29:38] Joel Yates : And that them two words, evolution. They hold a sweet memory for a, a member that's no longer with us, uh, people that moved away from the group. I said, it's the conversation. You always remember pieces and the conversation never changes. We build understanding, we build the knowledge, and we build a heart in those circles.

[00:29:55] George Koster: Thank you. I love the metaphor of the circle. It's shavan. Turning to you. Could you share with the audience a little bit about the Memorials project?

[00:30:02] Shavonne Allen: The yearly memorial project remembers the lives who are perished on the streets of San Francisco. And it's a project where there are many, I guess, many moving parts.

[00:30:13] Shavonne Allen: We have many people involved in from the community who actually, we have these banners and each person's name, there's the letters are cut out and are placed on this banner and it's artfully done and skillfully done and carefully done. And we actually invite members from multifaith organizations and churches.

[00:30:34] Shavonne Allen: But so it's, we have, it's a multifaith event and by particular experience of it is we have these, these banners and we do a procession through the neighborhood. And it's very emotional because people who are actually sitting on the streets can see that we are recognizing, acknowledging the deaths that have occurred.

[00:30:55] Shavonne Allen: And I believe last year there was close to 700 lives. Who? Or lost on the streets. That's not including the lives that were lost in the SROs, just specifically.

[00:31:05] Anne Bluethenthal: I, I just have to correct a little bit, but I think for the record, it's important to say that there has been, for many decades an annual vigil for all the people whose lives were lost on the streets of San Francisco.

[00:31:16] Anne Bluethenthal: And that's been, that was established by a coalition of people, including the Interfaith Council and a number of other tenderloin or organizational representatives. And when we, you know, it's like five or six years ago, some of us from Sky Watchers went to one of those vigils and were very moved and felt like we needed a visual representation.

[00:31:37] Anne Bluethenthal: We need to make that more visible, and that's something that we, as artists can do. And we came up with this idea that Siobhan is telling you about, which is the banner, so that we could have a banner. Hand sewn and hand pasted by each individual's name carried by another individual and lined the steps of City Hall with those banners to represent the lives lost from what we consider to be crime against humanity, which is this level of poverty.

[00:32:04] Anne Bluethenthal: And it does include people from SROs actually who passed away in the SROs. And that number has tragically doubled in the five years that we've been doing that, that annual event. So I just wanna make sure that no one was gonna feel slighted. We didn't start the event. Okay. But it was, it's something we, we connect, we were fortunate to connect to.

[00:32:24] Shavonne Allen: No, I appreciate. Every time I sit on a panel and I listen to Joelle and other members, I learned so much more about, 'cause we do so many different things. I was just reflecting on the fact that many of the things that I'm involved in today started with the relationships that I built in Sky Watchers. One thing that we do, we go, we sit on a lot of community meetings and we get information and that information is brought back to our circle, as Joelle was saying, about different jobs, opportunities to do outreach.

[00:32:57] Shavonne Allen: And one of the workshops I, I'm involved in now is with Larkin Street. I do a weekly workshop there and one of the relationship, one of the members, we actually, I organized. An event, a street fair that Sky Watchers is a part of that they perform in. And everything is about coming from the community and it celebrates, it's put together and organized by the Tenderloin residents.

[00:33:23] Shavonne Allen: You know, we all come from the Tenderloin area and we come up with solutions to things that we wanna address that, uh, pressing For example, we worked on a very successful campaign during the pandemic. We had no, a lot of the buses were stopped. We worked on, we collaborated with other organizations to get the buses running back to our community.

[00:33:44] Shavonne Allen: And we worked on a lot of different campaigns. Can't stop

[00:33:49] Anne Bluethenthal: the sweep.

[00:33:50] Shavonne Allen: Stop the sweeps. Yes.

[00:33:52] Joel Yates : 30 right now was a campaign to get the rents for fixed income people in these SROs to drop from 45 and 65% of their income to 30%. Across the board,

[00:34:07] George Koster: you're listening to Voices of the Community, which explores critical issues facing Northern California communities. Voices of the Community is supported by a grant from the James Irvine Foundation, dedicated to a California where all low income workers have the power to advance economically more@irvine.org.

[00:34:26] George Koster: This is George Koa, your host, and if you're just joining us, this is our one hour special show featuring the voices of the founder of A BD Productions and the Sky Watchers program and Blumenthal, along with members of the Sky Watcher Ensemble, Shavan Allen and Joel Gates. Let's get back to our conversation about their community engagement to create performing arts and bring voice to community members in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco.

[00:34:53] George Koster: Yeah. Which the 30% is based on for audience members who've heard me say this a little bit about housing in the past, the 30% is based on HUD's equation of what one should spend on housing is 30% of their annual income. And, and there's other projects, the Opulence portrait series. I don't know Joel, if you'd like to talk about that and, and at the table.

[00:35:12] George Koster: And then of course screenings of films.

[00:35:14] Joel Yates : Yeah. I say opposite portraits. The whole thing is a series that's grown. I was first introduced to it just as, as being a resident of the Tenderloin and seeing neighbors of mine faces up and seeing different props and my former Jones Sky Watchers and started to understand it.

[00:35:31] Joel Yates : It was a portrayal, portrayal, a vision project. It asked members to visualize the most opulent self. I actually was part of the project, and I some, I think one, because opulent I, I went and looked up opulence just to know what the actual dictionary says about it. And I think it was a, maybe up until like the last week before it started that I just really took it in depth.

[00:35:58] Joel Yates : And I was like, well, if I want to vision myself forward, I asked myself what I wanted at the time. And at that time I was dealing with a chronic illness and what I wanted was life. And I was like, well, what does that life require? And I wanted to be accepting life and be an opulent. Part of personal greatness comes accepting oneself and just maximizing yourself.

[00:36:19] Joel Yates : And one of the things I appreciated about myself was riding and where I was at in dealing with grief and witnessing things in the community, I hope in the future, incorporated all those things, and I chose. Eternal allergist. And so they went from, we pasting to, we went to portraits and through a grant we was able to collaborate and have our pictures posted on the bus stops up and down Market Street.

[00:36:41] Joel Yates : Each individual in a project had four posters posted, and as far as the neighborhood for months, during and after, anytime I saw someone, even someone I may have never spoke to in the whole 10 years I've been in the neighborhood, there's this type of celebration. You know, it wasn't just our vision, but it accentuated people's personal vision because if fact, they could see me up there, they could see themselves up there, many people would question about Sky Watchers, if not to participate, just to appreciate that Sky Watchers existed and that avenue was there.

[00:37:12] Joel Yates : From those characters created is where we grew our last show towards opulence and NCE is always about it growing and increasing and we went from an outdoor performance to doing something that never been done. Performing a moving show in the library, using multiple floors and multiple sounds and multiple props and multiple artists and even our assistant supervisor was a part of the show and it was a, uh, multi partnering of different organizations and artists and techs and crew.

[00:37:40] Joel Yates : It was something I was loved by many people, and I say the Oulu project is still growing. Our next show will be towards opulence to opera, which we're currently researching right now.

[00:37:50] George Koster: Thank you.

[00:37:51] Anne Bluethenthal: Can I just, can I just say a little something about that, if you mind if I interject? Sure. I was just wanted to say something that has meant a lot to me along the lines of impact, I guess, is when the Opulence project, which as Joel says started many years ago and taking on increasingly different forms or growing into different forms, was about what, how do we all envision ourselves our most grand, most delighted, most grandiose if we want, but on our terms, grandiose not in, not in terms of the archaic meaning of the word.

[00:38:22] Anne Bluethenthal: And I think one of the, one of my favorite impact statements was from Del Seymour, who when, when he looked at our, he said hundreds of filmmakers have come in and out of the Tenderloin and they leave with images of crack pipes and needles and people on the streets of which. There are plenty of images to be got, but he said the thing they never leave with is this.

[00:38:48] Anne Bluethenthal: What our work has represented, which is the beauty, the joy, the brilliance, the wisdom, the power, the eloquence, the talent, the sense of possibility. And at its core, opulence is about, if you can imagine it, you've already begun to live into it, and that is one of the greatest acts of resistance we offer.

[00:39:09] George Koster: Thank you. And then go. Go ahead, shaman. Do you wanna share about a project?

[00:39:13] Shavonne Allen: Well, I just wanted to add one more thing to include, I'll say the Opulence project for, you know, the way I experienced it, it was a journey when you're homeless or when you've experienced addiction and lost yourself, you wear, even when you come out of it, you wear this jacket the way you see yourself.

[00:39:31] Shavonne Allen: And as I've been working with Sky Watchers and doing things in the community, there was a transformation that was happening. And being part of this opulence project helped me to name it. So that's where the goddess of empathy comes from. Where she walks, she brings sunshine and healing, and I've watched other people with their, their journey and self discovery and embody their their gods and be their gods.

[00:39:57] Shavonne Allen: It's not just like coming up with a superhero from a comic book. It's really magnifying, illuminating the greatness that we already have within us. And it's just such a. Project to be a part of. And when people saw our images, the Sky Watchers images, these beautiful representations of our gods, and then they saw us walking in the community, people, they just lit up seeing the real as I believe the real heroes.

[00:40:23] Shavonne Allen: You know, and I, I have so much love for the Tenderloin be People were like, we're talking about the same place. And when I tell them, because I walk through with a different perspective, I meet different people, I see it differently and I feel I just have a love for all the talent and the personalities and the people who live and work their passion.

[00:40:44] Shavonne Allen: Right. I get to see that.

[00:40:46] George Koster: Thank you. And Anne, would you like to share about the 10th anniversary documentary?

[00:40:50] Anne Bluethenthal: Yeah, may or, or if you want me to do a, I can, because I know there was a long list. I can, I can bang off a few of those.

[00:40:58] George Koster: Sure. Well there's, yep. So there's at the table and the documentary, so if you wanna hit both those, that would be great.

[00:41:04] Anne Bluethenthal: Yeah, I think, uh, my name is next. Well, there's Inside Hotel Iroquois and at the table and the, and yeah, and the documentary. I can talk about what one of the, well, at the table was a large, like two or three year project that was sort of our hearkening back to something that I talked about earlier, which is trying to position our work in the civic discourse.

[00:41:26] Anne Bluethenthal: It was a, that was the main thrust of those three years. Like how do we get a seat at the table as, as an art making and social justice group and that, so at the table had all kinds of manifestations from the feast that Joelle walked into that he referenced in his background that didn't realize it was Sky Watchers, but that was a big 200 person community feast to our formal performances.

[00:41:53] Anne Bluethenthal: To a music video by Larkin Street Youth. But one of the things that happened in conjunction with at the table was inside Hotel Iroquois, which is now a documentary, but was originally a performance work that was some kind of combination of a, like a Home makeover idea crossed with the sort of tours of some of the great mansions of the city where people go in get the Mansion tours, to bringing that to the Tenderloin and into an SRO into supportive housing.

[00:42:23] Anne Bluethenthal: Became a walking meditation where we brought small group of no more than 10 people at a time. Into one of the supportive housing buildings after working for the better part of a year with the residents of that hotel to basically invite people into their home to tell their stories or to share their art.

[00:42:44] Anne Bluethenthal: But the, the idea was that there was a lot of money coming down the pike, still coming down the, to create more permanent supportive housing. But that the building of it, the supervising of it, the improving or not improving of it, the, the services that are provided, none of that is done with the input of, of the consumers of that housing, the residents of that housing, the tenants of that housing.

[00:43:08] Anne Bluethenthal: And so this was to bring those voices out to say, this is what it's like to live here. And this is who we are. We're human beings and we have shoe collections and poetry collections and dances and, you know, all that. One of the riskiest things that we did and also but has had a lasting effect. It still has a, a shelf life of, as a documentary now.

[00:43:28] George Koster: So where can folks see the documentary and inside hotel or acquire? Where would I go?

[00:43:33] Anne Bluethenthal: You could contact us at info@avdproductions.org and we can send a link. We have a trailer and we have the full length. We are trying to do it as screening, so whenever possible, if we can have that work, create the largest impact possible, we'd love to do that.

[00:43:49] Anne Bluethenthal: But it is accessible if someone reaches out.

[00:43:52] George Koster: Great, and we'll, we'll include the trailer on the episode, web landing page as well, along with the trailer for the document for your 10th anniversary. So tell us about the 10th anniversary documentary.

[00:44:03] Anne Bluethenthal: The 10th anniversary documentary is exactly just that.

[00:44:05] Anne Bluethenthal: It's like, it highlights 10 years of Sky Watchers and we're super proud of it. It kind of moves us, kind of like you. We just have been plugging along doing our thing all these years. But when we look at it, it gives us a sense of all of the different generations of Sky Watchers, the different manifestations, the hundreds and hundreds of people who have walked through, been part of witnessed, helped create, helped support all of that.

[00:44:32] Anne Bluethenthal: And so yeah, we're really excited about that, about spreading the audience. For that documentary and the other, and we have another documentary that was called Reimagining the City as our Own Towards an Architecture of Inclusion, which is a documentary about unpleasant or hostile design where we did do use art to sort of mitigate a form of design and policing through architecture of publiZ Space.

[00:44:58] Anne Bluethenthal: To make it hostile to poor people or unhoused people. So we're excited about that one too. We can, we can give you a link to that trailer as well.

[00:45:06] George Koster: And it sounds like, and that if folks wanted to host a screening at their house or a meetup room, they could work with Sky Watchers and Sambo a team to actually put that together.

[00:45:17] Anne Bluethenthal: A hundred percent.

[00:45:18] George Koster: Right? Yeah. And, and would the screening could conceivably include yourself or Siobhan or Joelle or someone else to talk and provide context about the documentaries as well?

[00:45:28] Anne Bluethenthal: Yes. I think that sounds great. That would be

[00:45:30] Shavonne Allen: really,

[00:45:31] Joel Yates : that's what we do.

[00:45:32] George Koster: That's great. Alright, so I'm gonna move to our next topic, which is, so for folks who've been listening to the series, just about how COVID-19 has impacted nonprofit organizations such as Sky Watchers, how has COVID-19 impacted Sky Watchers from your perspective?

[00:45:47] George Koster: Joelle,

[00:45:48] Joel Yates : I was, I was wondering how it was gonna go about it. It started with, I say a new member who I built a connection with. First was scared to gimme a hug before I really realized what was going on in the country. That was the first sign of what it was doing. It shut down facilities, access to search and financial resources were cut off.

[00:46:07] Joel Yates : I said places where basically the arts was really just brought to a standstill. It became, I guess, semi illegal for us to even to meet when we actually were approached at different times. So, well, he. We couldn't, we couldn't convene 'cause of regulations. COVID actually placed a risk for me. My health at the time was dealing with serious illness, and so I actually was isolated the same day.

[00:46:29] Joel Yates : They started sending kids home. The connection that Skywalker works to build, that was something we had to work to overcome a number of these buildings. I said, people aren't fixed incomes. People don't have the resource to get wifi. People don't have tablets. A lot of these buildings are old historical buildings, and so it's hard to get a phone signal.

[00:46:47] Joel Yates : So as far as just staying connected, that was, that was a challenge for a lot of people. Through our efforts in partnering with organizations, we was able to bridge the tech divide so that people can actually know that there's still people out there and still get connected and not be trapped in the things that we wanna distract them and just help people move away from being trapped in their own head inside of four walls.

[00:47:08] Joel Yates : You know, just listening to a lot of misery that happens to roads that people are not unaware of.

[00:47:14] George Koster: Do you, what do you feel are some of the good things that have come out of the COVID-19 to support Sky Watchers program, but also the folks in the tender line as well?

[00:47:24] Joel Yates : Yes. It's kind of trip when, because you ask that, my mind instantly goes to the tender one because our stories and, and, uh, situations are, are rooted in where we presently are.

[00:47:34] Joel Yates : And so I think, I think just in terms of the neighborhood, COVID just brought attention to everything that was already going on here, far as limited resource, everything that was going on, and then how much more it was needed because you couldn't walk down the sidewalk without bumping shoulders with somebody.

[00:47:52] Joel Yates : It was the deficits because during of lower castes and economic situations. As far as no water, no public facilities. It was a tragedy and a disaster across the world. But there was a gap where, I mean, as human nature, people weren't thinking beyond the cells and beyond their household, but that person that knew they could walk five blocks and go to a mall to use the restroom or use a sink to wash themselves, no longer had that option.

[00:48:18] Joel Yates : Uh, I said fresh water safety from the elements. There's no people that didn't have phones, maybe having trouble calling in prescriptions, people that don't have watches, knowing what time the pharmacy is gonna close, they're not allowed to access in the buildings where they have clocks just to go about what normal normality of life they're trying to hold onto it is brought a, a more serious, serious eye to that in an era evolving drug epidemic that we deal with that's been dealing with in the city and in Tenderloin for generations and generations.

[00:48:47] Joel Yates : COVID helped brings some more attention to that.

[00:48:49] George Koster: Thank you. And Shavan, from your perspective, how did COVID impact you and the Tenderloin community?

[00:48:56] Shavonne Allen: Well, for me, living in an SRO, and I remember when all of the people in my building, we started watching the news and we were aware of like all of the, I guess they had closed down a lot of the, the shelters.

[00:49:10] Shavonne Allen: And so we were seeing a lot of the tents lining the streets. And that's when I sort of recognized that Sky Watchers was really special. There was all these mandates and ordinances we had to. I guess we distance ourselves and that these things were really not possible. But I think there was a shortage of PPEs masks and the Sky watchers.

[00:49:31] Shavonne Allen: What one of the members, Deirdre, she made, you know, we were all concerned because in the building there's people who are elderly, like Joel said, health conditions. And we were all scared. We didn't know what it was. And we knew one thing that we were going to be the last to be. We were ignored. We were not being addressed.

[00:49:51] Shavonne Allen: The rest of the city were being taken care of. But Sky Watchers, Deidre that, you know, we turned it into this artful thing. She made these beautiful masks. And like Joelle also shared that, you know, since we were not able to meet in person, a lot of our members didn't have laptops and I was one of them. I didn't have a, a good, stable laptop.

[00:50:12] Shavonne Allen: And the members got together and got resources and we all made sure we, that we, everyone had a laptop, we had our mask and we also did a public campaign. I remember we did public health posters. We did, and we made all these posters. And I remember it was a group effort. One of the sames was we could stay up late, try not to ruminate on Trump 'cause he is a chump.

[00:50:37] Shavonne Allen: You could stay up late, even eat chocolate cake, but try not to ruminate on Trump.

[00:50:44] Joel Yates : Actually,

[00:50:45] George Koster: no, that was a great wrap.

[00:50:49] Shavonne Allen: Never been called a rapper before, but yeah, I'll take that. But those are the things that we worked on together. You know, we were, like Joelle was saying, it was a scary time. These rooms kept built like coffins and there was a lot of death. People died during that time of overdoses. But I, I believe a lot of my neighbors died of broken hearts.

[00:51:07] Shavonne Allen: And our, a project that I worked on, I was inspired by being part of the documentaries that Anne and Joel talked about. So I started just recording some of my neighbors experiences of what it was like because there was no one else coming in to do it. And a lot of these people have passed away since. But it's definitely a moment in time that we all grieved and shared together.

[00:51:33] George Koster: And do you feel like anything positive has come out of COVID-19 to help shine more of a spotlight, more resources on scout watchers as well as the, the change lane.

[00:51:43] Shavonne Allen: Well, I could say that I did a lot of bike riding with Joel during that time. Got to see a lot of the city. I didn't see, I think during that time a lot of people, the rest of San Francisco saw how all, how very connected we were when people were on the streets suffering and we have such a contagious disease going on.

[00:52:03] Shavonne Allen: I think that everyone saw that, how connected we were,

[00:52:06] Joel Yates : I was gonna say it showed that that work can be done and can be provided if people open up their hand. Either people chose to help or they went and started printing more money. But the thing is, it was possible all along. And so because accountability, 'cause we've seen a little bit, we'll go ahead and go ahead and continue that.

[00:52:24] Anne Bluethenthal: Let's say they open their hand and also if there's enough political will, so there is enough urgency or enough lawsuits coming down that we get it done that our city government was not willing to do until they saw this sort of crisis, until they had the shame of seeing the number of encampments on the street increasing from 90 to 300 overnight.

[00:52:47] Joel Yates : Yeah.

[00:52:47] Anne Bluethenthal: We had the political will to, to get to house most of those people or to create some kind of safer shelter.

[00:52:54] Joel Yates : I was gonna say COVID got our neighbor uc, Hastings, which basically is right within our border. And that's the lawsuit Ann was talking about that started giving people a house.

[00:53:03] Shavonne Allen: I just remembered.

[00:53:04] Shavonne Allen: Uh, thank you for bringing that up. Yeah. A couple of points. Uh, one was that there's been a need for, uh, public restrooms. Because we're human beings. And so we got those started. And also this, the shelter in place, I, all of a sudden we were able to house all of these unhoused people and give them a dignified, well, I, I ended up working as well in the shelter, in place hotel, and I witnessed people being housed and treated with dignity and how their lives transformed.

[00:53:34] Shavonne Allen: So we were able to open up all before we couldn't find any of these places. During the pandemic, I think that let the rest of the city know that it's important to house people and we somehow found the money and we did it in a quick manner.

[00:53:47] George Koster: Thank you. And Anne, how has COVID impacted kind of the overall operations of A, B, D and Sky Watchers?

[00:53:55] Anne Bluethenthal: So, I think that Joelle and Siobhan have covered a lot of how we pivoted, as everybody's likes to say, around COVID. We pivoted a lot of our operations. We, we actually ended up doing way more. Way more work than we were doing before. So everything came to a standstill, but we sped up, and without going into all of the detail about that, we did like the documentary, we, we documented life in the containment zone under quarantine.

[00:54:20] Anne Bluethenthal: We did the public health posters, we distributed masks and laptops and tried to agitate for wifi, et cetera. But what's true is that the, the pandemic, it was, we already had a pandemic in the, in, in the Tenderloin. So what the COVID Pandemic did was expose, I mean, I'm not everybody's saying the same thing, but expose the, the health inequities that were already there.

[00:54:43] Anne Bluethenthal: One of the great things that happened in our life, or ours being the life of Sky Watchers, is that Sam Dennison here at Faithful Fools was in partnership already with folks at UCSF and convened a weekly call with a, with a whole group of physicians, clinicians, researchers. Staff members, professors and medical students at UCSF, along with organizational leaders in the Tenderloin and, and residents of the Tenderloin to talk about how they could mitigate the effects of the, of the COVID pandemic.

[00:55:16] Anne Bluethenthal: I entered that conversation, I don't know, good about six months into it and have remained ever since. And with my entry, there was already a lot of activity being done and people trying to deliver healthcare sort of more to the people. My concern was less about COVID per se, but about access to treatment in general, about stigma, about medical racism and trauma and generally about like the, just the, the people that I knew and loved, or what'd I say?

[00:55:43] Anne Bluethenthal: I felt like I was watching people my age die and I wanted to know what people were gonna do about it. And one of those conversations, somebody suggested that we do a community grand rounds. Which would flip the table from the the traditional grand rounds where a prominent physician gets up and teaches younger physicians or students about a new technique in medicine or about a special case.

[00:56:06] Anne Bluethenthal: And it brings community experts such as Sivan and Joel and other people to the table to tell their stories of medical, all those things, medical racism, trauma, neglect, lack of access. Et cetera and use their stories as a teaching tool. So that has, that's a project that has gotten really a lot of legs.

[00:56:29] Anne Bluethenthal: We've got a couple archives of stories now, and also a lot of amazing people within the medical establishment who are interested in dismantling the, the sort of racist roots of medical institutions who are working with us and archiving their stories also, and turning it into what we have now is for teaching modules and more in the works.

[00:56:53] George Koster: Thank you and staying with you. Ann, for folks who are listening to the show today, how can they support the work of Sky Watchers? We talked about screenings, right? Folks can host screenings, they can make donations. You've got, which of you would like to talk a little bit about the annual, get your annual homeless person memorial vigil coming up as well.

[00:57:11] George Koster: So how can folks support

[00:57:13] Shavonne Allen: you? So how can the community get engaged? You ask, like all small nonprofits, we struggle to raise money, but you can reach out to us, you can find us@adproductions.org and you can donate there. You can reach out to us and find out how to volunteer and our performances and events that we'll be involved in.

[00:57:35] George Koster: Okay, so, and could you please share with the audience one of your favorite stories?

[00:57:40] Anne Bluethenthal: Well, okay, because that the mine's a little unorthodox. It's not really a story, but I wanted to forward the name of Melanie Damour, who was there at the very first Sky Watcher gathering before I had any idea what it was gonna be.

[00:57:53] Anne Bluethenthal: And I said, I don't know what's gonna happen, Mel. She said, well, she's a vocal activist. She is an extraordinary singer. She's one of the founding members of Linda Tiller's Cultural Heritage Choir. She's a choral director. Composer, et cetera. And she said, no worries. My favorite thing to do now is a spontaneous choir, so give me a gathering and we'll turn 'em into a choir.

[00:58:17] Anne Bluethenthal: And that's what she did at our first gathering. And she does now every year and sometimes many times a year. She helped us do our very first processional around the Tenderloin where we walk as Siobhan was talking about, where we walk through the streets of the Tenderloin singing. And yeah, I just needed to sort of give some props to, to her as, as also one of the founding members.

[00:58:38] Anne Bluethenthal: And just to call out the names, because when you, when I was given the question of favorite stories, I just wanted to. Mentioned Janice Detroit, who gave us the name of Sky Watchers 'cause she was the first person I I interviewed. And Warren Chapman, one of the first people I met at the Senator and used to sit and watch TV before.

[00:58:57] Anne Bluethenthal: Before those gatherings turned into actual conversations. Warren Chapman ran, and Mariano, Dino Smith, Alexis Alexander, Jerry Tubas brother Earl have all passed. And who, uh, contributed so much heart and so much soul and so much richness to this work.

[00:59:13] George Koster: Wonderful and Shavan favorite story.

[00:59:16] Shavonne Allen: There's so many.

[00:59:17] Shavonne Allen: The one that comes to mind right now is we have a blind, gay talented artist who creates puppets. And so one was a dog and uh, another one was a woman. And he passed these puppets off to another member who's good at just being funny. And so Dennis and Gigi got together. Gigi Ma is good at making sounds.

[00:59:41] Shavonne Allen: So they turned one puppet into Lady Lulu and then another the dog puppet into McGruff. And it's just the, the chemistry of people who are come from very different backgrounds. You know, you have gay, transgender, straight and different talents and different abilities coming together with that and making this just music and magic.

[01:00:01] George Koster: Wonderful. And Joel, favorite story you'd like to share with the audience?

[01:00:05] Joel Yates : It was actually after the first show, I think 2019, the first time I got on stage with Scout watches. And, uh, I remember as I, like, we're doing three shows series and this lady case manager actually works in my building actually in being in the audience.

[01:00:19] Joel Yates : And I remember songs banging on the door and ringing the bell and I'm stumbling to the front door. And it's her with like 30 copies of like, pictures from the show and talking about how she was in tears to whole show, just hearing her story being told.

[01:00:32] George Koster: Wonderful. I'd like to thank Siobhan, Joel and Anne for sharing their wonderful work and the creation and production of Sky Watchers Ensemble Productions.

[01:00:40] George Koster: We'll make sure that listeners have your contact information, website and social media, along with links to donate to the production of the annual homeless person Memorial Vigil, as well as the ongoing operations of the A BD and Sky Watchers Ensemble and to hopefully reach out and set up screening of the documentaries.

[01:00:59] George Koster: Please stay safe and healthy out there as we all work our way through this latest stage of COVID-19 pandemic and all this variance. Thanks very much for being on the show today.

[01:01:07] Anne Bluethenthal: Thank you so much. Yes, thank you.

[01:01:09] George Koster: That's it for this episode of Voices of the Community. You've been listening to the Voices of the founder of A BD Productions and the Sky Watchers program and Ental, along with members of the Sky Watcher Ensemble, Shavan Allen and Joel Gates to find out more about Sky Watchers Ensemble.

[01:01:27] George Koster: Annual homeless person, Memorial Vigil. Watch the trailer and set up a screening of the 10th anniversary documentary film, and make a donation along with volunteering. Please go to ad productions.org. We hope that you enjoyed the insights, points

of

[01:01:43] George Koster: view and personal stories from the voices of Change makers and their nonprofits and small businesses featured in the series.

[01:01:50] George Koster: To find out more and get engaged with the nonprofits, small businesses, and staff members featured in the series, please go to my website, george koster.com and click on Voices of the Community to find links to the extended versions of these interviews and to listen to the entire series. After listening to these stories, we hope that you will consider making a donation and volunteering to provide a hand up to your fellow community members.

[01:02:16] George Koster: Today's episode was made possible by the Audio Wizard and our associate producer, Eric Estrada. And the graphics magic of Casey Nance from Citron Studios, along with a wonderful crew at the San Francisco Public Press and KSFP. Voices of the Community is supported by a grant from the James Irvine Foundation, dedicated to a California where all low income workers have the power to advance economically more@irvine.org.

[01:02:42] George Koster: Voices of the Community is a member of Intersection for the Arts, which allows us to offer you a tax deduction. For your contributions, please go to george koster.com and click on the donate link to make a donation to help us provide future shows. Just like this one. While you're on our website, you can enjoy our archive to pass shows which feature community voices working on solutions to critical issues facing Northern California communities.

[01:03:08] George Koster: And you can sign up for our newsletter to find out more about future shows as well as shows and events from the organizations that are included in our episodes. Take us along on your next COVID walk by subscribing to Voices of the Community on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

[01:03:28] George Koster: You can follow us on Twitter at George Koster, and we'd love to hear from you with feedback and show ideas. So send us an email toGeorge@georgekoster.com. I'm George Koster and San Francisco, and thank you for listening.

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Voices of the Community is supported by a grant from The James Irvine Foundation, dedicated to a California where all low-income workers have the power to advance economically. More at www.irvine.org

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