New Tools. New Stages. New Chapters.
Dear Friends and Supporters,
August feels like one of those moments when you can see several years of work beginning to connect.
Over the past month, we’ve been moving between neighborhoods, disciplines, and communities—learning from peers across the country while continuing to experiment here at home. We’re seeing new ways for artists to navigate technology, new opportunities to bring music into unexpected spaces, and renewed excitement around the Filipino Cultural District we’ve spent the last decade helping build.
There’s a lot happening. Here are a few things I’m especially excited to share.
🎨 Thousands of Votes for the Mahal Mural
One of the most energizing things we’ve seen this summer has been the community response to the Mahal Mural.
Thousands of votes were cast to help decide the winning mural concepts. For us, that level of participation matters just as much as the final artwork.
Public art should feel public. It should create a reason for people to stop, talk, debate, imagine, and ultimately see a piece of themselves reflected in the places they move through every day.
We’re excited to celebrate the winning artists and, even more importantly, to see these works move from ideas into the neighborhood.
Thank you to everyone who voted, shared the project, and helped shape what comes next.
🌿 Kapwa Gardens 2.0: Listening Before We Build
Photography by: Matthew Davis
We’ve also begun outreach for the next iteration of Kapwa Gardens 2.0.
This time, we’re starting by listening.
Over the past few weeks, we popped up at Bhangra and Beats and Downtown First Thursdays to hear directly from the wider SoMa community about what they want to see in the next version of Kapwa Gardens.
What kinds of programs feel missing? What would make the space more useful, welcoming, and exciting? What would make people come back again and again?
Kapwa Gardens has always been about more than activating a site. It’s about creating a place that reflects the people around it.
As we imagine 2.0, we want the next version to be shaped not just by our ideas, but by the people who will actually use it.
🤖 Eksplora: Where Are You on Your AI Journey?
AI is moving quickly, but artists are not all starting from the same place.
Some are already experimenting with it. Some are curious but cautious. Some are skeptical. Some are trying to understand what it means for their practice, their livelihood, and their creative identity.
That’s the thinking behind Eksplora.
The core question is simple:
What kind of artist are you — and where are you with AI?
Every artist arrives somewhere different. Eksplora is designed to help artists identify where they’re starting from, understand how they relate to emerging AI tools, and find other artists who are on a similar part of the journey.
This September, we’ll welcome the inaugural Eksplora cohort, with room for just 24 artists.
The goal isn’t to convince artists to embrace AI or reject it. It’s to create space for reflection, experimentation, and conversation—so artists can make more intentional choices about how, whether, and where AI fits into their creative practice.
🎶 Unplugged: Ruby Ibarra + Bolo Music Group — August 27
We’re also excited to announce a new collaboration with our friends at Brave New Spaces.
On August 27, we’ll launch the inaugural Unplugged Series, featuring Ruby Ibarra and artists from Bolo Music Group.
The idea behind Unplugged is simple: create an intimate environment where audiences can experience artists differently—closer to the music, the storytelling, and the people behind the work.
Ruby has been an important voice in Filipino American music and culture, and we couldn’t imagine a better group of artists to help us begin this new series.
🔥 UNDSCVRD: Season 10
It’s hard to believe we’re saying this:
UNDISCOVERED SF is entering Season 10.
What began as an experiment in using nightlife, music, food, art, and entrepreneurship to draw people into the Filipino Cultural District has become a decade-long journey alongside hundreds of artists, performers, entrepreneurs, organizers, volunteers, and community members.
For Season 10, we’re changing things up again:
3 events.
3 different locations.
3 different dates.
Each one will offer a different way to experience the Filipino Cultural District.
UNDISCOVERED has never really been about producing the same festival over and over again. It has been about asking what the neighborhood needs now—and then using culture to help people rediscover it.
Ten seasons later, we’re still asking that question.
And we can’t wait to show you what’s next.
🌎 Sharing What We’ve Learned
This summer also gave us an opportunity to get outside of San Francisco and spend time with organizations doing community development work across the country.
We attended three gatherings, each connecting us to a different network of peers.
At CLTRE in Sacramento, we spent time alongside Black-led nonprofits exchanging ideas about cultural and community development.
In July, we traveled to Arlington, Virginia for FAHNS, connecting with Filipino organizations and leaders from across the country.
And most recently, we joined National CAPACD in Long Beach, learning alongside organizations serving Asian American and Pacific Islander communities nationwide.
We went to these gatherings to share some of what Kultivate Labs has learned through our work in the Filipino Cultural District—but we came home with just as many questions and ideas.
That exchange matters.
Community development can become very local by necessity. We spend so much time thinking about individual storefronts, artists, blocks, grants, events, and neighborhoods that it can be easy to lose sight of the larger movement we are part of.
Across the country, communities are wrestling with many of the same questions we are: Who gets to remain in our cultural neighborhoods? Who gets to own businesses there? How do artists build sustainable lives? How do we preserve culture without freezing it in time? And how do historically under-resourced communities gain greater power over the future of the places they helped create?
There isn’t one answer.
But there is tremendous value in figuring it out together.
Building the Next Chapter Together
A mural chosen by thousands of community votes. A new Kapwa Gardens shaped through community input. A way for artists to understand where they stand with AI. An intimate new music series. The tenth season of UNDISCOVERED. Conversations with community builders from Sacramento to Virginia to Long Beach.
At first glance, these might seem like very different projects.
To us, they are connected.
They are all about participation and possibility—creating more ways for artists, entrepreneurs, neighbors, and culture-bearers to have a meaningful role in shaping what comes next.
That has always been at the heart of Kultivate Labs: not arriving with a finished answer, but creating the conditions for community ideas to become real places, programs, businesses, art, and experiences.
As we move into the rest of 2026, that’s the work we’re excited to keep doing—listening, experimenting, building, and evolving together.
Thank you, as always, for being part of it.
With gratitude,
Desi Danganan
Executive Director
Kultivate Labs
###
