This summer, API Equality – Northern California (APIENC) and Visibility Project Director, artist Mia Nakano are collaborating to develop a historical LGBTQ AAPI tour of San Francisco Bay Area – “Resilience Archives” that will culminate in an accessible digital online archive with photos, podcasts, and more. Funded by the San Francisco Arts Commission, this tour will be created through a multi-faceted community archiving and storytelling series of workshops including archiving, storytelling, print media, performance arts, and film practices.

On behalf of API Equality – Northern California and the Visibility Project, we’d like to invite you to participate in our collaborative workshop series. We’d love to have our community members contribute and collect their own narratives and histories as part of Resilience Archives. RSVP here by Friday June 24th to sign up for the workshops below! Spots are limited.

Why we’re doing this: LGBTQ Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) have made historic contributions to art, labor rights, and immigration reform, but their stories are truncated footnotes. With little to no LGBTQ AAPI representation in popular culture or history, it is often up to these individuals to seek out their own community in order to hear stories and experiences. This process can be a huge struggle, resulting in conflicts of identity, religion, familial obligation, and self worth. LGBTQ AAPIs face intense discrimination and racism from mainstream LGBTQ communities, and must often choose to be LGBTQ or Asian.

Workshops will be open to LGBTQ AAPI community members, family, friends, community partners and the general public.