Welcome to folkLAB!
We are a community-based, interdisciplinary art project that is committed to producing work by and creating opportunities for under-represented artists. We are on a mission to practice equitable art-making. We create and curate programing that enriches and empowers artists and the Pittsburgh area communities we call home.
UPDATE (4/16/21): It’s a scary and unpredictable time. Many are reckoning with unprecedented challenges and the pressure of systemic oppression (racial, economic, gender-based, and more) is at an all time high. To help process and cope with the collective and personal traumas we are all experiencing folkLAB is partnering with organizations, artists, educators, and facilitators from the Pittsburgh community to focus in on mental health for all of our 2021 programing. We believe that the arts can be a doorway to collective liberation and healing.
As the incomparable bell hooks said, “the function of art is to do more than tell it like it is– it’s to imagine what is possible” We imagine a better world and we believe it is possible.
Check out what we have going on:
Join us for MAD May! folkLAB is partnering with radical mental health organization Inside Our Minds and a whole host of wonderful artists and educators to offer a whole month of unique, free workshops and digital art exhibitions inspired by the radical mental health movement.
Watch Sadapalooza (March 2021), our most recent show and a laugh/cry extravaganza of stand-up comedy and spoken word poetry!
Check out our virtual experiment When the World is Sick: producing art amidst a pandemic, late-stage capitalism, and beyond (May 2020)
Submit your art work! We are putting out an open call for submission from all sorts of artists whose work explores mental health. Stipends available.
Join our mailing list to stay up-to-date on all the latest programing and art-making opportunities.
Whats On
Virtual art
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