Life Is Living

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Life Is Living Celebrating Life through urban performance, intergenerational health, and environmental action. LIFE is Real. Celebrate your LIFE.

Key Presenting Partners have included:
Youth Speaks Inc. The Living Word Project
The Estria Foundation (Oakland)
Town Park (Oakland)
Riverside Church (NYC)
The Mitchell Center for Performing Arts (Houston)
The Farm (Houston)
Kuumba Lynx (Chicago)
Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago)
Brave New Voices (Chicago and Philadelphia)
Philly Urban Creators

From breakfast conversation to local all-star cypher, this year the LIFE IS LIVING mainstage was roots first and Town fo...
10/13/2026

From breakfast conversation to local all-star cypher, this year the LIFE IS LIVING mainstage was roots first and Town forward.

Grounded in community, family and chosen family, it is, was and always will be ALL LOVE. We have mountains of gratitude for our partners and supporters in both production and delivery. It is our deep honor to have hosted a platform that timestamped the moment... but it was all y’all who put HONEY ON THE BEAT!!

🎧 DJ Black Woman
🎤 YAK
🎶 Januarry
🌹 Phoenyx Rose & DJ Tabu
🔥 Reach Back Retain
🎵 Zo1
💎All Star Cypher

Until next time, be good to yourself and look out for each. We got US!! ✊🏿❤️🙏🏿🔥

Today’s the day! ✊🏾🔥Life Is Living Oakland is back for its 18th year with this year’s theme: A Party For Self Defense - ...
10/10/2026

Today’s the day! ✊🏾🔥

Life Is Living Oakland is back for its 18th year with this year’s theme: A Party For Self Defense - honoring the Discipline and daily practice of protecting, uplifting, and showing up for ourselves and our people.

In partnership with the Bruce Lee Foundation, with support from the Akonadi Foundation, we’re bringing you YAK dancers, CreativeShields Watermelon Bounce House, Town Park Skate, The Crucible, The Village, Wakanda Labs, and more.

Don’t miss the Lil Bobby Hutton Marketplace, BPP Alumni 60th Commemoration, and People’s Kitchen Collective’s Free Breakfast.

And the MainStage is bringing:

DJ Black Woman DJ BlackWoman™️
YAK
Januarry
Phoenyx Rose & DJ Tabu 👑 The First Lady - Phoenyx Rose
Reach Back Retain
Zo1 Zo1
Special guests!!!

We kick things off at 11:00 AM with Free Breakfast Opening and Libation to the Ancestors.

Pull up, tap in, and celebrate community with us. We’ll see you soon!

📸 Bethanie Hines Graphics Elvis James

Sprouts, Nuggets, Littles, Shorties and their caregivers are especially welcome at Life Is Living... Always!!. In fact, ...
10/07/2026

Sprouts, Nuggets, Littles, Shorties and their caregivers are especially welcome at Life Is Living... Always!!. In fact, the entire footprint of the fesitval is centered around two things: The Altar and The Kid Zone. Why is that? It’s because properly celebrating who we are today must involve paying homage to those ones who came before AND prioritizing the newer souls amongst us. Actively listening, sharing and playing. Pouring joyful, engaging, empowering, experiences into the babies is what sustains LIFE and LIFE IS LIVING.

Don’t sleep on The Kids Zone!! Faerily hosted by Faerygoddessmother Emily Butterfly🦋 Emily Butterfly, this year’s kid-friendly activities include:

💫 ArtEsteem Artmobile
💫 CREATIVE SHIELD’S WATERMELON Bounce House
💫Social Justice Book Fair Storytime
💫 The Crucible Arts
💫 Snacks
💫 Bubbles
💫 Games
💫 and so much more!

LIFE IS LIVING
SATURDAY, OCT 10 • 11-4
LIL BOBBY HUTTON Park (aka Defermery Park)

Graphic 🖊️ Elvis James


Creative shields
Tikodatxh6
Emily Butterfly

In all our 18 years, dance has been a throughline of celebration and connection at LIFE IS LIVING festivals. Healthy an...
10/06/2026

In all our 18 years, dance has been a throughline of celebration and connection at LIFE IS LIVING festivals. Healthy and cathartic, on the grass, under the sun, alive with the rhythm of the drummers and blessed with the guidance of master teachers.

Africa In Oakland, comes straight out of the Malonga Casquelourd Center Malonga Arts Collective and is offered as a gift to community. It’s an introduction to movement and connection passed down through generations reaching back to the Motherland.

This year’s line up of master teachers and drummers is not to be missed! 🪘 Let your body experience Kongolese, African Brazilian and West African dance. And if you’re a drummer, you’re welcome to bring your instrument and tap in.

Everybody Move Your Body and get a taste of these traditions. Whether you 2 or 72, all are welcome to dance in Africa In Oakland at LIFE IS LIVING!!

Pin📍 this schedule:
12–12:50 PM — Kongolese Drum Class with Hyacinte Massamba*
1–1:50 PM — Kongolese Dance Class with Muisi-kongo Malonga
2–2:50 PM — African Brazilian Dance with King Theo of SambaFunk!
3–3:50 PM — West African Dances with Diamano Coura West African Dance Company

Hosted by Fua Dia Kongo. Bring your own drum; limited drums available.

Presented by DelinaDream Productions ✨DelinaDream✨ and Drianke Entertainment.

SATURDAY • OCTOBER 11 • 11AM - 4PM
LITTLE BOBBY HUTTON PARK

Oye, Come in a little closer....we’re here to put you on to the LIFE IS LIVING MARKETPLACE... This year’s theme: UTAMADU...
10/02/2026

Oye, Come in a little closer....we’re here to put you on to the LIFE IS LIVING MARKETPLACE... This year’s theme: UTAMADUNI SANA (translation: RICH CULTURE💜✊🏽) The festival marketplace is always a mash up of The Town and The Diaspora and is carefully curated to be so. IT’s about lifting up our community micro businesses and giving shoppers robust, high quality options that support our reciprocal, circular economy. Everybody knows Oakland has that drip💦 that defies gravity and flows from the ground up. Come get you some!!

BAOBOB Directory with People's Kitchen Collective, , The Living Word Project,and an airtight host of community partners, we’re proud to welcome you to LIFE IS LIVING’S UTAMADUNI SANA MARKETPLACE!! Come for action, solidarity and to satisfy that itch for what’s missing from your closet, bookshelf, art collection or healthy life regimen.🌱 We’ve also made sure you have excellent lunch options popping in the food court all day long!! 🥗

LIFE IS LIVING
Saturday, Oct 10
Lil Bobby Hutton Park (aka Defermery Park)
11am - 4pm

AROC Action

bayefall Republik
Rainbow Italian Ice 2 🍧🌈
Kenyan Safari Designs
Aïma the Dreamer Soulovely Femme Rage Hue Man Style
East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative
Royal P
Summertime Slushy
Ate O'clock
Designs By IvoryB
Kemi Tijaniqudus
The Curator
Live Love Lemons
Toss and Throws
and more!!

Design 🖊️ Elvis James 📸 Bethanie Hines

Nothing brings more life than seeing the babies of LIFE IS LIVING all grown up and doing their thing creatively, unapolo...
09/30/2026

Nothing brings more life than seeing the babies of LIFE IS LIVING all grown up and doing their thing creatively, unapologeticly and with the beauty of community building in their spirit. Without further ado, please give it up for Drips and Diamonds 💦💎, the all woman graffitti crew curated by our very own Joyous de Asis, aka Lumpia Ladies aka The Village ✊🏽

The skill and sisterhood will be happening throughout Lil Bobby Hutton Park next Saturday. Turn up to tap in with artists motion capturing the moment.

LIFE IS LIVING
Saturday, October 10
11 AM–4 PM
Little Bobby Hutton Park

Come celebrate the culture, creativity, and community.

Explore the legacy of martial arts in Oakland at LIFE IS LIVING!! This year, we’re celebrating Oakland’s deep connection...
09/30/2026

Explore the legacy of martial arts in Oakland at LIFE IS LIVING!! This year, we’re celebrating Oakland’s deep connection with the practice, balance, discipline and focus of martial arts. In partnership with The Bruce Lee Foundation, we’re highlighting the unique relationship between Bruce Lee, Oakland, and the Black Panther Party. Because self defense is far more than combat. In our conversations about survival, it is critical we learn how to protect ourselves in ways that include the whole Self.

We’ve invited dojos from all over The Town to join us for martial arts demonstrations, exhibitions and 45 min workshops for attendees, especially young people, to gain some hands-on experience in various martial arts. We’re especially honored that the Bruce Lee Foundation is bringing an exhibition of artifacts from the world of Bruce Lee. Additionally, the Mable Ola Williams Gun Club will present an introductory gun safety workshop and another on preparing survival backpacks.

What they say is true. If you stay ready, you won’t have to get ready. Mind. Body. Spirit. Love.

LIFE IS LIVING
Saturday, Oct 10
Lil Bobby Hutton Park (aka Defermery Park)
11am - 4pm

destinyarts
Camp Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee Foundation

MOW Gun Club

For 18 years at Life is Living we have honored this legacy. Staging the Free Breakfast program for attendees and inviti...
09/28/2026

For 18 years at Life is Living we have honored this legacy. Staging the Free Breakfast program for attendees and inviting the original Panthers to be present to share their stories. Performances by Young Gifted and Black, Youth Speaks, and various poets, artists, musicians and story tellers have helped to solidify this event as an important component of the festival.

Every year we have fed hundreds of early arrivals with fresh food, community, culture and knowledge at this event. Founded by Oakland legend Jenn Johns Jenn Johns, and carried by the Peoples Kitchen Collective People's Kitchen Collective since its inception, this offering to community has included so many culinary icons of our city, and served as a unique table setting experience for a day of sharing, moving and living together.

This flier is a reminder that this is happening and a call for you to get involved. Welcoming restaurants, cafe’s, chef’s, and foodies to get involved and help us feed the Life is Living Community well.

It’s how we begin: lifting spirit, honoring history and feeding the people with Radical Hospitality.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10
11 AM - 4 PM
Lil Bobby Hutton Park (aka Defermery Park)

How you living, Fam?? That’s a fundamental question to which we offer LIFE IS LIVING in vibrant response. Days getting ...
09/24/2026

How you living, Fam?? That’s a fundamental question to which we offer LIFE IS LIVING in vibrant response.

Days getting shorter, new moon energy, autumn festival vibes. We want to see you for free breakfast, storytelling, turf dance, African dance, live graffiti, joy in the kids zone, mainstage artistic expression, choice shopping in the marketplace and an exploration of solidarity and the many disciplines of self defense.

Through it all, we celebrate. We elevate. And we activate that abundant LIFE!!

LIFE IS LIVING
Saturday, Oct 10
11am - 4pm
Lil Bobby Hutton Park

People's Kitchen Collective
BAOBOB Directory

Edutainment for Equity
EVOAK!

The Village
Young Gifted and Black

If you’ve ever felt deep surrender to community love and care then you know LIFE IS LIVING. It’s the sparkle in brown ey...
09/17/2026

If you’ve ever felt deep surrender to community love and care then you know LIFE IS LIVING. It’s the sparkle in brown eyes and heart to heart hugs. It’s how it feels when the fight is about yours and not just you. It’s refueling of what it takes to get through the next 24, 30 and 365.

Fam, we are beyond guided and thrilled to welcome you to LIFE IS LIVING 2026, Saturday, Oct. 10 at Lil Bobby Hutton Park. All day, 11a - 4p, we invite you to come vibe with sights and sounds of generations.

This year’s theme, A Party For Self Defense is talking about the Discipline (capital D) and the practice of self defense. In partnership with the Bruce Lee Foundation and support from the Akonadi Foundation, the 18th Annual Life Is Living returns with cameos from YAK dancers, CreativeShields Watermelon Bounce House, Town Park Skate, The Crucible, The Village, Wakanda Labs and more. The Lil Bobby Hutton Marketplace, BPP Alumni 60th commemoration and People’s Kitchen Collective’s Free Breakfast are not to be missed.

So, as they say, SAVE THE DATE. Your presence is requested.

Address

Oakland, CA
94601–94615, 94617–94624, 94649, 94659–94662, 94666

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