2025 Creative Power Awards

Alex is a Black-white biracial, queer, “Glamputee” performer, dancer, and cultural producer whose live performances and cultural gatherings are love letters to anyone who has ever felt othered. They point to disability justice artists and activists as their North Star, celebrating the truth that embodiment looks good on everybody.

Alex’s Creative Power harnesses the tenacious power of disabled people to transform the pain of marginalization into infectious, joyful art.

Cat Brooks is a theater artist, writer, and community organizer. She is a resident artist with Lower Bottom Playaz. Her one-woman show ‘Tasha, about the in-custody murder of Natasha McKenna won Best of The SF Fringe (2017). Her film, Bottled Spirits, about the harms of gentrification has been nominated for and won multiple awards including Best Narrative Short. She is the co-founder/executive director of the Anti-Police Terror Project and has spent two decades working with communities to radically transform public safety systems.

Cat’s Creative Power inspires people through storytelling and performance to expose abuse in the criminal legal system and imagine the creation of alternatives that prioritize dignity and healing.

Christine Wong Yap is a visual artist and social practitioner specializing in hyperlocal projects which gather and amplify grassroots perspectives on belonging and mental well-being. She merges community engagement and language justice with drawing, lettering, textiles, publications, and public art and activations.

Christine’s Creative Power thoughtfully convenes people across ethnic identities and languages, using visual arts and imagination to inspire others with the goal of honoring, bridging, and healing.

DE ALMA is a trans Latina artist, producer, and DJ whose work blends music, movement, and visual art. Drawing strength from her migration story, she creates large-scale immersive installations that inspire healing, joy, and collective resistance. A cultural organizer and a leading voice in the Bay Area’s underground scene, DE ALMA connects ancestral rhythms with futuristic sounds, celebrating underrepresented communities and imagining new forms of physical, emotional, and spiritual freedom.

DE ALMA’s Creative Power lies in turning survival into ceremony, sound into sanctuary, and community into movement.

Faye Carol is renowned throughout the Bay Area and beyond as a unique and powerful artist, educator, and community activist. She has a career over 60 years as a vocalist, performer, and recording artist in diverse traditions of Black music and is a dedicated educator & community activist, founder of School of The Getdown and other projects.

Faye’s Creative Power builds bridges using the rich cultural and musical legacy of jazz, classical, blues, gospel, funk, and hip-hop.

J. Miko Thomas (aka Landa Lakes), is a Chickasaw multidisciplinary artist whose work spans performance, theater, dance, visual art, writing, and cultural leadership. Their art bridges creativity, activism, and community, creating spaces that honor Two-Spirit identity and celebrate Indigenous and LGBTQ+ expression. A co-founder of the Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirit Powwow and the Weaving Spirits Festival, J. Miko has been a vital voice from the early days of the American Indian and Gay Rights movements to the present, using art as a powerful force for education, healing, and connection.

J. Miko’s Creative Power brings Indigenous and non-Indigenous people together in a shared community space, highlighting that Two-Spirit identity is both deeply rooted in history and vibrantly alive today.

Sarah Crowell is a veteran dancer, choreographer, dance and theater educator, and nonprofit leader who creates powerful collaborative experiences through movement, spoken word, and intimate storytelling, re-imagining the world through the lens of justice. She founded and co-directed the Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company (a former Fund Arts grantee). As Artistic Director and Executive Director of Destiny Arts Center, Sarah inspired generations of youth, teaching artists, and artistic collaborators for 30 years.

Sarah’s Creative Power builds bridges: turning rehearsals and meetings into laboratories for liberation, stages into places that demonstrate what justice and belonging look like, and audience members into people inspired to work for social change.

Tina Valentin Aguirre is a documentarian, artistic and cultural producer, poet, and the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District Director. They are the co-producer and director of Viva 16, a bilingual documentary on queer Latinx experiences in San Francisco. Some of Tina’s curation includes the Chosen Familias exhibition at the GLBT Historical Society Museum, Giving Them Their Flowers/Living Lesbian Legends, and Conjuring Power: Queer and Trans Movements Roots and Futures, a co-curated art exhibition in 2026 at YBCA.

Tina’s Creative Power lies in seeking out beauty to understand and improve the world, artistically treating accounts of AIDS, cancer, and poverty into stories that are remembered with grandeur, celebration, and sparks of magic.

Tommy Wong is an award-winning creative director and arts educator whose public art installations are featured throughout the Bay Area. Tommy brings together government departments and residents to improve underserved neighborhoods through art and beautification. He curates and collaborates on hundreds of large-scale permanent artworks, design builds, and cultural celebrations.

Tommy Wong’s Creative Power lives in listening to the voices of neighborhood residents and bringing them into the public sphere, making art the final product of a process that brings visibility and belonging to disempowered communities.