Olongapo Disco Presents Dreaming in South East: Joy Across the Diaspora

The Olongapo Disco Presents Dreaming in South East: Joy Across the Diaspora campaign objective is to transmute intergenerational trauma into collective wellness and joy in the lowest quartile California Healthy Places Index communities of Southeast San Diego and National City. The campaign centers on building a community procession to create hope, joy, imagination, and cross-cultural solidarity within the communities and beyond. Intergenerational workshops explore myths and creatures used within the diaspora to solve community problems, ultimately constructing a creature and choreographing its movements within a four-block distance. Engagement will include a community clean day and acknowledgment community land listening day before engaging the community in the culminating performance procession ritual. Local organizations will be invited to participate in this procession and showcase their ancestral or new joy technology in the communal procession. The campaign creates multiple avenues for healing in the community by providing wellness-centered art education and community connection. It empowers residents to see themselves as knowledge holders as they center their ancestral joy archives and future dreams. We will heal historical amnesia, social isolation, and the nervous system through sonically, kinesthetically, and visually exposing residents to new healthy environments and interactions.