Photo of Mama Celeste, Nicki Jizz, and Beatrix Lahaine from The Oaklash Festival 2025 by Brandon Roberts
WHAT IS OAKLASH?
Oaklash is an Oakland-based arts nonprofit that produces large scale Drag performance events, facilitates mutual aid, and provides mentorship to emerging queer and trans leaders in nightlife.
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Our year-round programming aims to create safe and accessible environments that celebrate the diversity of intersectional identities held within our community, especially queer and trans Black, Indigenous, and/or people of color. We hope that by amplifying and supporting the queer art community in the Bay Area, we illuminate the need for investment in the arts in the face of systemic racism, growing economic disparities, and the Bay Area housing crisis.
OAKLASH'S HISTORY
Founded by Beatrix LaHaine and Mama Celeste in 2018, Oaklash has provided a stage to over 600 queer and trans performers from all around the world and raised over half a million dollars to support queer and trans art here in Huichin and Yelamu, also known as the Bay Area.
Our flagship program, The Oaklash Festival of Drag and Queer Performance, is part of our mission to create opportunities that showcase, elevate, and resource local queer and trans talent. Our organization was founded to showcase performances that are boundary-pushing, underrepresented, and unique to the sensibility of the Bay Area. We aim to stay true to the history of Oakland as a home to creative renaissance rooted in diversity.
OAKLASH'S STRATEGIC PLAN
2025 - 2030
Oaklash is committed to building an enduring institution that will support the whole of our queer and trans community for many years to come. We believe that our organization has a critical role to play in enacting and modeling an equitable vision of racial, ethnic, gender, class, and ability empowerment within the Bay Area arts and nightlife sector – and we know we must build a stable foundation to allow this work to continue well beyond our current leadership. As we look toward the future, we are focused on investing in efforts that we believe will grow and sustain not just our small nonprofit but that will support the development of a thriving and vibrant queer cultural ecosystem.​
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GOAL 1: INSTITUTIONAL SUSTAINBILITY
If we...
Then we can...
Which will lead to...
Develop
Multi-Year General Operating Funding Strategies (Individual and Institutional)
Increase Administrative Support (Time, Pay, Team Size)
A Long-Standing Institution that Exists Beyond its Current Leadership
GOAL 2: RESPONSIVE PROGRAMS
If we...
Then we can...
Which will lead to...
Build the Careers & Support the Livelihoods of QTBIPOC Artists
Transition Curation and Decision Making to a New Generation of Leaders
Programs That Remain Authentically Community-Led as Our Organization Continues to Grow
GOAL 3: COMMUNITY SUPPORT
If we...
Then we can...
Which will lead to...
Redistribute Funds and Opportunities to Queer and Trans Artists and Cultural Workers
Build the Agency of Artists & Leaders who will Incubate Opportunities Beyond Oaklash
A Thriving Ecosystem for Queer and Trans Arts in the Bay Area
With these incremental goals in mind, we aim that by the year 2030 we will have a full team of well resourced, highly trained, and deeply interconnected queer and trans leaders carrying this work into it's next iteration. We believe in the future of the Bay Area as a home for queer arts, and we are immensely grateful for those of you who share this vision and who continue to support us in our work along the way.​
SUPPORT THE FUTURE OF QUEER & TRANS ART
​Oaklash is a 501(c)3 registered non-profit charity in the state of California (EIN: 38-4133258)
All donations to Oaklash are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.​​​​​​​​
MEET OUR LEADERSHIP TEAM
Executive Director: Mama Celeste
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Creative Director: Beatrix Lahaine
Board President: Charles Hawthorne
Board Vice-President: Ambrose Trataris
Board Secretary: Maha Wam
Board Treasurer & Bookkeeper: Lex Young
Board of Directors: Vera Hannush
Jethro Cuenca
Emily Odenberg
Brian Ragas
LOTUS BOY
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