Show Your Love.
In her seminal 2000 book All About Love: New Visions, cultural critic and feminist Bell Hooks defines love not as a passive feeling, but as an active choice. She argues that society fails us by treating love as mere romance, and proposes instead that we treat love as a combination of care, respect, trust, and commitment.
At BLACspace, we believe that love is a verb. We love better when we treat love as an action and a conscious intention. We do not have to love; we actively choose to love and extend ourselves to others. Practicing a “love ethic” helps dismantle systemic oppression, fear, and alienation in society.
We are a new cooperative of artists, cultural workers, creative businesses, and organizations building on the love of our community to improve the conditions for Black culture to thrive in Oakland and beyond. This fall, we’re inviting you to do something simple:
Show your love.
Introducing LOVE BLACspace, a five-month campaign celebrating the people, places, ideas, and possibilities that make our ecosystem worth investing in. From August through December 2026, LOVE BLACspace will move through a series of fabulous stories, gatherings, invitations, and opportunities designed to bring more people like you into the work and closer to the BLACspace vision: Cultural Reforestation*. Love, in this ecosystem, is not passive.
Love is participation.
Love is curiosity.
Love is membership.
Love is growth.
Love is investment.
LOVE. EXPLORE. JOIN. GROW.
These four invitations form the heart of the campaign.
LOVE what Black arts and cultural workers are building.
EXPLORE the spaces, people, and stories that make up our ecosystem through The BLAC Map of Oakland and our highly anticipated event this October 2nd, The BLAC Map of Oakland Tour + Party, in partnership with MOAD’s Nexus SF/Bay Area Black Art Week.
JOIN the cooperative and become part of our network built on authenticity, mutual support, and long-term collective power.
GROW with BLACspace through membership, consulting, connection, and the exchange of resources and brilliant ideas.
We love you.
Sincerely,
The BLACspace Cooperative Team
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Cultural Reforestation* (verb): the collective process of repairing, replenishing, rooting, and promoting Black arts and culture where it has been displaced: through a cooperative strategy that owns spaces, shares stewardship, and embraces community trust as the soil for cultural permanence in Oakland and beyond for the next 100 years.