Calling Us In, an exploration of radical inclusion and community accountability, is Skywatchers’ current creative endeavor. Through Skywatchers’ values-based, community engaged practice, this 3-year-long project centers the stories and talents of Tenderloin residents with lived experience, to render a series of art works that reveal the collective humanity and intrinsic inter-connection beneath even our most intractable issues. Calling Us In invites us to take a deeper dive into our existing practices of inclusion, repair and transformation.
Calling Us In brings our relational arts process into partnership with organizers, policy makers, public health workers, and community leaders on the front lines of these crises. Together we are challenging myths and fears about substance use disorder and houselessness, exposing the humanity behind the numbers, and elevating humane, evidence-based solutions.
Calling Us In: Safer Inside, was year one of a process-driven series of artistic interventions rooted in the Tenderloin neighborhood and extending across San Francisco. A collaboration between Glide Foundation's Center for Social Justice and lead artist Joel Yates, with the Skywatchers ensemble, we created publicly accessible and multi-disciplinary artworks, drawing attention to the humanity behind our cities’ most intractable crises. Calling Us In unfolded as a constellation of street performances, civic interventions, and neighborhood gatherings that brought first-person experience, embodied storytelling, and artistic rigor into public conversations about housing insecurity, overdose prevention, and harm reduction. All performances were free and open to all.
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