Mt. SAC’s 11th annual Culturama will be on Oct. 25-26 and Nov. 1-2 providing students and the community with the opportunity to network with other peers and learn from professional artists, writers and professors.
Culturama is organized by the English, creative writing and the art department. There will be workshops throughout the event that cover a range of creative outlets including comic book writing, poetry, animation and other art mediums. All workshops are open to artists of all skill levels.
Culturama will span two weekends, starting at 9 a.m. each day. The first weekend will be held in person while the following weekend will take place online.
According to the Culturama website, it is “an annual event full of workshops designed to help participants exercise their creativity.”
Every year, Culturama tries to incorporate new themes to attract a wider audience. This year’s theme will be based on cosplay with a contest being held at the end of the first weekend. Workshops leading up to the contest will also be themed around cosplay-related art.
“We try to bring in the community as well as the college students but our focus has definitely been driven towards college students and giving them a place just to start to network,” Fine Arts Coordinator for Culturama Melissa Macias said.
With the addition of Zoom due to the lockdown in 2020, the event has become more global in that the online component allowed a wider outreach. Guest speakers from outside the country have been invited to speak, joining from countries like Canada and even Japan.
With the integration of Zoom following the 2020 lockdown Culturama has expanded globally allowing for a bigger audience. The virtual component has enabled the inclusion of international speakers and participants.
Culturama began in 2008 under the name Writer’s Weekend, an event for writers organized by Mt. SAC professors Lloyd Aquino and John Brantingham. As the event grew it incorporated arts leading to a name change as well as the inclusion of a wider amount of subjects.
For more information about Culturama and how to RSVP, visit their website here.