The Festival Center

05/29/2026

Join us June 11th for our second workshop, Healing Through Improv and Community Storytelling with Maisha Atrice Williams.

Maisha-Atrice is looking forward to partnering with attendees to stretch the boundaries of playback theatre, which is a form of drama therapy. As well, exploring psychodrama with folx who are open to storytelling and healing in circles.

RSVP TODAY!

https://secure.givelively.org/event/the-festival-center/healing-through-improv-and-community-storytelling

05/27/2026

Join us at The Festival Center on Friday, May 29 at 6:00 PM for an evening of art, conversation, and community as artist AnaYelsi Velasco Sanchez launches a new curatorial program that will bring four rotating artists and exhibitions to the Festival Center throughout the year.

The inaugural exhibition, Under the Same Sun, features AnaYelsi’s own work — vibrant, deeply human paintings that explore culture, identity, liberation, mental health, and collective care.

Guests are invited to enjoy light refreshments, a guided tour of the exhibition, and an artist talk with AnaYelsi about the work, the vision behind the new curatorial program, and the role of art in community life. RSVP today!

https://secure.givelively.org/event/the-festival-center/art-exhibit-under-the-same-sun

05/18/2026

Join us at The Festival Center on Thursday, May 29 at 6:00 PM for an evening of art, conversation, and community as artist AnaYelsi Velasco Sanchez launches a new curatorial program that will bring four rotating artists and exhibitions to the Festival Center throughout the year.

The inaugural exhibition, Under the Same Sun, features AnaYelsi’s own work — vibrant, deeply human paintings that explore culture, identity, liberation, mental health, and collective care. Through bold color, symbolic landscapes, and scenes of shared experience, the exhibition invites viewers to reflect on connection, responsibility, and the kind of world we are building together.

Born in Venezuela and now based in Washington, D.C., AnaYelsi has been painting professionally since 2012. Her work has been exhibited at venues including Orlando City Hall, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, the Venezuelan Embassy, Dupont Underground, and Orlando’s CityArts Factory. Her practice centers art as both resistance and healing, creating space for dialogue, transformation, and imagination.

Guests are invited to enjoy light refreshments, a guided tour of the exhibition, and an artist talk with AnaYelsi about the work, the vision behind the new curatorial program, and the role of art in community life.

We hope you’ll join us for this special opening celebration.

https://secure.givelively.org/event/the-festival-center/art-exhibit-under-the-same-sun

05/18/2026

As white political leaders implement a racist gerrymandering to deny Black people voting representation, here is my letter inviting them to repent.

05/11/2026

Join us tonight at 6 for the start of a very special series. If your work includes activism or social justice of any kind, we understand how spirit breaking the work can be. That's why House of Kindred and the Festival Center are bringing you the Healing Hub, a chance for you to work with seasoned healers to help take that load off.

Tonight, join Matresa Flowers as she brings a hands-on, grounded approach—working with herbs, teas, and plant practices—while exploring how the cycles of nature mirror our own emotional and mental rhythms.

See you there at 6pm tonight. Dinner provided (vegan and gf options included) RSVP Here: https://secure.givelively.org/event/the-festival-center/healing-hub-residency-matresa-flowers

05/04/2026

It was just another Wednesday at the Festival Center. Just another terrible, rotten, no good, AMAZING Wednesday.

Last Wednesday was a terrible, rotten, no-good, amazing day at the Festival Center.

05/01/2026

There is a particular kind of strain many of us are carrying right now.

Across DC, organizers, healers, and community leaders are responding to the urgent needs of our city. These people are modern day super heroes, self chosen to navigate the systems that extract, surveil, and destabilize us. No one walks away from this work unmarred. The weight of it often lives on in the body and the spirit.

House of Kindred is an organization that thrives within the Festival Center walls. It’s leader, Richael Faithful, has partnered with Sharon Groves and Scotty Brown to create a safety net for those brave social justice warriors when they come in from the cold. They are calling this space the Healing Hub Residency, a place that fosters relationships between activists and healers every month.

Join us for the launch of this residency on May 11th with our first healer, Matresa Flowers where we try to answer the question: What would it look like to build spaces where care is part of the work—not something we get to only after everything else is done?

Find out more here: https://secure.givelively.org/event/the-festival-center/healing-hub-residency-matresa-flowers

04/30/2026

The centerpiece of May Day will be a march and rally beginning at the Washington Monument at 12 PM. Led by immigrant workers in solidarity with labor unions and community members, we’ll take action together to make it clear we reject this administration’s attacks on workers, immigrants, and our communities.

JOIN US!

04/27/2026

To stop predatory behavior we must call out the secrets and theologies which undergird this sin.

If we are to stop predatory behavior in the church we must uncover the systemic secrecies and theologies that undergird this kind of sin.

04/24/2026

Take action with us this May Day

ICE has now arrested nearly 20,000 people in our region. More than 10,000 people have been arrested as part of the "DC Safe and Beautiful Task Force." More than 70,000 people here lost jobs last year because of this regime's destruction, and the ongoing military occupation of DC is a fundamental threat to everyone in this country's civil liberties, our First Amendment rights, and a functional democracy.

Enough is enough. On Friday, May 1, unions, workers, and community members from across the DC region will come together to take action in the middle of the work day. Together we’ll make it clear that we are willing to stop cooperating if this regime does not change. Make your plans now to join us on Friday, May 1 starting at 12 PM at the Washington Monument.

https://www.maydaydc.org/schedule/noon