Manilatown Archive presents: a "Flipping the Boat" miniature boat making workshop
Please join the Manilatown Heritage Foundation at our International Hotel Manilatown Center for a special hands-on workshop where we will be creating miniature boats holding our wishes and dreams for ourselves, our families and our communities. Through personal storytelling we will also explore our own connection to the maritime world and learn about the resilience and culture of Manilatown's maritime connection. Don't miss out on this unique opportunity to connect with our heritage and celebrate the spirit of our ancestors. We especially encourage families to come build boats and share stories together!
"Flipping the Boat" is made possible from the generous support of the Center for Cultural Power, the California Arts Council, the San Francisco Arts Commission, the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workplace Development and Grants for the Arts.
For more information about Flipping the Boat or the Manilatown Heritage Foundation please contact us at: mhf@manilatown.org
About the Flipping the Boat project:
“Flipping the Boat'' is a community engagement project that speaks to the power and agency of Filipino and all San Francisco Bay Area residents to navigate their boats, ships, communities and lives. This partnershipbetween the Manilatown Heritage Foundation and San Francisco’s Maritime Museum celebrates our sovereign ways of being and encourages us to take the helm of our community “ships” to direct our own destiny.
Each month, from April to July 2024 free intergenerational and family-friendly workshops will take place at the International Hotel Manilatown Center to teach people how to create their own miniature boats that will bear their dreams and wishes for themselves and for the city of San Francisco. Participants will be encouraged to let their boats stay at the Center as part of a growing exhibit of boats representing the voices of our community.
Also from April-July 2024, the Manilatown Heritage Foundation and the San Francisco Maritime Museum will provide workshops and lectures focusing on traditional Philippine ancestral music and dance related to the maritime world, the Filipino-American connection to San Francisco maritime history, celestial navigation and traditional boat making.
On Sunday, August 4th we will invite all workshop participants and the larger community to join us at San Francisco's Aquatic Park for a special launching of our community boats into Aquatic Cove to symbolically reclaim our ancestral connection to the waterways, releases our wishes, and bring our boats back to our Manilatown home. Participants will be invited to walk with us from Aquatic Park, through North Beach and to the International Hotel Manilatown Center in Chinatown to commmemorate the 1977 I-Hotel Eviction, the most dramatic housing rights battleground in America’s History. We will recall the names and stories of the I-Hotel tenants (many of whom were merchant seamen, longshoremen and fishermen), and transition from a Commemoration event to a Reclamation event in which participants will actively reclaim our connection to each other as one San Francisco Bay Area maritime community.
