Next Three Events:
Download the Spring 2026 calendar as a pdf here.
Wed., May 27, 7:30pm
AI and Empire Building
Public Talk at 518 Valencia
We bring together several sharp critics of the hype machine that has long characterized the internet and our successive tech booms, currently blowing up in the AI bubble. Lost in the hand wringing over the more exaggerated claims of boosters and doomers is the ongoing reproduction of a colonial seizure of what should be our common wealth. This process has long historic roots and in some ways it is thanks to our amnesiac culture that the current crop of billionaire investors and tech bros have gotten away with doing it all again. Wendy Liu, Alex Hanna, Tamara Kneese, and Elizabeth Travelslight.
We welcome donations. Donate now!
Wed., June 3, 7:30pm
Rewilding San Francisco
Public Talk at 518 Valencia
World Environment Day with its Global Call for Climate Action is June 5. Restoring nature reduces our climate impact while making our life-places more resilient to climate disruption. Join us for a panel discussion with community stewards caring for and rewilding San Francisco's public open spaces. Learn about current stewardship work and strategies for helping nature thrive in San Francisco so that San Franciscans can thrive in nature. Tom Radulovich, Peter Brastow, and others TBA.
We welcome donations. Donate now!
Saturday, June 6, 11:20 am-4 pm
Another Way Urban Bike & Talk: East Bayshore—Richmond to Treasure Island
Urban Bike & Talk
Join us by bicycle as we leave the peninsula and ride from Richmond to Treasure Island. Visit the Rosie the Riveter National Monument before proceeding with us along the eastern shore of the Bay, with a stop at the Albany Bulb and other locations. Following estuaries and pedaling over the east span of the Bay Bridge, we explore the sights, sounds, smells, and stories of life at the edge and ruminate on the rising seas. On this immersive bike ride we give historical context for the contemporary landscape of the east bayshore, and engage in individual and collective thought experiments about an utopian future. Bring notebooks for sketching, writing thoughts, poetry, songs, etc. or perhaps record sounds and make photos or videos to share with each other.
Each attendee pays their own ferry passage to Richmond and from Treasure Island (or MUNI fare from TI.)
RSVP to shaping@foundsf.org
We welcome donations. Donate now!
Explore Shaping San Francisco:
Ecology Emerges
Discussions and reflections on the history of Bay Area ecological activism, based on oral histories documenting the past 50 years.
Ecology Emerges is an oral history gathering project to explore the past 50 years of ecological activism in the Bay Area and the role that individual and institutional memories play in the development, policy proposals, and interrelationships that together make up the existing networks of ecological politics. We document the living ecological activist movement, in their own words, but also in a larger context of urban growth and globalization.
Oral Histories
Shaping San Francisco, as part of our ongoing work, sits down with people who have stories to tell and conducts oral history interviews.
Check them out here.
"Editor's Pick Tour" from FoundSF.org
Comprised of over 1,400 pages, and 2,500 historical photos, the wiki-based archive FoundSF.org is the product of hundreds of contributors, regular people who were compelled by the chance to investigate some piece of this City's past.
Shaping San Francisco is fiscally sponsored by Independent Arts & Media, a California non-profit corporation.