In 2019, a few months before UNDISCOVERED, I walked my friend Cir down Stevenson Alley to show him where we were planning to host the festival.
Now, if you've ever seen the Batman movie where young Bruce Wayne walks into an alley with his parents and everything goes horribly wrong, that's pretty much the vibe Stevenson Alley was giving off.
Cir looked around, looked at me, and asked, “Are you sure you want to do this here?”
The worst part? I started wondering the same thing.
A few months later, I stood in that very same alley and witnessed something I'll never forget.
Our little side stage, often overshadowed by the larger stages at UNDISCOVERED, had become the heart of the festival. Families were dancing. Kids, parents, and neighbors were moving to the music together. There was laughter, joy, and a feeling of belonging that seemed almost impossible to reconcile with what that alley had looked like just days earlier.
For a few hours, a place people normally hurried through or avoided altogether became somewhere they wanted to stay.
It was beautiful.
And it wasn't something we could have manufactured, no matter how much money we spent on production or how carefully we planned the event.
The community brought that joy. We simply helped create the space for it to happen.
That experience stayed with me. And looking back over ten years of UNDISCOVERED, I realize it's one of the things I'm most grateful for.
The People Who Kept Showing Up
When we started UNDISCOVERED SF ten years ago, we wanted to create a different kind of Filipino cultural celebration. One that reflected our contemporary Filipino American experience, where hip-hop, streetwear, food, art, nightlife, and entrepreneurship could exist alongside our cultural traditions.
We had ideas. We had ambition. What we didn't have was any guarantee that it would work.
And there were plenty of moments when it almost didn't.
Behind every festival were financial uncertainties, delayed government payments, exhausted teams, difficult decisions, and the constant challenge of keeping an ambitious community project alive.
Through all of it, people kept showing up.
I can't talk about gratitude without starting with Gina Rosales, UNDISCOVERED's co-creator and executive producer.
Gina has given more to this project than most people will ever know. There were times when government payments were delayed and she personally carried financial obligations exceeding $100,000 while our organization worked to get its finances in order.
Think about that for a moment.
That's not simply believing in a project. That's putting your own financial security on the line because you believe in the people behind it.
I don't share this because I think that level of sacrifice should be expected of anyone. It shouldn't. But I do think it deserves to be recognized.
As Gina prepares to step away after ten years, I want her to know how deeply grateful I am for everything she has given, both to UNDISCOVERED and to the community we built together.
That's love.
To the Vendors Who Built This With Us
One of the things I'm most grateful for is the incredible loyalty of the small businesses and independent creatives who have participated in UNDISCOVERED SF year after year, throughout our ten-year journey.
I think about Archipelago Books, Malaya Botanicals, Native Sol, and Kristian Kabuay. I think about Victory Hall, Mestiza, and Lady Victory, through their many evolutions.
These are the entrepreneurs and creatives who have been part of UNDISCOVERED SD across a decade of festivals, changing locations, and different formats.
When people think of a night market, they often think of vendors as businesses renting booths for the evening. But that's never been how I've seen the entrepreneurs who helped build UNDISCOVERED SF.
They were our partners in creating something that didn't exist before.
Every event required an investment of time, money, inventory, labor, and energy. Every market came with uncertainty. Would enough people attend? Would sales justify the effort? Would all the work pay off?
For a small business, those aren't insignificant questions.
Yet these entrepreneurs continued to take a chance on us, year after year.
They returned when our events were growing. They returned when we experimented with new formats. They stayed connected through the inevitable ups and downs of building something over a decade.
And they brought their communities with them.
Their products, their stories, their creativity, and the relationships they built were what made UNDISCOVERED feel different.
That's how an ecosystem grows. Not because one organization owns it, but because people inspire one another, share opportunities, and create something bigger than any one event.
To our longtime vendors, thank you for believing in us, for growing alongside us, and for helping make UNDISCOVERED a place where Filipino entrepreneurship and creativity could thrive.
We may have built the marketplace, but you gave people a reason to keep coming back.
To Our City Partners Who Believed in Us
Over the past ten years, we've been fortunate to work with many partners across the City and County of San Francisco who believed in what UNDISCOVERED could bring to our communities.
But through all the changes, the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, or OEWD, has been our most consistent funding partner.
Year after year, OEWD continued to recognize that investing in Filipino culture also means investing in small businesses, creative entrepreneurs, and the economic vitality of our neighborhoods.
Community celebrations don't happen on passion alone. They require resources, investment, and institutions willing to believe in what communities can create.
To every City department, agency, and individual who has supported us along the way, thank you.
And to OEWD, thank you for being that consistent thread through a decade of growth, challenges, and transformation.
You kept showing up for our community, and that made it possible for us to keep showing up, too.
The Artists and Performers Who Brought It to Life
And then there are the hundreds of performers, artists, DJs, designers, and cultural workers who brought their talents to our stages and streets.
They gave UNDISCOVERED SF its energy, personality, and soul.
Even during difficult periods, when community politics became complicated and disagreements tested relationships, many chose to stay connected.
That choice meant more than they probably realize.
They understood that the community was bigger than any one disagreement, organization, or individual.
Thank you for continuing to create, perform, collaborate, and share your gifts with us.
To Those Who Helped Tell Our Story
I also want to thank our longtime media partners, especially NBC Bay Area, who believed in UNDISCOVERED from the beginning and helped share our story with audiences beyond our own streets.
When we launched UNDISCOVERED, we were trying to build something many people hadn't seen before: a celebration of contemporary Filipino American culture, entrepreneurship, and creativity in the heart of San Francisco.
Having media partners willing to share that story helped our community see itself represented and introduced what we were building to a much wider audience.
I'm also deeply grateful to Paloma Concordia of Papalodown PR, whose dedication to amplifying Filipino American voices and stories has helped bring greater visibility to UNDISCOVERED and the community behind it. Her work reminds us that representation isn't just about being seen. It's about having our stories told with the care, authenticity, and cultural understanding they deserve.
And I want to give special recognition to Gregory Manalo, who's been our videographer since the very first UNDISCOVERED SF.
For ten years, Greg has been there capturing the performances, the entrepreneurs, the crowds, and the little moments of joy that might otherwise have been forgotten.
When I look back at footage from our earliest events, I'm reminded of how much we've grown and how many people have been part of this journey.
Some people helped us make history. Greg helped us document it.
The People Behind the Curtain
The public sees the festival. They see the performances, the food, the art, and thousands of people having a good time.
What they don't always see are the people behind the scenes who make those moments possible.
I think about Dre, who, aside from me, has been with Kultivate Labs since the very beginning. Through countless projects, changes in direction, victories, and setbacks, he's remained part of the creative foundation of this organization.
I think about Jimmie, whom I've watched grow from an intern into our most thoughtful marketing manager. There's something incredibly rewarding about seeing someone develop their talents and leadership within an organization you've helped build.
And I think about our founding board members, Billy Chan and Gani Lagusima, who've been there from day one.
Billy's legal expertise and Gani’s financial stewardship have given Kultivate Labs something every ambitious nonprofit needs but rarely celebrates: a steady foundation.
They've helped hold the organization together through circumstances most people outside our team will never see.
To our current and former staff, board members, volunteers, and collaborators: thank you.
Thank you for believing in ideas that sometimes sounded a little crazy. Thank you for navigating the uncertainty. Thank you for giving so much of yourselves to something larger than any one person.
And thank you for reminding me, especially during the difficult moments, why this work matters.
From Stevenson Alley to Mahal Murals
Something else happened after that memorable night on Stevenson Alley.
The transformation didn't end when we packed up the stages.
The city made further investments in the alley. Friends of Stevenson Alley, a neighborhood group working to improve the space, later commissioned my creative agency, Plinth, to design lanterns for the alley.
What surprised me was that they specifically wanted Filipino design elements incorporated into them.
We hadn't pushed for that. They wanted it because they had seen what our community brought to the neighborhood.
I remember being struck by that.
Our culture wasn't being treated as something temporary that arrived for a festival and disappeared afterward. It had become part of how people imagined the future of that place.
Seven years later, as we prepare to unveil the Mahal murals in Jessie West Alley, I find myself thinking about Stevenson Alley again.
Mahal means love in Tagalog.
When we developed the mural project, we didn't tell the artists what love should look like.
Instead, we asked community members what Mahal meant to them, what they valued, and how they experienced love.
Those perspectives helped inform the creative brief, and we trusted the artists to bring their own interpretations to life.
Because love isn't something Kultivate Labs gets to define for everyone else.
It belongs to the community.
In 2019, we watched an alley fill with love through music and dancing. In 2026, we're giving love another form through public art that can remain long after the celebration ends.
Different alleys. Different expressions.
The same belief that our communities deserve beautiful places where they can see themselves reflected.
Love Is Showing Up
Ten years of UNDISCOVERED have given us plenty of accomplishments to celebrate.
We've welcomed more than 125,000 attendees, helped create economic opportunities for small businesses, supported countless artists, and contributed to a growing movement of cultural placemaking in San Francisco and beyond.
I'm proud of those accomplishments.
But when I think about what these ten years have meant to me, I don't immediately think about the numbers.
I think about Gina.
I think about the vendors who returned year after year.
I think about the artists who kept creating, the City partners who continued to invest, the media partners who helped share our stories, Gregory documenting our journey, the staff who stayed through the difficult stretches, and the board members who helped keep us standing.
I think about that little side stage on Stevenson Alley, where people of different generations danced together in a place nobody expected to find so much joy.
And I think about how none of it would have been possible without people who believed that our culture, our businesses, and our community deserved to thrive.
As we celebrate ten years of UNDISCOVERED SF and unveil Mahal Murals, I've come to understand something about gratitude.
It's easy to be grateful when everything is going well. When the streets are full, the music is playing, and everyone is celebrating.
But the gratitude I feel most deeply today is for the people who stayed when things were uncertain.
The ones who believed when there was no guarantee of success.
The ones who gave their time, talent, resources, and trust because they saw something worth building together.
Mahal isn't just what we paint on walls. It's what we practice with one another.
It's the love that brought people into an alley in 2019 and turned it into a celebration.
It's the love that carried UNDISCOVERED SF through ten years of challenges and change.
And it's the love that continues to shape what we build next.
To everyone who has been part of this journey: thank you.
You kept showing up. And because you did, so did we.
With love and gratitude,
Desi
Co-Founder & Executive Director
Kultivate Labs
