Joshua TREE Foundation FOR Arts and ECOLOGY

Our Ecology program with its Arts & Ecology center, is a demonstration site for sustainable drylands management, food security and Ecology education, open to the public. Hundreds of people have toured our grounds, and thousands have learned about drylands Ecology through two filmfeatures highlighting our efforts. Our Ecology education includes permaculture design where we hosted two introductory weekend courses for over 50 people participating, hundreds moretoured our Ecology site. 9 months out of the year we host a bi-weekly stem science pod for 8-13 year olds. We hosted a seed exchange, our first ever farm to table meal for 50 people and several times monthly volunteer days that allow community members to follow the entire process of planting, growing and harvesting food. We also brought youth from the public schools for field trips.

Our residency/public performance program brings diverse world-class musicians/artists for residencies to create and share their work through public performances within our rural community. Being an underserved area, most of these creative offerings would not otherwise be available. We hosted 9 artists for residencies, 6 workshops and 8 muscial and cultural public performances which reached over 600 live audience members in addition, to many hundreds more through media.

Youth program includes interacting with the morongo unified school district to provide educational field trips to our Arts and Ecology center for over 200 kids. We provided forty-five in-school music and cultural assemblies with performances by ten different artists for over 9,000 youth audience members. We provided a music and a drama teacher for the extended learning summer program.