In ten years in the Tenderloin, the Skywatchers Ensemble has articulated a method for collaborative art making that they’ve come to call Relational, Durational, Conversational, and Structural. These words reflect the ensemble’s commitments to center community, interrogate power and privilege, and redefine rigor through the lens of community engagement and social justice.

An annual artistic intervention and processional led by Choral Director Melanie DeMore honoring those who died on the streets in SF each year. Hundreds of people from around the Bay Area gathered to carry handmade banners bearing the names of each of the deceased to the steps of City Hall, making a typically unseen and tragic reality visible.

An ongoing performative photography series that attempts to create a Tenderloin folklore, inviting local residents to dream up the most opulent, lavish, powerful, and regal versions of themselves.

Community experts from the Skywatchers ensemble are working with educators at UCSF to rethink Grand Rounds. We’ll be part of panel discussions in which first-person experiences illuminate medical trauma and racism in healthcare, and together we’ll imagine how we can co-create models of care that better respond to
community needs.