TARS event on June 15, 2019 at the World Stage in Leimert Park featuring Los Angeles-based artists and cultural leaders from ACTA’s Apprenticeship and Living Cultures programs. Photos by Timo Saarelma.

ACTA’s first website, launched in 1998.

ACTA hosted a group of culture bearers at the Sacramento Youth Hostel and held a day long convening as part of the Joint Congress on the Arts in 2001. Top Row L-R: Carmencristina Moreno, Ruben Guzman, Herminia Albaran Romero, Gladys McKinney (W. Mono-Dunlap) and Danongan "Danny" Kalunduyan. Middle Row L-R: Armando Torres, Stanley Rodriguez (Kumeyaay) and Juan Mesa Cuero (Kumeyaay). Front Row L-R: Luis Jovel, Ferenc Tobak, Ruby Vargas (Wukchumni) and Amy Kitchener.

Co-founders of San Jose Taiko, Roy and PJ Hirabayashi received the NEA National Heritage Fellowship award in 2011. The Hirabayashis have previously participated in ACTA'S Apprenticeship Program and Living Cultures grant. Photo: Tom Pich Photography

NEA Chair Jane Chu (3rd from left) visits with ACTA staff and newly-appointed NEA Council Member and Del Rey writer and organic peach farmer David “Mas” Masumoto (second from left) in Fresno, 2011.

Amy Kitchener (Alliance for California Traditional Arts) (center in blue dress) with fellow board and staff of the Library of Congress American Folklife Center. (L-R): Cliff Murphy (Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Matthew Quinn (Veterans Affairs), Cheryl Schiele (NEA), Nicki Saylor (Executive Director American Folklife Center), Heather Hodges (Historic New Orleans Collection), Natalie Merchant (Musician), Ricky Punzalan (University of Michigan), John Patrick Rice (Great Basin College), and Jessica Turner (American Folklore Society), in front of the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress, April 20, 2023.

Filipina dancer Caroline Cabading performs at ACTA’s Traditional Arts Roundtable in San Francisco in 2024.⁠ Photo: Hewitt Visuals/ACTA.⁠

Malik Sow (R) and friends perform at our office opening party at Grand Performances in downtown LA in 2012. Photo by Abel Gutierrez.

A comic character played by actor Tenzin Ngawang stumbles, drinks, and cajoles the audience with recitation and physical comedy at a Chaksam-Pa performance in 2011. Photo: ACTA

San Joaquin Valley-based Grupo Nuu Yuku perform La Danza de los Diablos, a sacred dance of the Mixteco community from Oaxaca, Mexico, at our Sounds of California inaugural concert, at James Moore Theater in the Oakland Museum of California on December 6, 2015. Photo: ACTA.

Member of San Jose Taiko performs at Mayferia event, Sept. 2017. Photo: ACTA.

Students from Maqueos Music Academy perform Oaxacan orchestral music at Promise Zone Arts Live! in Los Angeles in 2019. Photo by Timo Saarelma/ACTA.

Singers and musicians from the Omnira Institute's Awon Omnira Choir create connections between the African-American experience and African spirituality through their sacred drumming and chants at the SOC: Bayview concert in 2018. Photo: Sonia Narang/ACTA.

ACTA Artist Fellow Omar Ramirez (far right) guides participants in ACTA’s session discussing cultural organizing strategies at the REMAP LA Conference. Photo: T. Saarelma/ACTA, 2019.

While at the Oglala Lakota Artspace, National Folklife Network convening participants made wasna, a traditional Lakota dish, with Helene Gaddie. Photo: National Folklife Network

Avis Punkin (North Fork Mono, R) with her grand-daughter and 2003 ACTA Apprentice in coiled basketry Carly Tex. Photo: Amy Kitchener/ACTA, 2003.

(L-R) Josie Talamantez, unidentified photographer, Bess Lomax Hawes, and Charlie Seemann at the January 1997 California Arts Council Asilomar conference in Pacific Grove, CA, during which the Alliance for California Traditional Arts was founded. Other co-founders not pictured included: John Bishop, Jo Farb Hernandez, Terry Liu, Amy Kitchener, Malcolm Margolin, Libby Maynard, and David Roche. Photo: Vibul Wonprasat, courtesy of Charlie Seemann.

Living Cultures, a magazine of arts and community, was ACTA’s first publication helmed by David Roche.

The first board meeting of ACTA at the Fresno Arts Council, Feb. 28, 2002. Back (L-R): Jo Farb Hernandez, Peter Pennekamp, Charlie Seemann, Frank LaPena, Natividad Cano, Hugo Morales, Dan Sheehy, Joel Jacinto, Malcolm Margolin, Nancy Marquez. Front (L-R): Amy Kitchener, Libby Maynard. Photo: ACTA.

Amy Kitchener, Co-Founder of the Alliance for California Traditions Arts in 2002. Photo: ACTA.

A snapshot of staff gathered together in 2009 at ACTA’s first-ever office on the second floor of the Fresno Arts Council. L to R: Amy Kitchener, Suzanne Hildebrand, Lily Kharrazi, Sherwood Chen, Amy Lawrence. Photo: ACTA.

ACTA staff Suzanne Hildebrand, Amy Kitchener, and Lily Kharrazi get settled in the new San Francisco office at the Tides Center in The Presidio in 2009. Photo: S. Chen/ACTA.

A young girl participates in Movimiento Cultural de la Union Indigena’s Triqui Dreaming weaving project in Sonoma County, funded by the Living Cultures Grant in 2011. Photo: Lily Kharrazi/ACTA.

Drummers from Garifuna American Heritage Foundation United invite the celebrants to dance at the opening of ACTA's downtown Los Angeles office co-hosted by Grand Performances, August 21, 2012. Photo: Abel Gutierrez/ACTA.

Staff and board of ACTA at a board meeting in San Francisco, Oct. 2017. Photo: J. Jameson Merchant/ACTA.

Photos of Building Healthy Communities artist fellows Omar Ramirez, Luz Marlene Cordero, Ofelia Esparza, Rosanna Ahrens Esparza, and Dalila Mendez with ACTA staff Betty Marín and Quetzal Flores in front of La Cultura Cura Altar, Nov 2020. Photo: ACTA.

The Susana Arenas Dance Company performing Afro- Cuban repertoire received a prestigious commission for new work in 2022 from the Hewlett 50 Art Commission. Photo courtesy of the organization.

Chike C. Nwoffiah. Photo: Janet Tavares

Staff members gather in Fresno for a Staff and Board Meeting in December 2023. Clockwise from left: Kenya Curry, Amy Kitchener, Leti Flores, Aliah Najmabadi, Jennifer Jameson Merchant, Juhi Gupta, Betty Marín. Photo: ACTA.