Mission

E.A.R.T.H. Lab is a dynamic hotbed of creativity. We build community by creating collaborative, multidisciplinary art projects that re-envision the Earth, all of its beings, and environmental activism with fresh eyes. Our organization expands prevailing notions of environmental art, challenges the mainstream’s binary concepts of gender, sexuality, and race, and incorporates inclusive, diverse, and imaginative possibilities for sustainable living. We champion the adoption of public policies based on scientifically informed environmental practices; our projects promote love, tolerance, sustainability, and peace. We make movies, produce performances, present talks, host symposiums, create images, do pop-ups, and support artists and activists we love.

Our work in Santa Cruz takes place on the unceded, ancestral homelands of the Ohlone, Miwok, and Mutsun and Awaswas-speaking peoples on Uypi Tribal land. We recognize that colonization is an ongoing cultural, political, and ecological process, and we honor those peoples for whom this land has been a home for thousands of years. Their stewardship encouraged the land to flourish in ways that historically benefited colonizers past and present. As we enjoy, experience, and fight for the protection of this land, we affirm the sovereign rights of indigenous communities and the traditional and contemporary evolution of their culture. 

As colonization is a tool of domination by the heteropatriarchal nation-state, so too is systemic and deeply entrenched racism. Over recent years we have witnessed, endorsed, and championed the growing power of the Black Lives Matter movement and its calls to action. We stand in solidarity with all those working to dismantle white supremacy. We see the struggles of our Black, Indigenous, Latinx and other colleagues, friends, and fellow humans and, in our work, endeavor to create spaces in which racial and other diversity is celebrated. While we are not always perfect, we acknowledge the unearned privilege afforded to us. We commit to working towards a world in which all are free from discrimination, fear, bias, and harm, and where all have equal access to education, a living wage, housing, medical care, visibility, power, healthy food, and safe, beautiful outdoor spaces to enjoy.

 Join us.