Music Festival Workshops 2026
Participate in our workshops! This year’s festival features a powerful lineup of creative, educational, and community-building workshops led by artists, educators, organizers, and cultural workers. From music and movement to storytelling, bilingual education, and social justice writing, each workshop offers a unique space to learn, create, and connect. Workshops will take place on January 17th and 18th and are included with all festival passes.
ESL (Spanish) – Workers’ Rights
Facilitator: Julia Toscano
Email: sflivingwage@gmail.com
Phone: +1 415-863-1225
Description:
This workshop would be an ESL class which would teach English by teaching California Workers’ Rights.
Qualifications:
I have been facilitating this workshop for the past 26 weeks at the Center for Social and Economic Justice every week. I am a Campaign Co-director of the San Francisco Living Wage Coalition, an advocacy organization for low wage workers.
Engagement:
I would engage participants with listening, reading, writing, and speaking. I will provide workshop worksheets participants can take home to keep the worker rights they learned during this workshop in both English and Spanish so they can reference.
Better Your World
Facilitator: Pete Kronowitt
Email: petekronowitt@gmail.com
Phone: +1 310-871-2923
Description:
“How to Combine Music and Activism to Better Your World
Learn how to use live performances to raise awareness and effectively engage, recruit, and activate volunteers to take meaningful action. We will discuss tactics to organize and promote standalone shows and tours, approaches to select potential partners (causes, candidates, etc.), media and promotion strategies and tactics for attracting new audiences for social justice performances.
Successful social movements organize a critical mass of people to pivotal influence points at the right moment and over a sustained period of time. At the same time, building effective coalitions by focusing on aligning the strengths of organizations are the key to unlock potential for mass mobilization.”
Qualifications:
“- Recorded 5 albums & combine performing with activism.
Founded Face the Music Collective, a guide for creative activists utilizing performances to inspire targeted individual action. We recruited more than 80 artists, raised >$50K for grassroots organizations and campaigns performing 80+ live and online performances.
As a board member of Music Declares Emergency US, I’m championing 2 programs to make it easy for artists to activate fans with meaningful actions to have an impact on the climate crisis. One of the programs is called AMPLIFY, which turns the power of music into a global movement, connecting fans and artists to the grassroots climate solutions for a livable planet.”
Engagement:
We will have an open discussion to determine what participants care about and what groups they have partnered with. I hope to learn from them and describe my own journey.
Liberation Line Dancing: Getting the Movement to Move
Facilitator: Aya de Leon
Email: yadele@yahoo.com
Phone: +1 510-776-6835
Description:
“In this workshop, participants will write, choreograph and record a line dance about a political issue they care about. No experience necessary. Just bring a smartphone and a desire to get the masses moving collectively.
OPTIONAL PREPARATION: find a song you LOVE to dance to that has an instrumental version on YouTube or your favorite music streaming app. Not sure what this is all about? Check out the “No Kings” line dance on IG: https://www.instagram.com/p/DP-v5_3juFY/ or YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blXECLM9YaA“
Qualifications:
I am the poet laureate of Berkeley, a veteran organizer, and have led thousands of people in liberation line dancing, and have developed several tracks of my own.
Engagement:
I will have them dancing, singing, writing, choreographing, and recording.
Teaching Bilingual Poetry: A Brainstorming Session for Educators, Librarians, and Activist-Organizers
Facilitator: Norma Smith
Email: njssmith@sonic.net
Phone: +1 510-459-9636
Description:
“This is a work in Progress. More details to come.
Participants might include educators, librarians, and artists in any genre. The workshop focuses on poetry/literature, but it could be applied to any arts.
Together, we will develop curriculum for teaching poetry in a bilingual or multilingual classroom (grades 4 through 12), where the educator is not necessarily fluent in a second or third language. We will build bibliographies and strategies for acknowledging our students’ skills and encouraging building on their potential as translators (of language, history, culture) and educators themselves.”
Qualifications:
“Longtime activist-organizer and community scholar-educator. Worked as translator (Spanish to English) in past. Waning Spanish skills.
BA in creative writing; MA in Education with focus on equity issues; PhD in Ethnic & Cultural Studies
Recently taught poetry in an after-school program (4th grade) without being informed before starting that the class was mostly English learners. Had to scramble to develop curriculum. Recruited some bilingual students to co-teach.”
Engagement:
“The goal, articulated at beginning of workshop, will be to create curriculum that can be shared and used in Bay Area classrooms and beyond.
This will be a deeply collaborative workshop. I’ll begin by telling my experience teaching poetry in a class of mostly English-learners; share the bibliography and strategies I developed; solicit ideas for further multilingual, multicultural bibliographies and strategize together. Form a group to continue the work.”
Workers’ Voices in the Fight for Justice
Facilitator: The Workers Voices Collective (Bill Shields, Director)
Email: billshieldssf@gmail.com
Phone: +1 415-652-6154
Description:
“This is a fun, creative and liberation-oriented storytelling workshop. We will read short excerpts from our collective members’ stories to get our creative juices flowing. We will then do writing exercises on the theme of workers in the fight for justice. We will conclude by reading this work to each other. Come, join us and connect with a great network of worker-storytellers! The workshop will be taught in English, with Spanish translation as needed.”
Qualifications:
Director, Workers Voices Storytelling Project at City College of San Francisco for many years. Collective members bring their own rich histories of worker-story-writing and performing.
Engagement:
As described above, by inviting them to read, write and then perform workers-justice stories. The workshop is designed for maximum participation.
La Comunidad Dice No a Trump, Sí a Justicia!
Facilitator: Bill Shields & Workers Voices Members
Email: billshieldssf@gmail.com
Phone: +1 415-652-6154
Description:
“The workshop will be conducted in Spanish, with simultaneous English translation. Participants will read excerpts from the El Nuevo Sol teatro groups’ new piece on fighting for justice during Trump 2.0. They will then be invited to do fun, easy voice and physical exercises to stimulate creativity. Finally, they will work in small groups to create a skit on the subject of justice for the immigrant community. Join us for an enjoyable, liberating storytelling session — no prior experience necessary! ¿Se puede? ¡Si, se puede!”
Qualifications:
Many years as the director of the Workers Voices Storytelling Project of City College of San Francisco, including years working with the former La Colectiva and now, El Nuevo Sol.
Engagement:
Participatory reading, easy voice and physical exercises and enjoyable improvisational work creating a short skit.
Past and Present — Our Writing for Social and Economic Justice
Facilitator: Alice Elizabeth Rogoff
Email: alicerogoff@yahoo.com
Phone: +1 415-584-8264
Description:
“The facilitator will discuss previous literary writers who wrote for social and economic justice. Then she will suggest prompts for the participants’ own writing which could be a monologue, poem, or scene. We will do some writing, and then sharing of the pieces.”
Qualifications:
“I have been a volunteer with the San Francisco Living Wage Coalition, and other organizations for the environment and for Seniors. I belong to the Communications of America (CWA) union. I have an MA in Creative Writing and an MA in Drama from San Francisco State University. I received a commission from the San Francisco Arts Commission for a poetry project about San Francisco women labor organizers. I have given workshops at recreation centers and some as guests of City College and SF State classes.”
Engagement:
The writing prompts will help to give ideas if needed. I will also ask the participants what specific issues they have, or which are ones that they have worked on or are currently working on.
Using Music and Culture as Tools for Building the Movement
Facilitator: David Rovics
Email: drovics@gmail.com
Phone: +1 503-863-1177
Description:
“In the US and many other countries today, social movements have largely forgotten about the power of music and culture. But in the past in the US, music and culture have played a pivotal role in many social movements, just as it still does around the world today. In this workshop we will explore past movements and how they have made use of music and culture, how we can re-introduce these concepts into social movements today, and why this is such a crucially important project to embark on.”
Qualifications:
“David Rovics has been singing at protests large and small in 25 countries since the 1990’s. As a traveling performer he has been able to be a musical participant in many different social movements around the world. His songs about current events and history are covered by artists around the world — especially in Mexico and Ireland — and have been heard by millions, despite the total disinterest in David’s music by the music industry. Along with being a musician, Kamala Emanuel has been an organizer of protests and other events in Australia since the 1990’s.”
Engagement:
“The workshop will involve guided discussion on subjects related to the project of bringing music and culture into social movements, with the hosts actively seeking ideas and stories from participants. David will also pontificate a fair bit as well, and the hosts will sing a few songs to illustrate different approaches at communication.”