Next Three Events:
Download the Spring 2026 calendar as a pdf here.
Wed., February 25, 7:30pm
Memory Keeping from Indigenous Perspectives
Public Talk at 518 Valencia
Shaping San Francisco’s year-long case study of the Padre Junípero Serra statue included a folklife-based, community-led research process centered on memory-keeping practices. Indigenous community researchers explored everyday practices from their own cultures that carry collective knowledge. The researchers included members of Urban Native communities, Indigenous migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean, and urban youth. Their research invites reflection on how genocide, relocation, and migration continue to erode Indigenous ways of knowing, and how communities continue to protect and hold on to them. The process was facilitated by storyteller Adriana Camarena. Several community researchers will share their findings. The discussion will be presented in Spanish and English.
Part of Shaping Legacy: San Francisco Monuments & Memorials, a project of San Francisco Arts Commission
We welcome donations. Donate now!
Saturday, March 7, 12-3pm
Noe Valley History
A Walking Tour
Explore the southeastern edge of Rancho San Miguel. This walk highlights the agricultural and industrial history of Noe Valley and its heights, from Billy Goat Hill through Fairmount Heights to the east side of Twin Peaks. We walk along sites of former dairies and quarries, through early and modernist residential developments, along Slow Streets and up and down staircases, and more. Be prepared for steep slopes and great views! With SFPL Noe Valley Branch
We welcome donations. Donate now!
Wed., March 11, 7:30pm
City of Redwood
Public Talk at 518 Valencia
James Michael Buckley’s 2024 City of Wood: San Francisco and the Architecture of the Redwood Lumber Industry reconnects us to the built environment from San Francisco all the way up to Eureka in the far north of California, past and present. David Schmidt’s brand new majesterial San Francisco Bay Area: An Environmental History contains a close look at the historic forests of the Bay Area and how they were cut down to help build the region. Together these speakers will help us see how profoundly the iconic trees of the west coast literally undergird our everyday lives even today.
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.