Connecting North Oakland Neighbors Through Stories, Shared Resources & Celebrations

What We Do

Commons Archive’s Projects, Workshops and Celebrations are programmed to foster and…

Support Neighborhood Mutual Aid
Develop Neighborhood Literacy
Build Community at the Library
Honor Neighborhood History Keepers
Amplify Neighbors Voices
Make Neighborhood History Accessible

"WHO ARE WE? WHAT IS THIS PLACE? WHO DOES IT BELONG TO?" - Brock Winstead, neighbor since 2003

Commons Archive is a creative grassroots history project. We collaborate with North Oakland, CA groups and organizations to connect neighbors through stories, shared resources and celebrations.

Since 2016, Commons Archive has been empowering longtime and new neighbors as narrators and creators of their many local histories. We invite neighbors from all walks of life to express, sing, dance, read and listen to the multilayered stories that continue to shape this neighborhood.

By embracing traditional block club hospitality, Commons Archive supports community resiliency and carry stories of our neighborhoods, the stories that make a place home. We honor the many histories of this rapidly changing North Oakland neighborhood. Our interactive format preserves neighbor knowledge that, if undocumented, will disappear.

We collaboratively explores issues like: whose knowledge is valued; connections among new and longtime neighbors; how neighborhood culture can both remain intact and evolve - ways a neighborhood becomes a community. Using Participatory Action Research (PAR), Commons Archive empowers neighbors as experts of their experiences.

To learn how to live with one another, we need to share and listen to each others’ stories.

COMMONS ARCHIVE thrives on the support of many North Oakland and Bay Area organizations, community groups and neighbors. We acknowledge and honor that North Oakland sits on the land of the Ohlone people, today politically represented by the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area. We recognize the Muwekma Ohlone people past and present who have settled, nurtured and loved this land, and are grateful to live here.