Posts Tagged ‘Oakland School for the Arts’

At a special meeting on Wednesday night, Oakland school board members voted to deny one charter school a petition for renewal and failed to approve renewals for two others, planning to consider both again at the December 2 meeting.

Some 1,600 people filled the Fox Theatre for this year’s Notes & Words concert. The concert, in its seventh year, benefited the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland and featured local talent like the Oakland School for the Arts choir, as well as high-profile authors and musicians, such as actor BJ Novak and Coldplay’s front man Chris Martin.

Founded in 2011 at the Oakland School of the Arts, the group is made up of high school students at the charter school. They have won the International Championship of High School A Cappella (ICHSA) three times, including this year in April. In 2013, they placed third on NBC’s The Sing-Off, a televised a cappella competition between some of the best musical ensembles in the country. With the level of success they’ve garnered, the group has decided to use their art as a form of activism: “aca-activism,” that is.

The downtown Oakland school, founded in 2002 by Governor Jerry Brown who was then Oakland’s mayor, will celebrate its 10th birthday Thursday night with a performance at the Fox Theater. It is the only public charter performing arts school in Oakland, and is actually made up nine different schools, each spanning grades 6-12, that teach dance, instrumental music, vocal music, digital media, literary arts, production design, theatre, visual arts, and circus arts.

Now that the finalists in Oakland’s first Youth Poet Laureate competition have been announced, the poets have until September to hear the final results after the last panel of judges make their decision. While waiting to find out who will be named the first Youth Poet Laureate, the finalists are preparing for the first group performance at the Art & Soul Festival this summer in Oakland.

Feelmore510, Oakland’s newest adult store, opened—somewhat appropriately—on Valentine’s Day this week, but it has not been universally welcomed. When Nenna Joiner applied for permits to open the store two months ago, opponents complained that Feelmore510’s Uptown location would put it within 500 feet of several major gathering places for young people, including Youth Radio, a foster housing agency called First Place for Youth, and Oakland School for the Arts. But not everyone objects to the store.

Plans to open a sex boutique in downtown Oakland near a school and several youth program offices have caused some mixed reactions among neighboring businesses, although opponents seem unlikely to appeal a recent decision by the Oakland City Planning Commission allowing the shop to operate within close proximity to a school.

For those women who always wanted to unleash their inner Patti Smith or Grace Slick, last weekend’s Ladies Rock Camp in downtown Oakland offered a weekend of concentrated rock.