• Home
  • About
  • Projects
  • Support

Contact

We’d love to hear from you! Please feel free to reach out to the team any time.

ac@active-cultures.org
Thank you to all who joined for a beautiful day th Thank you to all who joined for a beautiful day this past weekend for Michelle Nazzal: Food Mythologies at Arlington Garden ✨ And a special thanks to: Michelle Nazzal for organizing and facilitating this program, and for the care she brought to every part of the evening; to Chris Jadallah, Liana Aghajanian, and Soha Yassine for a conversation that spoke to the personal and political implications of our food histories, memories, and traditions both on ancestral lands and in exile. To Maryam and Tahereh at Arlington Garden, who have been stewarding watermelon seeds from Palestine in the garden and shared those with all of us; and Al Baraka Restaurant for the incredible meal to end the evening together in the olive allée. Finally, thank you to everyone who donated to The Sameer Project ahead of this program. Their work providing tents, medical aid, clean water, and community kitchens to displaced families in Gaza continues, and so does the need. We encourage you to keep donating at the link in bio. Photos by Tito Molina/HRDWRKER. @hrdwrker
Food Mythologies is organized and facilitated by O Food Mythologies is organized and facilitated by Oakland-based chef and designer Michelle Nazzal. Through her ongoing project Mishmish, Michelle works to preserve Palestinian food and cultural traditions in the diaspora. Mishmish is inspired by remembrance, liminality, and how we move through the world when we’re severed from our ancestral lands. She has collaborated with restaurants, farmers, cultural workers, and artists from the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, London, Barcelona, Sicily, and beyond. For Food Mythologies, Michelle has designed a program for attendees to take home, a resource to sit with the evening’s conversation and carry its questions forward. Food Mythologies takes place Saturday, August 1st, 4:30–8pm at Arlington Garden in Pasadena. To RSVP, visit the link in bio! Please note: this event has a waitlist. We encourage you to join, as spaces may become available as we get closer to August 1. —— Photos courtesy of Michelle Nazzal.
Food Mythologies is an evening of conversation, re Food Mythologies is an evening of conversation, reflection, and a shared meal — exploring how food traditions move across generations, and how genocide and displacement reshape them. Joining us on August 1st at Arlington Garden: journalist Liana Aghajanian, seed saver and educator Chris Jadallah, organizer Soha Yassine, in conversation facilitated by Michelle Nazzal. Together they’ll explore how colonialism has shaped food, land access, and tradition across generations, and across exile. Conversation in the olive allée, followed by a self-guided garden walk and shared meal. RSVP at the link in bio. __ Photo of Chris Jadallah by Li Schmidt of Cultural Roots Nursery
Meet Leila MacKenzie, our Getty Marrow Curatorial Meet Leila MacKenzie, our Getty Marrow Curatorial Intern for this summer ☀️ Leila writes, researches, and lives in Los Angeles, usually on their back porch or running along the LA River. Originally from South Florida, they recently graduated from USC with degrees in Comparative Literature and Applied Mathematics, concentrating in Arabic. Leila’s thesis traces how papyrus, marshlands, and the cultures they sustain reveal non-human resistance to power in Palestine. Their broader work looks at ecology, space, and play in sites of extraction, spanning arts programming, agriculture, and media across Florida, LA, and Palestine. Leila is grateful and excited to collaborate with and learn from Active Cultures this summer.
Active Cultures invites you to Food Mythologies, a Active Cultures invites you to Food Mythologies, an evening of conversation, reflection, and a meal organized by Oakland-based chef and designer Michelle Nazzal. Food Mythologies explores the transmission of food traditions across generations. Through the lens of immigrant and diasporic cooks, land stewards, and cultural workers from the Los Angeles community, the program examines how genocide and displacement shape these practices, weaving personal mythologies of time, place, and familial history. The evening begins in the olive allée of Arlington Garden with a conversation with Liana Aghajanian, Chris Jadallah, and Soha Yassine, facilitated by Nazzal, on the effects of colonialism on food, land access, and tradition. A self-guided garden walk follows, then a shared meal in the allée. Hosted in partnership with Arlington Garden in Pasadena, with a program and resource designed by Nazzal. Please note: in lieu of a ticket, we’re asking attendees to donate to The Sameer Project, a Palestinian-led initiative providing tents, medical aid, and clean water to displaced families in Gaza and operating community kitchens to feed those in need. RSVPs are required due to limited capacity. To donate to the Sameer Project and to RSVP, visit the link in bio.
Active Cultures is a public arts nonprofit in Los Active Cultures is a public arts nonprofit in Los Angeles that explores the intersection of art, food, and ecologies through artist-led projects and programs. Food is the essential lens through which we examine fundamental questions of power, cultural expression, history, equity, and climate futures, connecting us in ways both intimate and collective.  This September, for the first time, we bring together artists, cooks, farmers, writers, and organizers to engage with the politics of food.  The Convening gathers practitioners who work with food as both material and subject, asking how social practice can make these politics visible, and how cultural and ecological networks can become systems of support when infrastructures fail. Across two days of performance, presentations, discussion, and shared meals in LA, we examine food as medium, system, archive, and territory. FOOD: A Convening is open to all. September 25 & 26, 2026. Save the date! To be the first to receive full program details, sign up for our newsletter at the link in bio.

Follow Us

Keep in touch

@activeculturesla

Subscribe to Active Cultures

As a subscriber you will receive program announcements, online publications, as well as invitations to performances, meals, and public programs in Los Angeles.
As a subscriber you will receive program announcements, online publications, as well as invitations to performances, meals, and public programs in Los Angeles.

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
  • About
  • Projects
  • Support
  • Contact
  • Instagram

Copyright © 2025 Active Cultures. All rights reserved.