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382 upcoming events · West Cliff · Natural Bridges

From Mission Street out to West Cliff and Natural Bridges: shows, trivia and game nights at The Cruz Room, nature programs at Natural Bridges State Beach, exhibits at the Institute of the Arts and Sciences, and programs at the Seymour Marine Discovery Center.

← All areas Downtown Santa Cruz →

Oct
6

Fall 2026 Afterschool & Maker Sundays at SCMS!

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM · $37

Fall Semester Maker Classes (August 11 – December 20, 2026) Join us for a semester of hands-on creativity at SC Maker Studios! Students explore 3D printing, laser engraving, woodworking, sewing, robotics, beading, arts & crafts, and more, creating projects to take home each week. All materials are included (except electronic robot components). Weekly Class Times: Youth (Ages 6½–12) Tuesdays: 3:00–5:00 PM Wednesdays: 1:00–3:00 PM & 3:00–5:00 PM Thursdays: 3:00–5:00 PM Sundays: 10:00 AM–12:00 PM Teens (Ages 11–17) Sundays: 12:30–2:30 PM Register for the full semester to reserve your spot [https://scmakerstudios.com/fall-semester-2026/], or join us for individual Maker Sunday drop-in sessions [https://scmakerstudios.com/sunday-maker-registration/]. Spaces are limited!

Community Family 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
6

Readings from Winter In America

📍 Satori Arts
🕒 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM · FREE

InterAct Open Mic at Satori Arts. FREE community poetry jam featuring readings from Winter In America (Still Anthology Are you ready to get your poetry on? Join us on October 6, 2026 at Satori Arts for InterAct , a FREE open mic night, from 7-9 pm, featuring Roxi Power, co-editor of the anthology Winter in America (Still :. A reading hosted by co-editor Roxi Power of local poets published in the anthology, Winter in America (Still: Poets, Writers, and Artists Respond to a Fractured World (Carbonation Press, 2026). This large, full-color anthology is a sequel to the 2025 volume and, according to a review by Misfit Magazine: “a much-needed update of Carolyn Forché’s classic anthology, Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness.” Along with Forché, 200 contributors respond in the sequel to a world still fractured by post-election events. Come share your spoken word work or poetry with the community, or come out to support our local readers! Sign up to read starting at 6:30 pm. Limited seating. For more information, visit https://www.satoriarts.org/upcoming-events. 1st and 3rd Tuesdays. Free. Satori Arts, 815 Almar, #9, Santa Cruz (warehouse building near the back, follow signs)

Oct
7

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
7

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
7

Fall 2026 Afterschool & Maker Sundays at SCMS!

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM · $37

Fall Semester Maker Classes (August 11 – December 20, 2026) Join us for a semester of hands-on creativity at SC Maker Studios! Students explore 3D printing, laser engraving, woodworking, sewing, robotics, beading, arts & crafts, and more, creating projects to take home each week. All materials are included (except electronic robot components). Weekly Class Times: Youth (Ages 6½–12) Tuesdays: 3:00–5:00 PM Wednesdays: 1:00–3:00 PM & 3:00–5:00 PM Thursdays: 3:00–5:00 PM Sundays: 10:00 AM–12:00 PM Teens (Ages 11–17) Sundays: 12:30–2:30 PM Register for the full semester to reserve your spot [https://scmakerstudios.com/fall-semester-2026/], or join us for individual Maker Sunday drop-in sessions [https://scmakerstudios.com/sunday-maker-registration/]. Spaces are limited!

Community Family 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
7

Under the Mantle of an Idocile Dream: Film Screening and Conversation with Denise Carrascosa and Gina Dent

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM · FREE

The Institute of the Arts and Sciences invites you to a screening of the video-performance Under the Mantle of an Idocile Dream (Bruna Castro, Brasil, 2026), followed by a conversation between Denise Carrascosa and Gina Dent around the historical, political and spiritual relations between Afro-Brazilian ancestrality, visual arts and abolition feminism in Brazil. Denise Carrascosa is a writer, lawyer, and full professor of literature at the Federal University of Bahia, in Brasil. She holds a Ph.D. in Theory and Criticism of Literature and Culture (UFBA) and completed postdoctoral studies in the History of Slavery in Brasil (UFRB). In 2010, she launched the abolitionist project Indocile Bodies and Free Minds: an art-education program for literary writing at the Women’s Prison Complex in Bahia, where she established, together with sentenced women inmates, the Free Minds Library (2012), enabling Sisters inside to access sentence remission through reading. Gina Dent is Professor of Humanities and Faculty Director of the Institute of the Arts & Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she has won awards for her teaching (Dizikes Faculty Teaching Award), advocacy (Chancellor’s Award for Diversity), and research (Innovator of the Year). Currently, she serves as Principal Investigator and Co-Director for Visualizing Abolition , a multidisciplinary project—involving exhibitions, events, fellowships, and academic programs—addressing the global crisis of incarceration through art and visual culture. Her recent collaborative projects grow out of her decades-long work as a social justice advocate— Abolition. Feminism. Now. (co-authored with Angela Davis, Erica Meiners, and Beth Richie, Haymarket 2022), and Seeing through Stone (exhibition catalog, Marquand 2024). She works with several organizations nationally and internationally, including Columbia University’s Center for Justice and Australia’s Sisters Inside, primarily on justice-related concerns.

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
8

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
8

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
8

Far West Fungi: Myco-Mixer

📍 Far West Fungi
🕒 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Far West Fungi’s Santa Cruz Store & Café is launching Myco-Mixers – Enjoy an afternoon of food, fun, and fungi! Each Myco-Mixer will feature complimentary bites, product samples, and happy hour discounts on café favorites. Guests can meet the Far West Fungi team, learn about unique mushroom products, and discover new flavors to take home. Head Far West in Santa Cruz each week to taste house-made tacos, explore featured products, and find your new favorite mushroom treats. Whether you’re a foodie, mushroom enthusiast, or just looking for a fun Thursday outing, Myco-Mixers are the perfect way to experience local one-of-a-kind flavors!

Food & Drink Free 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
8

Fall 2026 Afterschool & Maker Sundays at SCMS!

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM · $37

Fall Semester Maker Classes (August 11 – December 20, 2026) Join us for a semester of hands-on creativity at SC Maker Studios! Students explore 3D printing, laser engraving, woodworking, sewing, robotics, beading, arts & crafts, and more, creating projects to take home each week. All materials are included (except electronic robot components). Weekly Class Times: Youth (Ages 6½–12) Tuesdays: 3:00–5:00 PM Wednesdays: 1:00–3:00 PM & 3:00–5:00 PM Thursdays: 3:00–5:00 PM Sundays: 10:00 AM–12:00 PM Teens (Ages 11–17) Sundays: 12:30–2:30 PM Register for the full semester to reserve your spot [https://scmakerstudios.com/fall-semester-2026/], or join us for individual Maker Sunday drop-in sessions [https://scmakerstudios.com/sunday-maker-registration/]. Spaces are limited!

Community Family 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
8
★ Featured

Afrobeats Nite at the IAS

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM · See listing

Join us for a night of dancing, joy, and community organized by Afrobeats Nite Santa Cruz featuring DJ Mai Girl and DJ Monk Earl. In addition to music, there will be vendors, food trucks, and late night showings of the exhibitions Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá and Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still . This event is FREE and open to the public. Afrobeats Nite at the IAS is a collaboration with Visualizing Abolition , an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to contribute to the unfolding collective story and alternative imagining underway to create a future free of prisons. Jase “Monk” Earl is a Santa Cruz–based DJ, curator, cultural producer, educator, and writer whose understanding of community is rooted in Hip Hop culture and shaped by his upbringing in the immigrant-rich neighborhood of Crown Heights, Brooklyn. As the founder of Afroscope Promotions and founder, curator, and resident DJ of Afrobeats Nite Santa Cruz, he creates public spaces where African and diasporic music become catalysts for connection, cultural exchange, and collective celebration. DJ Mai Girl plays festivals, clubs, shows, and private events all over the West Coast and beyond. Her unique blend of genres and hand-picked selections– whether it be hip hop, soul, house, jazzy vibes, old school jams, Afro, Caribbean or Latin rhythms– keep people moving all night. She consistently plays one Stevie or Prince song every set to remind herself of why she started DJing in the first place.

Education Free 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
9

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS, features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One, 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity, 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. The exhibition opens on October 2, 2026, with a performance by vocal artist and composer Samita Sinha from 5-6 pm followed by celebrations with the artists. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons.

Art & Culture Free 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
9

Gateway School Fall Festival

📍 Gateway School
🕒 4:00 PM – 6:30 PM · See listing

Gateway’s Fall Festival is back! Come for the hay rides, stay for the tacos, and enjoy everything in between–inflatable obstacle courses, face painting, crafts, games, Gladiator battles, Penny Creamery–and more! All are welcome to enjoy this festive community tradition!

Family Community 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
9

Parents Night Out

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 5:30 PM – 8:00 PM · $60

Parents' Night Out (Ages 6½–12) Enjoy a night off while your child spends the evening creating at SC Maker Studios! Kids will explore our maker stations, including 3D printing, woodworking, sewing, beading, and laser engraving with guidance from our instructors, and take home their handmade projects. Dinner included with registration. Time: 5:30 PM – 8:00 PM (Drop-off: 5:30–5:45 PM | Pick-up: 7:45–8:00 PM) (Dinner included) Available Dates: Friday, August 28 – Pizza Night Friday, September 18 – Taco Night Friday, October 9 – Quesadilla Night Friday, November 20 – Pasta Station Friday, December 18 – Sandwich Night Register early—spaces are limited! https://scmakerstudios.com/parents-night-out/

Community Family 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
10

Westside Santa Cruz Farmers' Market

📍 Mission St Extension & Western Dr
🕒 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM · FREE

Saturday mornings at Hwy 1 and Western Drive, year-round. Fifteen-plus years on the Westside, with 100% certified organic produce, pasture-raised meats, sustainable seafood, flowers, and eggs, plus cook-to-order meals, live local music, and espresso from Syllable. On the edge of the greenbelt, minutes from Natural Bridges and Wilder Ranch, a bike ride from Downtown. Free parking, easy to reach.

Markets Free 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
10

Santa Cruz Maker Studios at the Seymour Center

📍 Seymour Marine Discovery Center
🕒 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM · See listing

Check out Santa Cruz Maker Studios at the Seymour Center. Hands-on Activities include: Build and test a seawall Make a wooden sea creature Ocean-themed 3D kits Create felt ocean ornamentsActivities included with admission. While supplies last.

Education Family 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
10

Seymour Center’s Seaside Storytime

📍 Seymour Marine Discovery Center
🕒 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM · See listing

Get ready to set sail on a storybook adventure! 📚 ✨ It’s the ultimate weekend treat to spark big imaginations, foster a love for nature, and nurture the next generation of ocean heroes! 🌊 🐚 📖 Our friends at Bookshop Santa Cruz have hand-selected a collection of books about the environment that are perfect for young readers. We hope to see you there! Join Seaside Storytime on the second Saturday of every month!

Education Family 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
10

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
10

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
10

BRIX

📍 The Cruz Room
🕒 7:30 PM · See listing

7:30pm - 9:30pm · Hard rock and grunge band from Martinez, bringing a heavy mix of familiar covers and original music. Their sound pulls from the raw energy of 90s grunge and hard rock, with loud guitars, driving rhythms, and plenty of attitude. Expect songs you know alongside their own material, all delivered with the same gritty, high energy sound.

Oct
11

Youth Robot Series - Santa Cruz Maker Studios

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM · $245

Youth Robot Series at Santa Cruz Maker Studios Join us for our 3-week Robot Series designed for youth (ages 7-12) who love building, problem-solving, and technology. Each Sunday, students will work through exciting engineering challenges while building and programming their very own robot. Time: 3 Sunday Sessions 10am -12pm for youth (7-12 years old). Please see available sessions. Cost Overview: $245 per series (includes all robot materials) Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/robot-series-registration-form/

Family Education 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
11

Natural Bridges State Beach: Welcome Back Monarchs Day!

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM · FREE

Enjoy welcoming the monarch butterflies back to the park, where they will spend the winter. Monarch butterflies are notorious for never reading or sharing itineraries. The little prima donnas could show up early or even after their own welcoming festival! Not to worry. No matter what the butterfly schedule ends up being this year, you will be entertained! There will be live music, crafts, games, free cake, hand cranked pumpkin ice cream, a kids parade, art, cookies, story time, hand painting, a skit, live music, food, games, activities and more! Natural Bridges usually keeps butterfly numbers up to date at this phone number: (831) 423-4609 *This event is free. Parking is $10 to park in the day-use lot. Hang on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park or beach, you have paid for them all! There are over 14 in Santa Cruz County to explore for the day!

Oct
11

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
11

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
11

Teen Robot Series - Santa Cruz Maker Studios

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM · $245

Teen Robot Series at Santa Cruz Maker Studios Join us for our 3-week Robot Series designed for teens (ages 11-17) who love building, problem-solving, and technology. Each Sunday, students will work through exciting engineering challenges while building and programming their very own robot. Time: 3 Sunday Sessions 12:30-2:30pm for teens (11-17 years old). Please see available sessions. Cost Overview: $245 per series (includes all robot materials) Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/robot-series-registration-form/

Family Education 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
11

Negative Association

📍 The Cruz Room
🕒 7:00 PM · See listing

7:00 pm - 9:00 pm · We are a high energy alternative rock band with a dark edge! We fuse powerful riffs, memorable melodies, and emotionally driven songwriting! Overall we love putting on a show and connecting with the crowd!

Oct
11

Bird in the Hand Trio

📍 The Cruz Room
🕒 7:00 PM · See listing

7 - 9pm · Bird in the Hand is a trio of women who play an eclectic mix of tunes from Americana and traditional to current songs and swinging originals. Members play stand-up bass, mandolin, guitar and all sing with harmonizing vocals. We create a positive vibe and a warm and unique sound.

Oct
12

Hosted Board Game Night: Learn to Play Reef & Ruins

📍 The Cruz Room
🕒 6:30 PM · See listing

6:30pm · Learn to Play Reef & Ruins at 6:30pm! Fast and crunchy roll & write exploring underwater shipwrecks and asymmetric reefs. 1 - 100 players, 30 mins, ages 8+. Taught on the spot — no experience needed. Part of Hosted Board Game Night (6 - 8pm) — library of 30+ games, raffle, merch & a Learn to Play featured game demo at 6:30pm with The Game Night Collective. Trivia 8 - 10pm.

Music Family 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
13

Gateway School Tour

📍 Gateway School
🕒 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM · FREE

Voted the Best Elementary, Middle and Private School in Santa Cruz, Gateway’s campus is robust with purpose and play. From the creative haven of Kindy Island, to the muddy hands and bright minds in our Life Lab outdoor classroom, every space of our campus invites discovery. And don’t miss our middle schoolers diving deep into electives fueled by their passions and interests. Tours monthly on Tuesdays, or any weekday by request: [email protected]. Come for a visit. See what happens.

Community Free 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
14

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
14

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
15

Youth Fall 2026 Camps at SCMS

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 9:00 AM – 2:30 PM · $96

Youth Fall Maker Camp (ages 7-12) Our Fall 2026 Maker Camps offer children ages 7–12 a fun, hands-on way to spend their school breaks! Camp runs from 9:00am–2:30pm, with 1:00-5:00pm extended Maker Studio hours available during select minimum school days. Campers will build, create, and explore projects across our studio zones, including 3D printing, woodworking, sewing, beading, and laser engraving. Each camp is designed to spark creativity, encourage problem-solving, and keep kids engaged through exciting, project-based learning. Early bird pricing is available! Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/fall-camps-2026/

Family Education 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
15

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
15

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
15

Far West Fungi: Myco-Mixer

📍 Far West Fungi
🕒 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Far West Fungi’s Santa Cruz Store & Café is launching Myco-Mixers – Enjoy an afternoon of food, fun, and fungi! Each Myco-Mixer will feature complimentary bites, product samples, and happy hour discounts on café favorites. Guests can meet the Far West Fungi team, learn about unique mushroom products, and discover new flavors to take home. Head Far West in Santa Cruz each week to taste house-made tacos, explore featured products, and find your new favorite mushroom treats. Whether you’re a foodie, mushroom enthusiast, or just looking for a fun Thursday outing, Myco-Mixers are the perfect way to experience local one-of-a-kind flavors!

Food & Drink Free 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
15

406 Mission Open House

📍 Santa Cruz
🕒 4:00 PM – 7:00 PM · FREE

Come visit the businesses inside 406 Mission Street for a fun-filled event that you won't want to miss! Enjoy special offers, exciting activities, delicious refreshments, and the opportunity to connect with your neighbors. Bring your friends and family and get to know the vibrant community of local businesses. We can’t wait to see you there!

Wellness Free 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
15

Poetry and the Visual Slavery Archive in Brazil with Luciany Aparecida

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM · FREE

The Institute of the Arts and Sciences invites you to an evening of poetry and conversation with Luciany Aparecida, author of Macala (2022) and Aziri (2026), among other works. These books of poetry are inspired by nineteenth-century photographs of Black women taken in Brazil, shaped by the historical contexts of slavery and scientific racism. The research explores how poetry and fiction can reinscribe these images beyond the colonial gaze that originally produced them. Once confined within systems of economic exploitation and the aesthetic contemplation of whiteness, these women are now reimagined through a poetic practice in which poetry and photography converge as a feminist and abolitionist mode of critically engaging the archive. Following the wake, the work seeks to transform documents of violence into new aesthetic forms of freedom. This event is organized by lawyer and professor Denise Carrascoa, Visualizing Abolition Scholar in Residence. Luciany Aparecida is a writer as well as a psychoanalyst in training. She holds a Ph.D. in Literature, with research focused on literature and culture. She is the author of Mata Doce, a novel, winner of the 2024 São Paulo Literature Award and finalist for the 2024 Jabuti Prize. She also is the author of two poetry collections: Aziri (2016) and Macala (2022), as well as Joanna Mina (2021), a play. Aparecida is a researcher with the Black Ancestry Literature Group at PUCSP and was a guest writer in Berlin at the Middle Ground 2025 Festival; in Mexico at the Guadalajara International Book Fair in 2025; in Colombia at the Bogotá International Book Fair in 2024; in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at the FLUP 2024 Literary Festival of the Peripheries and at the FLIP 2022 Paraty International Literary Festival.

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
16

Youth Fall 2026 Camps at SCMS

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 9:00 AM – 2:30 PM · $96

Youth Fall Maker Camp (ages 7-12) Our Fall 2026 Maker Camps offer children ages 7–12 a fun, hands-on way to spend their school breaks! Camp runs from 9:00am–2:30pm, with 1:00-5:00pm extended Maker Studio hours available during select minimum school days. Campers will build, create, and explore projects across our studio zones, including 3D printing, woodworking, sewing, beading, and laser engraving. Each camp is designed to spark creativity, encourage problem-solving, and keep kids engaged through exciting, project-based learning. Early bird pricing is available! Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/fall-camps-2026/

Family Education 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
16

The RETURN of Malakai Lawton & Friends

📍 The Cruz Room
🕒 7:00 PM · See listing

7:00pm - 9:00 pm · Malakai Lawton is a Santa Cruz singer-songwriter, UC Santa Cruz music student, and also stars in a number of local bands. Known for his powerful vocals and fresh take on classic songs, Malakai also invites talented musical friends to join him on stage throughout the evening, making every performance unique. Expect great music, surprise collaborations, and an unforgettable night at The Cruz Room.

Oct
17

Westside Santa Cruz: Farmers Market

📍 Westside Farmers’ Market
🕒 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM · See listing

The Westside Farmers’ Market takes place every Saturday, year round at the corner of Hwy 1 and Western Drive. Here we serve the communities of the west end of Santa Cruz including Bonny Doon, the North Coast and the University of California, Santa Cruz campus. Sitting on the northern edge of Santa Cruz’s greenbelt this market is a great launching location for a day outdoors at Natural Bridges beach, Wilder Ranch or any adventure spot up the coast. It is also just a hop, skip and a jump, or bike ride, from Downtown. A community hub for over 15 years, the Westside Market showcases a great selection of 100% certified organic produce, artisan foods, beer, body products, tinctures, sustainable seafood, pasture raised meats, flowers and eggs along with cook-to-order cultural meals, live local music and a full espresso bar operated by Syllable. With an abundance of free parking and accessibility on its side, this market makes for a convenient and celebratory Saturday morning outing any time of the year.

Markets Outdoors 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
17

Seymour Center’s Art in the Aquarium

📍 Seymour Marine Discovery Center
🕒 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM · See listing

Dive into your creative side and make a splash with us! 🎨🌊 Bring the whole family and unleash your inner artist while surrounded by fascinating ocean life. Whether you’re a budding painter or just looking for a fun weekend activity, you’ll leave with your very own sea-inspired masterpiece to take home! 🐠✨ Join us on the third Saturday of every month for a fun art project with a talented Seymour volunteer!

Education Family 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
17

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
17

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
18

Youth Robot Series - Santa Cruz Maker Studios

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM · $245

Youth Robot Series at Santa Cruz Maker Studios Join us for our 3-week Robot Series designed for youth (ages 7-12) who love building, problem-solving, and technology. Each Sunday, students will work through exciting engineering challenges while building and programming their very own robot. Time: 3 Sunday Sessions 10am -12pm for youth (7-12 years old). Please see available sessions. Cost Overview: $245 per series (includes all robot materials) Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/robot-series-registration-form/

Family Education 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
18

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
18

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
18

Teen Robot Series - Santa Cruz Maker Studios

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM · $245

Teen Robot Series at Santa Cruz Maker Studios Join us for our 3-week Robot Series designed for teens (ages 11-17) who love building, problem-solving, and technology. Each Sunday, students will work through exciting engineering challenges while building and programming their very own robot. Time: 3 Sunday Sessions 12:30-2:30pm for teens (11-17 years old). Please see available sessions. Cost Overview: $245 per series (includes all robot materials) Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/robot-series-registration-form/

Family Education 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
18

Cold Tuesday

📍 The Cruz Room
🕒 7:00 PM · See listing

7 - 9pm · Cold Tuesday is a cover band of UC Santa Cruz kids who met in college and have mostly been playing house shows so far. We play a mix of classic rock, southern rock, and jam band stuff — Grateful Dead, Stones, Pearl Jam, Tom Petty, Skynyrd — plus fun singalongs like "Brown Eyed Girl," "Hotel California," and "Dancing in the Moonlight." We keep the energy up and like to get people moving and singing along. Looking to bring the house show energy to an actual venue. As always, we can adapt to what you are looking for! We would love, and be honored to play a set for you guys.

Oct
19

Youth Fall 2026 Camps at SCMS

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 1:00 AM – 5:30 PM · $96

Youth Fall Maker Camp (ages 7-12) Our Fall 2026 Maker Camps offer children ages 7–12 a fun, hands-on way to spend their school breaks! Camp runs from 9:00am–2:30pm, with 1:00-5:00pm extended Maker Studio hours available during select minimum school days. Campers will build, create, and explore projects across our studio zones, including 3D printing, woodworking, sewing, beading, and laser engraving. Each camp is designed to spark creativity, encourage problem-solving, and keep kids engaged through exciting, project-based learning. Early bird pricing is available! Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/fall-camps-2026/

Family Education 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
19

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Oct
20

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Oct
20

Youth Fall 2026 Camps at SCMS

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 1:00 PM – 5:30 PM · $96

Youth Fall Maker Camp (ages 7-12) Our Fall 2026 Maker Camps offer children ages 7–12 a fun, hands-on way to spend their school breaks! Camp runs from 9:00am–2:30pm, with 1:00-5:00pm extended Maker Studio hours available during select minimum school days. Campers will build, create, and explore projects across our studio zones, including 3D printing, woodworking, sewing, beading, and laser engraving. Each camp is designed to spark creativity, encourage problem-solving, and keep kids engaged through exciting, project-based learning. Early bird pricing is available! Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/fall-camps-2026/

Family Education 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
20

Anthology Reading– How to Get Home in the Dark

📍 Satori Arts
🕒 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM · See listing

InterAct Open Mic at Satori Arts. FREE community poetry jam and Anthology Launch Reading– How to Get Home in the Dark Are you ready to get your poetry on? Join us on October 20, 2026 at Satori Arts for InterAct , a FREE open mic night, from 7-9 pm, featuring the anthology launch reading of How to Get Home in the Dark: Poems on Mental Health and Healing Come and share poems from the heart. Emilie Lygren, Nancy Miller Gomez, Farnaz Fatemi, and other local poets will read from How to Get Home in the Dark, a new anthology featuring established and emerging writers who take inventory of what impacts their mental health, what has contributed to their healing and growth, and offer short poems for hard days. Emilie Lygren is a poet and outdoor educator who has taught writing in classrooms, research stations, graduate programs, parks, libraries, and beyond. She has also written two books of poetry and dozens of resources on science education and social emotional learning. Emilie lives in San Rafael, CA. Nancy Miller Gomez (she/her) is the author of Inconsolable Objects (YesYes Books, 2024), winner of the 2025 Paterson Prize in Poetry. She served as the Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California, for 2025 and 2026 and received a 2025 Laureate Fellowship Award from The Academy of American Poets. Farnaz Fatemi is an Iranian American writer, former Santa Cruz County Poet Laureate, Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, and founding member of The Hive Poetry Collective. Her book, Sister Tongue رهاوخ†نابز†, won the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. Come share your spoken word work or poetry with the community, or come out to support our local readers! Sign up to read starting at 6:30 pm. Limited seating. For more information, visit https://www.satoriarts.org/upcoming-events. 1st and 3rd Tuesdays. Free. Satori Arts, 815 Almar, #9, Santa Cruz (warehouse building near the back, follow signs)

Oct
21

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Oct
21

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
21

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
21

Youth Fall 2026 Camps at SCMS

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 1:00 PM – 5:30 PM · $96

Youth Fall Maker Camp (ages 7-12) Our Fall 2026 Maker Camps offer children ages 7–12 a fun, hands-on way to spend their school breaks! Camp runs from 9:00am–2:30pm, with 1:00-5:00pm extended Maker Studio hours available during select minimum school days. Campers will build, create, and explore projects across our studio zones, including 3D printing, woodworking, sewing, beading, and laser engraving. Each camp is designed to spark creativity, encourage problem-solving, and keep kids engaged through exciting, project-based learning. Early bird pricing is available! Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/fall-camps-2026/

Family Education 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
22

CruzCon: Open Source for Research & Innovation

📍 Seymour Marine Discovery Center
🕒 10:00 AM – 7:30 PM · FREE

CruzCon brings together UC researchers, faculty, students, campus leadership, and industry partners for a day exploring open source in research and innovation — hosted by the UC Santa Cruz Open Source Program Office (CROSS) and CITRIS and the Banatao Institute at the Seymour Center, UC Santa Cruz. Registration Open Please note that is not an open event as space is limited. It is meant primarily for UC affiliates, industry partners and invited guests. If you are an external participant who has not received a direct invitation please email [email protected] to request one before registering. Attendees are also invited to join the CROSS Annual Oktoberfest , held immediately following the conference.

Education Free 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
22

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Oct
22

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
22

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
22

Youth Fall 2026 Camps at SCMS

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 1:00 PM – 5:30 PM · $96

Youth Fall Maker Camp (ages 7-12) Our Fall 2026 Maker Camps offer children ages 7–12 a fun, hands-on way to spend their school breaks! Camp runs from 9:00am–2:30pm, with 1:00-5:00pm extended Maker Studio hours available during select minimum school days. Campers will build, create, and explore projects across our studio zones, including 3D printing, woodworking, sewing, beading, and laser engraving. Each camp is designed to spark creativity, encourage problem-solving, and keep kids engaged through exciting, project-based learning. Early bird pricing is available! Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/fall-camps-2026/

Family Education 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
22

Far West Fungi: Myco-Mixer

📍 Far West Fungi
🕒 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Far West Fungi’s Santa Cruz Store & Café is launching Myco-Mixers – Enjoy an afternoon of food, fun, and fungi! Each Myco-Mixer will feature complimentary bites, product samples, and happy hour discounts on café favorites. Guests can meet the Far West Fungi team, learn about unique mushroom products, and discover new flavors to take home. Head Far West in Santa Cruz each week to taste house-made tacos, explore featured products, and find your new favorite mushroom treats. Whether you’re a foodie, mushroom enthusiast, or just looking for a fun Thursday outing, Myco-Mixers are the perfect way to experience local one-of-a-kind flavors!

Food & Drink Free 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
22

Rioters: Unruly Images and Freedom Experiments with Patrícia Freitas

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM · See listing

The Institute of the Arts and Sciences invites you to a screening of three short films by Patrícia Freitas about women and incarceration in Brazil, followed by a conversation with the filmmaker. Fleeing Firminas features moments of women inside the Women’s Penal Complex of Salvador in Bahia, Brazil participating in the creative writing workshops . Fleeing Roquelina follows writer Dona Roquelina’s release from prison. Rioters is an in-production feature-length documentary that begins in the Lemos de Brito Penitentiary in Salvador and tells the stories of Black women from the post-abolition era in old Bahia to the present day; women who dared and continue to dare to occupy spaces that, though still hostile to them today, allow their art, knowledge, and ancestral power to resonate. Patrícia Freitas , documentary filmmaker, holds a master’s degree in literature and culture from the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), and is an associate researcher at PAVIC—Researchers in Audiovisual Media, Iconography, and Content. In over two decades of work, she has directed documentaries such as Ira (2004) on religious racism, which received an honorable mention at Cinesul (2005) and the Ibero-American Film and Video Festival (2005) and was screened at the Ethnographic Film Festival (2005), Negros em Movimento (2005), about Black theater in Bahia and Rio de Janeiro; and Enquanto te espero, a luz coalhou (2018), a poetic documentary screened at the Arqfilm Festival in Santiago, Chile, and Puebla, Mexico, among others. In recent years, she has worked as an assistant director on the series Enredos da liberdade (dir. Luis Carlos de Alencar), currently streaming on Globoplay, and as a researcher for the series Histórias submersas (dir. Paulo Alcântara) and Todos os sonhos (dir. Sofia Federico), both aired on TVE Bahia, among others. She also served as an assistant to Joel Zito Araújo and Hermano Penna, leading figures in Brazilian cinema.

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
23

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Oct
24

Westside Santa Cruz: Farmers Market

📍 Westside Farmers’ Market
🕒 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM · See listing

The Westside Farmers’ Market takes place every Saturday, year round at the corner of Hwy 1 and Western Drive. Here we serve the communities of the west end of Santa Cruz including Bonny Doon, the North Coast and the University of California, Santa Cruz campus. Sitting on the northern edge of Santa Cruz’s greenbelt this market is a great launching location for a day outdoors at Natural Bridges beach, Wilder Ranch or any adventure spot up the coast. It is also just a hop, skip and a jump, or bike ride, from Downtown. A community hub for over 15 years, the Westside Market showcases a great selection of 100% certified organic produce, artisan foods, beer, body products, tinctures, sustainable seafood, pasture raised meats, flowers and eggs along with cook-to-order cultural meals, live local music and a full espresso bar operated by Syllable. With an abundance of free parking and accessibility on its side, this market makes for a convenient and celebratory Saturday morning outing any time of the year.

Markets Outdoors 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
24

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Oct
24

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
24

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
24

Dream Inn Santa Cruz: Oceanfront Dinner

📍 Dream Inn Santa Cruz
🕒 4:00 PM – 9:00 PM · $265

She Sets the Table is Dream Inn Santa Cruz’s intimate, multi-course dinner celebrating the creativity, talent, and stories of women in culinary. For this special evening, three accomplished culinary women will come together to create a collaborative menu inspired by the season, the Central Coast, and their individual culinary perspectives: Chef Michelle Gomez Executive Chef, Dream Inn Santa Cruz Chef Angela Sweetser Queen of Hearts, Las Vegas Luciana Costanza Gran Gelato Caffè The evening will also feature Ryan Beauregard, Winemaker at Beauregard Family Winery, pairing Santa Cruz Mountains wines in support of an evening celebrating women in culinary. Guests will arrive at 4:00 PM for a welcome reception with wine and passed bites, followed by a seated multi-course dinner on Cowell Beach. Expect beautiful food, thoughtful wine pairings, meaningful conversation, and a front-row seat to a Monterey Bay sunset. Please click the link in the orange button above to reserve your spot.

Food & Drink 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
25

Halloween Day at Santa Cruz Maker Studios

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 10:00 AM – 2:30 PM · $45

Halloween Day at Santa Cruz Maker Studios Get into the spooky spirit and join us for a special Halloween-themed Maker Day at SC Maker Studios! In addition to all of our favorite maker stations, including 3D printing, laser engraving, woodworking, sewing, and beading, participants will enjoy exclusive Halloween-inspired crafts and activities available only during this special event. Come ready to create, explore, and make something delightfully spooky! Session Times: Youth Session (Ages 7–12): 10:00am–12:00pm Teen Session (Ages 11–17): 12:30pm–2:30pm Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/fall-events-2026/

Community Family 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
25

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Oct
25

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
25

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
26

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Oct
27

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Oct
27

Circulo de Poetas Inaugural Anthology Launch at Satori Arts

📍 Satori Arts
🕒 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM · FREE

Circulo de Poetas and Writers, a community of authors dedicated to the creation, promotion, and dissemination of multilingual multicultural poetry and prose through workshops, publications, and public presentations. The community celebrates the inaugural launch of an anthology of prose and poetry by writers from Latin America, the United States, the Middle East, and Asia at local artist and writer venue, Satori Arts, and hosted by Writers of Color.

Art & Culture Free 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
28

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Oct
28

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
28

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Cultural Event 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
29

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Oct
29

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Cultural Event 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
29

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

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Oct
29

Far West Fungi: Myco-Mixer

📍 Far West Fungi
🕒 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Far West Fungi’s Santa Cruz Store & Café is launching Myco-Mixers – Enjoy an afternoon of food, fun, and fungi! Each Myco-Mixer will feature complimentary bites, product samples, and happy hour discounts on café favorites. Guests can meet the Far West Fungi team, learn about unique mushroom products, and discover new flavors to take home. Head Far West in Santa Cruz each week to taste house-made tacos, explore featured products, and find your new favorite mushroom treats. Whether you’re a foodie, mushroom enthusiast, or just looking for a fun Thursday outing, Myco-Mixers are the perfect way to experience local one-of-a-kind flavors!

Food & Drink Free 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
30

Seymour Center Homeschool Day: Spectacular Science

📍 Seymour Marine Discovery Center
🕒 10:00 AM – 12:30 PM · See listing

Calling all homeschool families! Join the Seymour Center on Friday, October 30 , at 10 a.m. for a morning of hands-on science investigations, aquarium feeds, a scavenger hunt, and lots more. • Enjoy hands-on science investigations, crafts, and a scavenger hunt. • Make an enormous whale skeleton appear in front of your eyes, then walk inside it with our special virtual reality experience. • Touch live bat stars and crabs, and learn about bone-eating zombie worms and hagfish. • Marvel at Ms. Blue, a massive blue whale skeleton, and discover how science and engineering innovations helped us restore this beloved Santa Cruz icon. Admission fees apply. Special activities are included at no additional cost. RSVP here by October 15 to receive details and activities.

Education Family 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
30

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Oct
30

Aaron Blyth & Fara Leona

📍 The Cruz Room
🕒 7:00 PM · See listing

7 - 9pm · Santa Cruz singer/ songwriter Aaron Blyth is a little bit of everything. Raised on the beaches of Hawaii and in the Mountains of the Pacific Northwest, his music is as diverse and eclectic as his background. Pulling from strong influences of Folk, Rock, Blues and Funk, this singer/songwriter blends his favorite flavors into a uniquely energetic sound that is sonically simple and lyrically deep.

Oct
31

Westside Santa Cruz: Farmers Market

📍 Westside Farmers’ Market
🕒 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM · See listing

The Westside Farmers’ Market takes place every Saturday, year round at the corner of Hwy 1 and Western Drive. Here we serve the communities of the west end of Santa Cruz including Bonny Doon, the North Coast and the University of California, Santa Cruz campus. Sitting on the northern edge of Santa Cruz’s greenbelt this market is a great launching location for a day outdoors at Natural Bridges beach, Wilder Ranch or any adventure spot up the coast. It is also just a hop, skip and a jump, or bike ride, from Downtown. A community hub for over 15 years, the Westside Market showcases a great selection of 100% certified organic produce, artisan foods, beer, body products, tinctures, sustainable seafood, pasture raised meats, flowers and eggs along with cook-to-order cultural meals, live local music and a full espresso bar operated by Syllable. With an abundance of free parking and accessibility on its side, this market makes for a convenient and celebratory Saturday morning outing any time of the year.

Markets Food & Drink 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
31

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Oct
31

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Oct
31

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Cultural Event 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
1

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
1

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Cultural Event 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
1

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
2

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
2

Hosted Board Game Night

📍 The Cruz Room
🕒 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM · See listing

Hosted Mic’d Board Games 6 – 8 Trivia 8 – 10 The Game Night Collective is a Santa Cruz-based board game community that creates welcoming, hosted tabletop events where people can discover new games, meet new friends, and enjoy structured game nights without needing prior experience. Unlike a typical board game meetup where players are expected to know games or organize themselves, The Game Night Collective provides a curated experience. Each event includes a library of 50+ board games, guided game teaching, hosted featured games, community announcements, raffles, and opportunities to connect with other players. Whether you arrive alone or with a group, the goal is to make it easy to sit down and start playing. The flagship event takes place every Monday at The Cruz Room, where attendees can enjoy open gaming, learn two featured games taught by founder Courtney Laschkewitsch, participate in trivia, browse the Merch Chest, and become part of Santa Cruz’s growing tabletop gaming community. At its core, The Game Night Collective exists to bring people together through board games. It combines the structure and consistency of a trivia company with the creativity, strategy, and social connection of modern tabletop gaming, creating a space where newcomers and experienced gamers alike can feel welcome.

Family Community 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
3

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
3

InterAct Open Mic with Readings from Magpie On the Gallows Contributors

📍 Satori Arts
🕒 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM · See listing

InterAct Open Mic at Satori Arts. FREE community poetry jam featuring editor and contributor readings from Magpie On the Gallows anthology. Are you ready to get your poetry on? Join us on Nov 3, 2026 at Satori Arts for InterAct , a FREE open mic night, from 7-9 pm, featuring readings from editor and contributors of Magpie On the Gallows anthology. Magpie on the Gallows: Poems on the Art of Bosch and Bruegel collects famous and newly minted poems on the art of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. These painters from the Northern Renaissance are startlingly relevant today, with their critiques of authorities, exposure of church hypocrisies, and assault on holier-than-thou judgments. Though the artworks were created in the 1500s — featuring surrealistic scenes from dreams and nightmares, illustrations of ancient proverbs, and close examination of natural landscapes and peasant life — they still mesmerize. Combining well-known poems by Sylvia Plath, W. H. Auden, William Carlos Williams, Sandra Gilbert, Czesław Miłosz, and Robert Hass with work by some of today’s finest poets — Mosab Abu Toha, Charles Simic, Kimiko Hahn, Kaveh Akbar, Rae Armantrout, and Traci Brimhall, among others — this anthology will delight fans of the artists, readers of poetry, and anyone trying to comprehend our mad (and maddening!) world. Join co-editor David Allen Sullivan and contributors Dion O’Reilly, Addie Mahmassani, Wilma Marcus Chandler, Jessica Breheny, Nancy Miller Gomez, Taylor Gorman, Ken Weisner and Maggie Paul as they read from the anthology. Come share your spoken word work or poetry with the community, or come out to support our local readers! Sign up to read starting at 6:30 pm. Limited seating. For more information, visit https://www.satoriarts.org/upcoming-events. 1st and 3rd Tuesdays. Free. Satori Arts, 815 Almar, #9, Santa Cruz (warehouse building near the back, follow signs)

Nov
4

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
4

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
4

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Cultural Event 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
5

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
5

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Cultural Event 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
5

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
5

Far West Fungi: Myco-Mixer

📍 Far West Fungi
🕒 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Far West Fungi’s Santa Cruz Store & Café is launching Myco-Mixers – Enjoy an afternoon of food, fun, and fungi! Each Myco-Mixer will feature complimentary bites, product samples, and happy hour discounts on café favorites. Guests can meet the Far West Fungi team, learn about unique mushroom products, and discover new flavors to take home. Head Far West in Santa Cruz each week to taste house-made tacos, explore featured products, and find your new favorite mushroom treats. Whether you’re a foodie, mushroom enthusiast, or just looking for a fun Thursday outing, Myco-Mixers are the perfect way to experience local one-of-a-kind flavors!

Food & Drink Free 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
6

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
7

Westside Santa Cruz: Farmers Market

📍 Westside Farmers’ Market
🕒 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM · See listing

The Westside Farmers’ Market takes place every Saturday, year round at the corner of Hwy 1 and Western Drive. Here we serve the communities of the west end of Santa Cruz including Bonny Doon, the North Coast and the University of California, Santa Cruz campus. Sitting on the northern edge of Santa Cruz’s greenbelt this market is a great launching location for a day outdoors at Natural Bridges beach, Wilder Ranch or any adventure spot up the coast. It is also just a hop, skip and a jump, or bike ride, from Downtown. A community hub for over 15 years, the Westside Market showcases a great selection of 100% certified organic produce, artisan foods, beer, body products, tinctures, sustainable seafood, pasture raised meats, flowers and eggs along with cook-to-order cultural meals, live local music and a full espresso bar operated by Syllable. With an abundance of free parking and accessibility on its side, this market makes for a convenient and celebratory Saturday morning outing any time of the year.

Markets Community 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
7

Volunteer@ Lighthouse Field!

📍 Lighthouse Field State Beach
🕒 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM · FREE

Come get your hands dirty and help native plants thrive in some of the park’s most popular day-use areas and trails! Volunteers will water and weed around previously planted native plants while removing invasive and non-native vegetation, including ice plant, Himalayan blackberry, English ivy, mustard, wild radish, and other weeds. We’ll use hand tools like hori horis, Pulaskis, hand clippers, and loppers, plus 5-gallon buckets and other equipment to haul water to thirsty plants. Ages 8 and older are welcome! Minors must be accompanied by an adult and bring a signed waiver. Snacks will be provided, but we recommend bringing a personal lunch. Want something extra? Steamers Lane Coffee Supply has food, snacks, and refreshments available for purchase. Come lend a hand, get some fresh air, and help keep the park’s native habitat healthy and thriving! 🌿 REGISTER HERE: https://volunteer.calparks.org/opportunity/a3tJw000002qFeXIAU/lighthouse-field-state-beach Meeting Location: 644-670 W Cliff Dr, Santa Cruz, CA 95060 Google Link : https://goo.gl/maps/Wowc8kYVpneDUKoV7 The most convenient parking is in the lots near Steamer Lane Coffee Supply. There is also street parking available on Pelton Ave if the lot is full. Carpooling is recommended. Meet in the open field immediately behind Steamer Lane Supply. Volunteer event signs will be posted at the entrances to the parking lots to help guide volunteers to the correct location.

Outdoors Free 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
7

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
7

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Cultural Event 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
7

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
7

Left Unsaid

📍 The Cruz Room
🕒 7:00 PM · See listing

8 - 10pm · We are a Hiphop/Jazz Fusion duo from Los Angeles comprising of a keyboard/synth and drum set. We are very self contained with our setup and play instrumental originals with some covers.

Nov
8

Youth Robot Series - Santa Cruz Maker Studios

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM · $245

Youth Robot Series at Santa Cruz Maker Studios Join us for our 3-week Robot Series designed for youth (ages 7-12) who love building, problem-solving, and technology. Each Sunday, students will work through exciting engineering challenges while building and programming their very own robot. Time: 3 Sunday Sessions 10am -12pm for youth (7-12 years old). Please see available sessions. Cost Overview: $245 per series (includes all robot materials) Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/robot-series-registration-form/

Family Education 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
8

Santa Cruz Maker Studios at the Seymour Center

📍 Seymour Marine Discovery Center
🕒 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM · See listing

Check out Santa Cruz Maker Studios at the Seymour Center. Hands-on Activities include: Build and test a seawall Make a wooden sea creature Ocean-themed 3D kits Create felt ocean ornamentsActivities included with admission. While supplies last.

Education Family 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
8

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
8

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Cultural Event 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
8

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
8

Teen Robot Series - Santa Cruz Maker Studios

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM · $245

Teen Robot Series at Santa Cruz Maker Studios Join us for our 3-week Robot Series designed for teens (ages 11-17) who love building, problem-solving, and technology. Each Sunday, students will work through exciting engineering challenges while building and programming their very own robot. Time: 3 Sunday Sessions 12:30-2:30pm for teens (11-17 years old). Please see available sessions. Cost Overview: $245 per series (includes all robot materials) Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/robot-series-registration-form/

Family Education 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
9

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
9

Hosted Board Game Night

📍 The Cruz Room
🕒 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM · See listing

Hosted Mic’d Board Games 6 – 8 Trivia 8 – 10 The Game Night Collective is a Santa Cruz-based board game community that creates welcoming, hosted tabletop events where people can discover new games, meet new friends, and enjoy structured game nights without needing prior experience. Unlike a typical board game meetup where players are expected to know games or organize themselves, The Game Night Collective provides a curated experience. Each event includes a library of 50+ board games, guided game teaching, hosted featured games, community announcements, raffles, and opportunities to connect with other players. Whether you arrive alone or with a group, the goal is to make it easy to sit down and start playing. The flagship event takes place every Monday at The Cruz Room, where attendees can enjoy open gaming, learn two featured games taught by founder Courtney Laschkewitsch, participate in trivia, browse the Merch Chest, and become part of Santa Cruz’s growing tabletop gaming community. At its core, The Game Night Collective exists to bring people together through board games. It combines the structure and consistency of a trivia company with the creativity, strategy, and social connection of modern tabletop gaming, creating a space where newcomers and experienced gamers alike can feel welcome.

Family Community 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
10

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
11

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
11

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
11

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
12

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
12

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
12

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
12

Far West Fungi: Myco-Mixer

📍 Far West Fungi
🕒 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Far West Fungi’s Santa Cruz Store & Café is launching Myco-Mixers – Enjoy an afternoon of food, fun, and fungi! Each Myco-Mixer will feature complimentary bites, product samples, and happy hour discounts on café favorites. Guests can meet the Far West Fungi team, learn about unique mushroom products, and discover new flavors to take home. Head Far West in Santa Cruz each week to taste house-made tacos, explore featured products, and find your new favorite mushroom treats. Whether you’re a foodie, mushroom enthusiast, or just looking for a fun Thursday outing, Myco-Mixers are the perfect way to experience local one-of-a-kind flavors!

Food & Drink Free 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
13

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
13

James Spooner in conversation with Johnny Damm on AFROPUNK, anger, and other things

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM · See listing

The Institute of the Arts and Sciences invites you to a conversation with filmmaker and graphic novelist James Spooner about his latest graphic novel, moderated by cartoonist Johnny Damm. It Starts with Anger : A Punk Beginning. An AFROPUNK Ending tells the origin story of the multi-million-dollar AFROPUNK festival—beginning not with big stages or brand sponsorship, but with one mixed-race teenager’s search for belonging in the nineties New York City punk scene. The conversation will be followed by a book signing by Spooner. Local author and punk historian John Malkin will also be signing his new book, Punk Spirit! – An Oral History of Punk Rock, Spirituality, and Liberation , and Johnny Damm will have his latest comic, I’m a Cop: Real Life Horror Comics No. 3 available.

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
14

Westside Santa Cruz: Farmers Market

📍 Westside Farmers’ Market
🕒 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM · See listing

The Westside Farmers’ Market takes place every Saturday, year round at the corner of Hwy 1 and Western Drive. Here we serve the communities of the west end of Santa Cruz including Bonny Doon, the North Coast and the University of California, Santa Cruz campus. Sitting on the northern edge of Santa Cruz’s greenbelt this market is a great launching location for a day outdoors at Natural Bridges beach, Wilder Ranch or any adventure spot up the coast. It is also just a hop, skip and a jump, or bike ride, from Downtown. A community hub for over 15 years, the Westside Market showcases a great selection of 100% certified organic produce, artisan foods, beer, body products, tinctures, sustainable seafood, pasture raised meats, flowers and eggs along with cook-to-order cultural meals, live local music and a full espresso bar operated by Syllable. With an abundance of free parking and accessibility on its side, this market makes for a convenient and celebratory Saturday morning outing any time of the year.

Markets Food & Drink 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
14

Seymour Center’s Seaside Storytime

📍 Seymour Marine Discovery Center
🕒 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM · See listing

Get ready to set sail on a storybook adventure! 📚 ✨ It’s the ultimate weekend treat to spark big imaginations, foster a love for nature, and nurture the next generation of ocean heroes! 🌊 🐚 📖 Our friends at Bookshop Santa Cruz have hand-selected a collection of books about the environment that are perfect for young readers. We hope to see you there! Join Seaside Storytime on the second Saturday of every month!

Education Family 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
14

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
14

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
14

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
15

Youth Robot Series - Santa Cruz Maker Studios

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM · $245

Youth Robot Series at Santa Cruz Maker Studios Join us for our 3-week Robot Series designed for youth (ages 7-12) who love building, problem-solving, and technology. Each Sunday, students will work through exciting engineering challenges while building and programming their very own robot. Time: 3 Sunday Sessions 10am -12pm for youth (7-12 years old). Please see available sessions. Cost Overview: $245 per series (includes all robot materials) Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/robot-series-registration-form/

Family Education 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
15

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
15

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
15

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
15

Teen Robot Series - Santa Cruz Maker Studios

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM · $245

Teen Robot Series at Santa Cruz Maker Studios Join us for our 3-week Robot Series designed for teens (ages 11-17) who love building, problem-solving, and technology. Each Sunday, students will work through exciting engineering challenges while building and programming their very own robot. Time: 3 Sunday Sessions 12:30-2:30pm for teens (11-17 years old). Please see available sessions. Cost Overview: $245 per series (includes all robot materials) Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/robot-series-registration-form/

Family Education 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
16

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
16

Hosted Board Game Night

📍 The Cruz Room
🕒 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM · See listing

Hosted Mic’d Board Games 6 – 8 Trivia 8 – 10 The Game Night Collective is a Santa Cruz-based board game community that creates welcoming, hosted tabletop events where people can discover new games, meet new friends, and enjoy structured game nights without needing prior experience. Unlike a typical board game meetup where players are expected to know games or organize themselves, The Game Night Collective provides a curated experience. Each event includes a library of 50+ board games, guided game teaching, hosted featured games, community announcements, raffles, and opportunities to connect with other players. Whether you arrive alone or with a group, the goal is to make it easy to sit down and start playing. The flagship event takes place every Monday at The Cruz Room, where attendees can enjoy open gaming, learn two featured games taught by founder Courtney Laschkewitsch, participate in trivia, browse the Merch Chest, and become part of Santa Cruz’s growing tabletop gaming community. At its core, The Game Night Collective exists to bring people together through board games. It combines the structure and consistency of a trivia company with the creativity, strategy, and social connection of modern tabletop gaming, creating a space where newcomers and experienced gamers alike can feel welcome.

Family Community 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
17

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
17

InterAct Open Mic with Featured Poet Lisa Allen Ortiz

📍 Satori Arts
🕒 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM · See listing

InterAct Open Mic at Satori Arts. FREE community poetry jam featuring Lisa Allen Ortiz Are you ready to get your poetry on? Join us on November 17, 2026 at Satori Arts for InterAct , a FREE open mic night, from 7-9 pm, featuring poet Lisa Allen Ortiz. Lisa Allen Ortiz is the author of two poetry collections: Stem winner of the 2021 Idaho Prize judged by Ilya Kaminsky and Guide to the Exhibit , winner of the 2016 Perugia Press Prize. She is also co-translator with Sara Danielle Rivera of The Blinding Star, Selected Poems by Blanca Varela which one the 2022 Northern California Book Prize for Poetry in Translation. Come share your spoken word work or poetry with the community, or come out to support our local readers! Sign up to read starting at 6:30 pm. Limited seating. For more information, visit https://www.satoriarts.org/upcoming-events. 1st and 3rd Tuesdays. Free. Satori Arts, 815 Almar, #9, Santa Cruz (warehouse building near the back, follow signs)

Nov
18

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
18

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
18

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
19

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
19

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
19

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
19

Far West Fungi: Myco-Mixer

📍 Far West Fungi
🕒 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Far West Fungi’s Santa Cruz Store & Café is launching Myco-Mixers – Enjoy an afternoon of food, fun, and fungi! Each Myco-Mixer will feature complimentary bites, product samples, and happy hour discounts on café favorites. Guests can meet the Far West Fungi team, learn about unique mushroom products, and discover new flavors to take home. Head Far West in Santa Cruz each week to taste house-made tacos, explore featured products, and find your new favorite mushroom treats. Whether you’re a foodie, mushroom enthusiast, or just looking for a fun Thursday outing, Myco-Mixers are the perfect way to experience local one-of-a-kind flavors!

Food & Drink Free 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
20

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
20

Parents Night Out

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 5:30 PM – 8:00 PM · $60

Parents' Night Out (Ages 6½–12) Enjoy a night off while your child spends the evening creating at SC Maker Studios! Kids will explore our maker stations, including 3D printing, woodworking, sewing, beading, and laser engraving with guidance from our instructors, and take home their handmade projects. Dinner included with registration. Time: 5:30 PM – 8:00 PM (Drop-off: 5:30–5:45 PM | Pick-up: 7:45–8:00 PM) (Dinner included) Available Dates: Friday, August 28 – Pizza Night Friday, September 18 – Taco Night Friday, October 9 – Quesadilla Night Friday, November 20 – Pasta Station Friday, December 18 – Sandwich Night Register early—spaces are limited! https://scmakerstudios.com/parents-night-out/

Community Family 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
21

Westside Santa Cruz: Farmers Market

📍 Westside Farmers’ Market
🕒 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM · See listing

The Westside Farmers’ Market takes place every Saturday, year round at the corner of Hwy 1 and Western Drive. Here we serve the communities of the west end of Santa Cruz including Bonny Doon, the North Coast and the University of California, Santa Cruz campus. Sitting on the northern edge of Santa Cruz’s greenbelt this market is a great launching location for a day outdoors at Natural Bridges beach, Wilder Ranch or any adventure spot up the coast. It is also just a hop, skip and a jump, or bike ride, from Downtown. A community hub for over 15 years, the Westside Market showcases a great selection of 100% certified organic produce, artisan foods, beer, body products, tinctures, sustainable seafood, pasture raised meats, flowers and eggs along with cook-to-order cultural meals, live local music and a full espresso bar operated by Syllable. With an abundance of free parking and accessibility on its side, this market makes for a convenient and celebratory Saturday morning outing any time of the year.

Markets Food & Drink 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
21

Seymour Center’s Art in the Aquarium

📍 Seymour Marine Discovery Center
🕒 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM · See listing

Dive into your creative side and make a splash with us! 🎨🌊 Bring the whole family and unleash your inner artist while surrounded by fascinating ocean life. Whether you’re a budding painter or just looking for a fun weekend activity, you’ll leave with your very own sea-inspired masterpiece to take home! 🐠✨ Join us on the third Saturday of every month for a fun art project with a talented Seymour volunteer!

Education Family 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
21

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
21

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
21

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
22

Youth Robot Series - Santa Cruz Maker Studios

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM · $245

Youth Robot Series at Santa Cruz Maker Studios Join us for our 3-week Robot Series designed for youth (ages 7-12) who love building, problem-solving, and technology. Each Sunday, students will work through exciting engineering challenges while building and programming their very own robot. Time: 3 Sunday Sessions 10am -12pm for youth (7-12 years old). Please see available sessions. Cost Overview: $245 per series (includes all robot materials) Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/robot-series-registration-form/

Family Education 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
22

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
22

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
22

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
22

Teen Robot Series - Santa Cruz Maker Studios

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM · $245

Teen Robot Series at Santa Cruz Maker Studios Join us for our 3-week Robot Series designed for teens (ages 11-17) who love building, problem-solving, and technology. Each Sunday, students will work through exciting engineering challenges while building and programming their very own robot. Time: 3 Sunday Sessions 12:30-2:30pm for teens (11-17 years old). Please see available sessions. Cost Overview: $245 per series (includes all robot materials) Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/robot-series-registration-form/

Family Education 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
23

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
23

Hosted Board Game Night

📍 The Cruz Room
🕒 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM · See listing

Hosted Mic’d Board Games 6 – 8 Trivia 8 – 10 The Game Night Collective is a Santa Cruz-based board game community that creates welcoming, hosted tabletop events where people can discover new games, meet new friends, and enjoy structured game nights without needing prior experience. Unlike a typical board game meetup where players are expected to know games or organize themselves, The Game Night Collective provides a curated experience. Each event includes a library of 50+ board games, guided game teaching, hosted featured games, community announcements, raffles, and opportunities to connect with other players. Whether you arrive alone or with a group, the goal is to make it easy to sit down and start playing. The flagship event takes place every Monday at The Cruz Room, where attendees can enjoy open gaming, learn two featured games taught by founder Courtney Laschkewitsch, participate in trivia, browse the Merch Chest, and become part of Santa Cruz’s growing tabletop gaming community. At its core, The Game Night Collective exists to bring people together through board games. It combines the structure and consistency of a trivia company with the creativity, strategy, and social connection of modern tabletop gaming, creating a space where newcomers and experienced gamers alike can feel welcome.

Family Community 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
24

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
25

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
25

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
25

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

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Nov
26

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
26

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

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Nov
26

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

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Nov
26

Far West Fungi: Myco-Mixer

📍 Far West Fungi
🕒 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Far West Fungi’s Santa Cruz Store & Café is launching Myco-Mixers – Enjoy an afternoon of food, fun, and fungi! Each Myco-Mixer will feature complimentary bites, product samples, and happy hour discounts on café favorites. Guests can meet the Far West Fungi team, learn about unique mushroom products, and discover new flavors to take home. Head Far West in Santa Cruz each week to taste house-made tacos, explore featured products, and find your new favorite mushroom treats. Whether you’re a foodie, mushroom enthusiast, or just looking for a fun Thursday outing, Myco-Mixers are the perfect way to experience local one-of-a-kind flavors!

Food & Drink Free 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
27

West Cliff: Holiday Outdoor Market

📍 Steamer Lane at Lighthouse Point
🕒 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM · See listing

Just in time for holiday shopping, head to the outdoor market with unique artisans while taking in the spectacular view of the ocean. This one-of-a-kind market will be held in two parking lots along West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz. This is always a popular spot for locals and tourists, as it overlooks the famous Steamer Lane surf spot. The market will feature hand-crafted gifts and admission is FREE! 10am – 4pm both Friday and Saturday.

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Nov
27

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
28

Westside Santa Cruz: Farmers Market

📍 Westside Farmers’ Market
🕒 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM · See listing

The Westside Farmers’ Market takes place every Saturday, year round at the corner of Hwy 1 and Western Drive. Here we serve the communities of the west end of Santa Cruz including Bonny Doon, the North Coast and the University of California, Santa Cruz campus. Sitting on the northern edge of Santa Cruz’s greenbelt this market is a great launching location for a day outdoors at Natural Bridges beach, Wilder Ranch or any adventure spot up the coast. It is also just a hop, skip and a jump, or bike ride, from Downtown. A community hub for over 15 years, the Westside Market showcases a great selection of 100% certified organic produce, artisan foods, beer, body products, tinctures, sustainable seafood, pasture raised meats, flowers and eggs along with cook-to-order cultural meals, live local music and a full espresso bar operated by Syllable. With an abundance of free parking and accessibility on its side, this market makes for a convenient and celebratory Saturday morning outing any time of the year.

Markets Food & Drink 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
28

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
28

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
28

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
29

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
29

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

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Nov
29

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Nov
30

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Nov
30

Hosted Board Game Night

📍 The Cruz Room
🕒 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM · See listing

Hosted Mic’d Board Games 6 – 8 Trivia 8 – 10 The Game Night Collective is a Santa Cruz-based board game community that creates welcoming, hosted tabletop events where people can discover new games, meet new friends, and enjoy structured game nights without needing prior experience. Unlike a typical board game meetup where players are expected to know games or organize themselves, The Game Night Collective provides a curated experience. Each event includes a library of 50+ board games, guided game teaching, hosted featured games, community announcements, raffles, and opportunities to connect with other players. Whether you arrive alone or with a group, the goal is to make it easy to sit down and start playing. The flagship event takes place every Monday at The Cruz Room, where attendees can enjoy open gaming, learn two featured games taught by founder Courtney Laschkewitsch, participate in trivia, browse the Merch Chest, and become part of Santa Cruz’s growing tabletop gaming community. At its core, The Game Night Collective exists to bring people together through board games. It combines the structure and consistency of a trivia company with the creativity, strategy, and social connection of modern tabletop gaming, creating a space where newcomers and experienced gamers alike can feel welcome.

Family Community 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
1

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
2

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
2

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
2

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
3

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
3

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
3

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
4

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
5

Westside Santa Cruz: Farmers Market

📍 Westside Farmers’ Market
🕒 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM · See listing

The Westside Farmers’ Market takes place every Saturday, year round at the corner of Hwy 1 and Western Drive. Here we serve the communities of the west end of Santa Cruz including Bonny Doon, the North Coast and the University of California, Santa Cruz campus. Sitting on the northern edge of Santa Cruz’s greenbelt this market is a great launching location for a day outdoors at Natural Bridges beach, Wilder Ranch or any adventure spot up the coast. It is also just a hop, skip and a jump, or bike ride, from Downtown. A community hub for over 15 years, the Westside Market showcases a great selection of 100% certified organic produce, artisan foods, beer, body products, tinctures, sustainable seafood, pasture raised meats, flowers and eggs along with cook-to-order cultural meals, live local music and a full espresso bar operated by Syllable. With an abundance of free parking and accessibility on its side, this market makes for a convenient and celebratory Saturday morning outing any time of the year.

Markets Food & Drink 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
5

Volunteer@ Lighthouse Field!

📍 Lighthouse Field State Beach
🕒 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM · FREE

Come get your hands dirty and help native plants thrive in some of the park’s most popular day-use areas and trails! Volunteers will water and weed around previously planted native plants while removing invasive and non-native vegetation, including ice plant, Himalayan blackberry, English ivy, mustard, wild radish, and other weeds. We’ll use hand tools like hori horis, Pulaskis, hand clippers, and loppers, plus 5-gallon buckets and other equipment to haul water to thirsty plants. Ages 8 and older are welcome! Minors must be accompanied by an adult and bring a signed waiver. Snacks will be provided, but we recommend bringing a personal lunch. Want something extra? Steamers Lane Coffee Supply has food, snacks, and refreshments available for purchase. Come lend a hand, get some fresh air, and help keep the park’s native habitat healthy and thriving! 🌿 REGISTER HERE: https://volunteer.calparks.org/opportunity/a3tJw000002qFeXIAU/lighthouse-field-state-beach Meeting Location: 644-670 W Cliff Dr, Santa Cruz, CA 95060 Google Link : https://goo.gl/maps/Wowc8kYVpneDUKoV7 The most convenient parking is in the lots near Steamer Lane Coffee Supply. There is also street parking available on Pelton Ave if the lot is full. Carpooling is recommended. Meet in the open field immediately behind Steamer Lane Supply. Volunteer event signs will be posted at the entrances to the parking lots to help guide volunteers to the correct location.

Outdoors Free 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
5

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
5

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
5

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
6

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
6

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
6

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
6

The RETURN of Malakai Lawton & Friends

📍 The Cruz Room
🕒 6:00 PM · See listing

7:00pm - 9:00pm · Malakai Lawton is a Santa Cruz singer-songwriter, UC Santa Cruz music student, and also stars in a number of local bands. Known for his powerful vocals and fresh take on classic songs, Malakai also invites talented musical friends to join him on stage throughout the evening, making every performance unique. Expect great music, surprise collaborations, and an unforgettable night at The Cruz Room.

Dec
7

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
7

Hosted Board Game Night

📍 The Cruz Room
🕒 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM · See listing

Hosted Mic’d Board Games 6 – 8 Trivia 8 – 10 The Game Night Collective is a Santa Cruz-based board game community that creates welcoming, hosted tabletop events where people can discover new games, meet new friends, and enjoy structured game nights without needing prior experience. Unlike a typical board game meetup where players are expected to know games or organize themselves, The Game Night Collective provides a curated experience. Each event includes a library of 50+ board games, guided game teaching, hosted featured games, community announcements, raffles, and opportunities to connect with other players. Whether you arrive alone or with a group, the goal is to make it easy to sit down and start playing. The flagship event takes place every Monday at The Cruz Room, where attendees can enjoy open gaming, learn two featured games taught by founder Courtney Laschkewitsch, participate in trivia, browse the Merch Chest, and become part of Santa Cruz’s growing tabletop gaming community. At its core, The Game Night Collective exists to bring people together through board games. It combines the structure and consistency of a trivia company with the creativity, strategy, and social connection of modern tabletop gaming, creating a space where newcomers and experienced gamers alike can feel welcome.

Family Community 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
8

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
9

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
9

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
9

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
10

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
10

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
10

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
11

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
12

Westside Santa Cruz: Farmers Market

📍 Westside Farmers’ Market
🕒 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM · See listing

The Westside Farmers’ Market takes place every Saturday, year round at the corner of Hwy 1 and Western Drive. Here we serve the communities of the west end of Santa Cruz including Bonny Doon, the North Coast and the University of California, Santa Cruz campus. Sitting on the northern edge of Santa Cruz’s greenbelt this market is a great launching location for a day outdoors at Natural Bridges beach, Wilder Ranch or any adventure spot up the coast. It is also just a hop, skip and a jump, or bike ride, from Downtown. A community hub for over 15 years, the Westside Market showcases a great selection of 100% certified organic produce, artisan foods, beer, body products, tinctures, sustainable seafood, pasture raised meats, flowers and eggs along with cook-to-order cultural meals, live local music and a full espresso bar operated by Syllable. With an abundance of free parking and accessibility on its side, this market makes for a convenient and celebratory Saturday morning outing any time of the year.

Markets Food & Drink 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
12

Santa Cruz Maker Studios at the Seymour Center

📍 Seymour Marine Discovery Center
🕒 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM · See listing

Check out Santa Cruz Maker Studios at the Seymour Center. Hands-on Activities include: Build and test a seawall Make a wooden sea creature Ocean-themed 3D kits Create felt ocean ornamentsActivities included with admission. While supplies last.

Education Family 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
12

Seymour Center’s Seaside Storytime

📍 Seymour Marine Discovery Center
🕒 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM · See listing

Get ready to set sail on a storybook adventure! 📚 ✨ It’s the ultimate weekend treat to spark big imaginations, foster a love for nature, and nurture the next generation of ocean heroes! 🌊 🐚 📖 Our friends at Bookshop Santa Cruz have hand-selected a collection of books about the environment that are perfect for young readers. We hope to see you there! Join Seaside Storytime on the second Saturday of every month!

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Dec
12

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
12

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
12

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
13

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
13

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
13

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
14

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
14

Hosted Board Game Night

📍 The Cruz Room
🕒 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM · See listing

Hosted Mic’d Board Games 6 – 8 Trivia 8 – 10 The Game Night Collective is a Santa Cruz-based board game community that creates welcoming, hosted tabletop events where people can discover new games, meet new friends, and enjoy structured game nights without needing prior experience. Unlike a typical board game meetup where players are expected to know games or organize themselves, The Game Night Collective provides a curated experience. Each event includes a library of 50+ board games, guided game teaching, hosted featured games, community announcements, raffles, and opportunities to connect with other players. Whether you arrive alone or with a group, the goal is to make it easy to sit down and start playing. The flagship event takes place every Monday at The Cruz Room, where attendees can enjoy open gaming, learn two featured games taught by founder Courtney Laschkewitsch, participate in trivia, browse the Merch Chest, and become part of Santa Cruz’s growing tabletop gaming community. At its core, The Game Night Collective exists to bring people together through board games. It combines the structure and consistency of a trivia company with the creativity, strategy, and social connection of modern tabletop gaming, creating a space where newcomers and experienced gamers alike can feel welcome.

Family Community 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
15

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
15

InterAct Open Mic with Featured Poet Veronica Kornberg

📍 Satori Arts
🕒 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM · See listing

InterAct Open Mic at Satori Arts. FREE community poetry jam featuring Veronica Kornberg Are you ready to get your poetry on? Join us on Dec. 15, 2026 at Satori Arts for InterAct , a FREE open mic night, from 7-9 pm, featuring poet Veronica Kornberg. A Bay Area poet, Veronica Kornberg splits her time between Portola Valley and Pescadero. She is the recipient of the Morton Marcus Poetry Prize, and the Wandering Aengus Book Award in Poetry. Her poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review , New Ohio Review , Poet Lore , Catamaran , Plume , and Calyx , among other journals. Her first full-length collection, Strange Gift , was published in April 2026. When she’s not writing, she’s on her knees in the dirt, converting an acre of ice plant into a habitat garden of native coastal scrub. Come share your spoken word work or poetry with the community, or come out to support our local readers! Sign up to read starting at 6:30 pm. Limited seating. For more information, visit https://www.satoriarts.org/upcoming-events. 1st and 3rd Tuesdays. Free. Satori Arts, 815 Almar, #9, Santa Cruz (warehouse building near the back, follow signs)

Dec
16

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
16

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
16

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
17

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
17

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Cultural Event 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
17

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
18

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
18

Parents Night Out

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 5:30 PM – 8:00 PM · $60

Parents' Night Out (Ages 6½–12) Enjoy a night off while your child spends the evening creating at SC Maker Studios! Kids will explore our maker stations, including 3D printing, woodworking, sewing, beading, and laser engraving with guidance from our instructors, and take home their handmade projects. Dinner included with registration. Time: 5:30 PM – 8:00 PM (Drop-off: 5:30–5:45 PM | Pick-up: 7:45–8:00 PM) (Dinner included) Available Dates: Friday, August 28 – Pizza Night Friday, September 18 – Taco Night Friday, October 9 – Quesadilla Night Friday, November 20 – Pasta Station Friday, December 18 – Sandwich Night Register early—spaces are limited! https://scmakerstudios.com/parents-night-out/

Community Family 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
19

Westside Santa Cruz: Farmers Market

📍 Westside Farmers’ Market
🕒 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM · See listing

The Westside Farmers’ Market takes place every Saturday, year round at the corner of Hwy 1 and Western Drive. Here we serve the communities of the west end of Santa Cruz including Bonny Doon, the North Coast and the University of California, Santa Cruz campus. Sitting on the northern edge of Santa Cruz’s greenbelt this market is a great launching location for a day outdoors at Natural Bridges beach, Wilder Ranch or any adventure spot up the coast. It is also just a hop, skip and a jump, or bike ride, from Downtown. A community hub for over 15 years, the Westside Market showcases a great selection of 100% certified organic produce, artisan foods, beer, body products, tinctures, sustainable seafood, pasture raised meats, flowers and eggs along with cook-to-order cultural meals, live local music and a full espresso bar operated by Syllable. With an abundance of free parking and accessibility on its side, this market makes for a convenient and celebratory Saturday morning outing any time of the year.

Markets Food & Drink 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
19

Seymour Center’s Art in the Aquarium

📍 Seymour Marine Discovery Center
🕒 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM · See listing

Dive into your creative side and make a splash with us! 🎨🌊 Bring the whole family and unleash your inner artist while surrounded by fascinating ocean life. Whether you’re a budding painter or just looking for a fun weekend activity, you’ll leave with your very own sea-inspired masterpiece to take home! 🐠✨ Join us on the third Saturday of every month for a fun art project with a talented Seymour volunteer!

Education Family 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
19

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
19

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
19

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
20

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
20

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
20

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
21

Youth Winter Camps 2026/27 Santa Cruz Maker Studios

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 9:00 AM – 2:30 PM · $96

Youth Winter Camps 2026/27 (Ages 7-12) Make the most of winter break with a full day of creativity, building, and hands-on fun at SC Maker Studios! Our Winter Maker Camps give children ages 7–12 the opportunity to explore all of our favorite maker stations, including 3D printing, laser engraving, woodworking, sewing, and beading. Each camp day features exciting, project-based activities designed to encourage creativity, problem-solving, and exploration in a fun and supportive environment. Camp Hours: 9:00am–2:30pm Ages: 7–12 Dates: December 2026–February 2027 Learn More & Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/winter-camps-2026-27-registration/

Family Education 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
21

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
21

Hosted Board Game Night

📍 The Cruz Room
🕒 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM · See listing

Hosted Mic’d Board Games 6 – 8 Trivia 8 – 10 The Game Night Collective is a Santa Cruz-based board game community that creates welcoming, hosted tabletop events where people can discover new games, meet new friends, and enjoy structured game nights without needing prior experience. Unlike a typical board game meetup where players are expected to know games or organize themselves, The Game Night Collective provides a curated experience. Each event includes a library of 50+ board games, guided game teaching, hosted featured games, community announcements, raffles, and opportunities to connect with other players. Whether you arrive alone or with a group, the goal is to make it easy to sit down and start playing. The flagship event takes place every Monday at The Cruz Room, where attendees can enjoy open gaming, learn two featured games taught by founder Courtney Laschkewitsch, participate in trivia, browse the Merch Chest, and become part of Santa Cruz’s growing tabletop gaming community. At its core, The Game Night Collective exists to bring people together through board games. It combines the structure and consistency of a trivia company with the creativity, strategy, and social connection of modern tabletop gaming, creating a space where newcomers and experienced gamers alike can feel welcome.

Family Community 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
22

Youth Winter Camps 2026/27 Santa Cruz Maker Studios

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 9:00 AM – 2:30 PM · $96

Youth Winter Camps 2026/27 (Ages 7-12) Make the most of winter break with a full day of creativity, building, and hands-on fun at SC Maker Studios! Our Winter Maker Camps give children ages 7–12 the opportunity to explore all of our favorite maker stations, including 3D printing, laser engraving, woodworking, sewing, and beading. Each camp day features exciting, project-based activities designed to encourage creativity, problem-solving, and exploration in a fun and supportive environment. Camp Hours: 9:00am–2:30pm Ages: 7–12 Dates: December 2026–February 2027 Learn More & Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/winter-camps-2026-27-registration/

Family Education 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
22

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
23

Youth Winter Camps 2026/27 Santa Cruz Maker Studios

📍 Santa Cruz Maker Studios
🕒 9:00 AM – 2:30 PM · $96

Youth Winter Camps 2026/27 (Ages 7-12) Make the most of winter break with a full day of creativity, building, and hands-on fun at SC Maker Studios! Our Winter Maker Camps give children ages 7–12 the opportunity to explore all of our favorite maker stations, including 3D printing, laser engraving, woodworking, sewing, and beading. Each camp day features exciting, project-based activities designed to encourage creativity, problem-solving, and exploration in a fun and supportive environment. Camp Hours: 9:00am–2:30pm Ages: 7–12 Dates: December 2026–February 2027 Learn More & Register Here: https://scmakerstudios.com/winter-camps-2026-27-registration/

Family Education 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
23

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
23

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
23

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
24

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
24

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
24

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
25

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
26

Westside Santa Cruz: Farmers Market

📍 Westside Farmers’ Market
🕒 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM · See listing

The Westside Farmers’ Market takes place every Saturday, year round at the corner of Hwy 1 and Western Drive. Here we serve the communities of the west end of Santa Cruz including Bonny Doon, the North Coast and the University of California, Santa Cruz campus. Sitting on the northern edge of Santa Cruz’s greenbelt this market is a great launching location for a day outdoors at Natural Bridges beach, Wilder Ranch or any adventure spot up the coast. It is also just a hop, skip and a jump, or bike ride, from Downtown. A community hub for over 15 years, the Westside Market showcases a great selection of 100% certified organic produce, artisan foods, beer, body products, tinctures, sustainable seafood, pasture raised meats, flowers and eggs along with cook-to-order cultural meals, live local music and a full espresso bar operated by Syllable. With an abundance of free parking and accessibility on its side, this market makes for a convenient and celebratory Saturday morning outing any time of the year.

Markets Food & Drink 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
26

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
26

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
26

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
27

Natural Bridges SB: Monarch Butterfly Self Guided Tours

📍 Natural Bridges State Beach
🕒 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM · FREE

Monarch migration is variable and population numbers and dates are different each year. The monarchs typically begin arriving in mid-October and leave by mid-February. At Natural Bridges, late October and all of November is often the best time to go for a walk and observe the monarchs. The Monarch Grove at Natural Bridges has been declared a Natural Preserve, thus protecting these butterflies and their winter habitat from human encroachment or harm. It is the only State Monarch Preserve in California. On warm days, the butterflies fly all around you, giving you an ethereal experience. On cold days, the butterflies clump up in groups high in the trees, making for terrific photos. Bring binoculars, or a telephoto lens, and $10 for parking close to the entrance to the grove. Hold on to that receipt! Once you have paid for parking at one state park, you have paid for all state parks for the day, and there are over 14 in Santa Cruz County alone!

Dec
27

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

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Dec
27

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

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Dec
30

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

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Dec
30

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Cultural Event 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
31

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Dec
31

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Jan
2

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Jan
2

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Jan
3

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Organized in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, located in Brooklyn, New York, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá ( Not From Here, Not From There ) by multidisciplinary artist Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez features a wide range of artworks that issue a bold declaration of dual belonging, including altars, an elaborately immersive botanica, paintings referencing visual symbolism drawn from textiles, graffiti and community traditions, and, in a series called I.C.E. Scream , large, brightly colored resin sculptures in the shape of melting Mexican paletas (popsicles). As the exhibition title suggests (a phrase widely used in bilingual and bicultural communities), these artworks reflect the artist’s interest in the experience of living between worlds even as violent notions of nationalism and identity pervade. Accompanying the exhibition, Elevar la Cultura , an immersive sculptural installation featuring a twenty-two-foot-tall pyramid built from ice coolers adorned with ancestral textiles, sacred symbols, and mural work will be on view at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos (1817 Soquel) November 7, 2026- March 7, 2027. As Quiñonez explains, this sculpture epitomizes the contradictions of living—and laboring—as an immigrant in the United States: “Most people see the cooler as a tool for leisure…for barbecues, tailgating, and celebrations. But for immigrant communities, the cooler is a tool and symbol for opportunity and independence. In every major city, you see families and vendors selling fruit, food, and water out of these coolers on the streets and in subway stations. They’re a necessity for survival and a way to start an honest living,” the artist shares. The Institute of Arts and Sciences will be the second venue to successfully present Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá to the public. First organized by Boston University Art Galleries and curated by Kate Fowle in September of 2025, the exhibition debuted to critical acclaim before gaining national attention after its abrupt removal from

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →
Jan
3

Carlos Motta: When Time Stands Still

📍 Institute of the Arts and Sciences
🕒 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM · See listing

Carlos Motta’s When Time Stands Still, the artist’s second solo show with the IAS , features new and recent installations, videos, and sculptures highlighting the artist’s preoccupation with the historical and aesthetic productions of difference and marginalization that shape the present. The selection of artworks in the exhibition explore the unsettling experience of living in a time that seems violently stuck on repeat. Archetypal figures from art history (a fool, a siren, a witness, a victim) reappear in the current moment as containers of time, bringing the past of imperialism, colonization, and displacement into a present marked by the rise of anti-immigration politics, climate injustice, and other forms of disposability. Some works challenge this violent repetition of time. The clock moves, if gruelingly, in an endurance-based video performance, No One , 2025. For forty-six minutes, the artist undertakes to keep his eyes open, witnessing, withstanding, confronting, and resisting the bombardment of images, both historical and otherwise, that normalize harm. In another video work, Gravity , 2024, performers enact rescue carries, supporting each other until they can’t bear the weight. Together, the artworks act as a proposal about how to rethink time—how to slow time—with a poetic and aesthetic cadence that might counter the numbing reverberations of living in the present. When Time Stands Still is organized as part of Visualizing Abolition, an arts-based initiative that reaches across prison borders to create a future free of prisons. Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been shown widely nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions venues include the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH ; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Tate Modern, London; and

Education Art & Culture 📍 Westside Details →

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