Listen & Be Heard

A New Tradition on Marin Street

by

martha cinader


I was not able to experience the big picture of the First Annual Listen & Be Heard Marin Street Summer Arts Festival on Saturday August 18, 2007, because I was quite busy most of the day and night inside Listen & Be Heard Poetry Café. But it was very satisfying to look up and down Marin Street and see people strolling, enjoying the beautiful weather and buying art from local artists. What started out as Tony’s idea, and became a conversation between him and I, which turned into an event that cost practically nothing, but went a long way toward creating good feelings and an image of Marin Street, in downtown Vallejo California, as the center of a burgeoning creative arts movement.
Since Saturday people have walked into the café telling me it was the first time they went inside the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum, that they hadn’t been previously aware of Vallejo Music Theatre’s plans for a performing arts center right across the street from the café, and they didn’t even know that Vallejo has an artists’ guild until Saturday. Others told me that they bought art, or had gotten a wonderful caricature of themselves from none other than our own treasure on Marin Street, Cleven Goudeau.
A real community of artists on Marin Street is beginning to see the possibilites that cooperation and hard work can create with practically no budget. When we say that we want to do something and we will do it, then we put ourselves in a powerful position, where we dictate rather than ask what the program will be.
The pictures above, and the slideshow by Stephen Jacobson really only convey a small portion of the many wonderful moments that made up the day and night. If you took pictures, please share them with us!
Next up from Listen & Be Heard…a political forum for all our local candidates to speak about their commitment or lack of commitment to the arts in Vallejo…coming up in October…stay tuned…

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