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Thank you to everyone who joined us for Meech Boak Thank you to everyone who joined us for Meech Boakye: Sunstead on the solstice ☀️ Conceived by Portland-based artist @ghostyboi , who prepared us a meal featuring foraged “invasive” plants, the gathering centered fortune telling and meditative offerings to mark the transition into summer.  From Meech: “My most recent work, Sunstead (2026) moves from walk to table. Emerging from essays, conversations, websites, screenings, gatherings, and the many relationships that have formed through transplant thinking, Sunstead celebrates our collective experience of warm light. When we eat together in the sun, we become closer to our food. Bugs fly around our plates; the wind kicks up dust. We eat the land and the dirt simultaneously.” Sunstead was hosted by Active Cultures in partnership with the Audubon Center at Debs Park. This program was made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Photos by Yemi Seyi @yemididit @ghostyboi @audubon_debspark
This week, Meech Boakye and the AC team joined Tim This week, Meech Boakye and the AC team joined Tim Martinez of @arroyo_sage_outdoor_school for a foraging walk through the Arroyo Seco, learning about and gathering “invasive” plants along the way. This Saturday, Meech brings that spirit of gathering to Sunstead at the Audubon Center at Debs Park. Come celebrate the longest day of the year with a picnic and collective altar building, fortune telling, and meditative offerings to mark the transition into summer. We hope to see you there. June 20, 2026 4:30–7:30 PM at the @audubon_debspark ☀️ Link in bio to RSVP! ☀️ —— This program is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
Sunstead is the latest program in our perennial wo Sunstead is the latest program in our perennial work with artist Meech Boakye. Over the past four years, Meech has been in conversation with AC in ways that continue to evolve. Beginning in 2022, we commissioned Meech to create Research Poems, a digital garden that grows and flourishes over seasons. www.researchpoems.com In 2024, as part of our ECOTONES series presented with The Brick, Meech presented watering, a communal hydration ritual for collective healing, featuring foraged and homemade food and a screening of Jumana Manna’s film, The Foragers. Meech Boakye is a Canadian-American artist and researcher whose interdisciplinary practice spans foodways, sculpture, publishing and social practice. Through writing, image-making, participatory programs and material experiments, Boakye investigates how care is negotiated through intimate and playful collaborations with matter. We hope you’ll join us on June 20 for Sunstead, and to celebrate the longest day of the year with us! ☀️ Link in bio for tickets! ☀️ —— This program is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
AC invites you to ☀️ Sunstead ☀️ an artist-led eve AC invites you to ☀️ Sunstead ☀️ an artist-led evening celebrating the longest day of the year. Conceived by Portland-based artist Meech Boakye, this gathering centers fortune telling and meditative offerings to mark the transition into summer.  June 20, 2026 4:30 PM – 7:30 PM at the Audubon Center at Debs Park The picnic will feature non-native ingredients often labeled “invasive,” inviting reflection on the political and cultural histories embedded in how plants, and humans, are categorized. Meech Boakye’s research examines foraging as a cultural practice increasingly restricted by private property, land access, and ideas of ecological purity—connecting conservation conversations in Portland and Los Angeles to broader questions of migration, adaptation, and belonging, and how so-called invasive ecologies emerge through human histories of trade, displacement, and cultivation. Sunstead is hosted in partnership with the Audubon Center at Debs Park. The picnic will feature a light meal, performance, participatory actions, as well as artist-designed picnic blankets for seating on the ground. ☀️ Link in bio for tickets! ☀️ —— This program is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
The third and final film in our Seeds series is Ag The third and final film in our Seeds series is Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I (2000), selected by artist Clarissa Tossin. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Clarissa on seeds toward the end of their cycle, touching on food waste, and what industrial agriculture considers unfit for display. Thursday, May 28, 2026 7 PM (Doors 6:30 PM) at @now_instant Please note: seating is limited! Doors open thirty minutes prior to the listed showtime. Your RSVP does not guarantee you a seat. Seating is first-come, first-served. 🌱 RSVP at the link in bio! This series is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
Active Cultures and KCRW present Compost After Wri Active Cultures and KCRW present Compost After Writing — a reflective writing program by compost artist and writer Cass Marketos (@cassmarketos ) 🪱 LA Times Festival of Books, USC, April 18–19, 2026. 🪱 at KCRW Booth #031 (Cardinal Zone).  Visitors are invited to pause, sit, and respond to a set of reflective writing prompts Cass has created, exploring ideas of transformation, memory, and what we leave behind. You’ll write on seed paper that you can take home to plant or compost. 🪱 On Sunday, April 19 at 2 PM Cass will join us for a short reading and to lead the writing activity. Copies of her book will be available at the booth! Cass’s new book, Compost After Reading, is a practical manifesto for purposeful decomposition. It’s also compostable. Come say hi!  — Slide 1: Courtesy of Cass Marketos Slides 3 and 4: Summer Solstice, 2025, at the Audubon Center at Debs Park. Photos by John Jay (@johnjay.img )

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