Community Calendar

Based in Venice Beach, CA, an epicenter of nonconformist energy in the 1970s, Environmental Communications (EC) was a collective of architects, artists, and sociologists who championed an expanded understanding of architecture—one that encompassed not just individual buildings but the entire urban environment. To that end, the group documented defining traits of the then-booming consumerist society and the vibrant counterculture pushing back against it, primarily through photographic slides.

Challenging the architectural pedagogy of the time, which viewed architectural history as the evolution of styles through isolated buildings, EC distributed their slide sets to architecture schools and libraries across the country, offering a real-time and sweeping lens through which to teach the discipline.

Los Angeles—a crucible of market-driven ambition and anti-establishment spirit—became a central focus of EC’s visual inquiries. From smog-choked skies and sprawling suburbs to garish street art and Pop architecture, their slide sets captured the era’s cultural contradictions, evoking a sense of systemic unraveling while L.A. emerged as a beacon of radical freedom and creativity.

Including hundreds of slides, along with dozens of booklets and videos, the collective’s legacy stands as one of the most comprehensive and electrifying visual records of 1970s L.A. The presentation of EC’s materials from the Architecture and Design Collection here, following this year’s devastating fires in the Palisades and Altadena, serves not only as a poignant reminder of the city’s environmental fragility but also as a tribute to the extraordinary urban creativity that has fueled its resilience over the past five decades.

Big Bang Beat L.A. is organized by the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at UC Santa Barbara and is coordinated by Silvia Perea, curator of the Architecture and Design Collection. The exhibition is made possible thanks to the support of the AD&A Museum Council. Exhibition furniture has generously been provided by Fatboy.

In its 41st year, the Santa Barbara Vintners Festival is truly the Original Santa Barbara Wine Festival.

Don’t miss the opportunity to taste wines from 60+ wineries and sample regional cuisine from dozens of restaurants, chefs, and food producers, while strolling through the picturesque vines at Vega Vineyard and Farm. Chat with the winemakers and winery owners and enjoy live music from Generic Clapton. At the Rio Vista Chevrolet Bubble Lounge, sample sparkling wines from some of the region’s top producers.

An Early Entry Admission ticket grants access to the festival at noon, 60 minutes prior to General Admission tickets, providing the opportunity to interact more personally with winemakers, owners, and chefs in a more spacious, open, and uncrowded environment.

Peek behind-the-scenes of our chocolate factory to get a high-level overview of the chocolate-making process, from bean to bar! This event is great for families, corporate groups, bachelorette weekends, and anyone new to chocolate or curious about where their food comes from. You’ll get to taste warm, flowing dark chocolate from our tempering machine, and you’ll get to sample our single origin 75% dark chocolate bars.

It’s 1895: a new generation of Americans is coming of age and looking for trouble! In the barrooms and bordellos of St. Louis, New Orleans, Atlantic City – “loafing places”, as some disgruntled townie may have called them – something new and uniquely American is cooking up. Young piano players are melding southern country dances with lowdown blues with European classical, and the result is called: Ragtime, an infectious syncopation which will shape the sound of American music to come.

Award-winning pianist Eve Elliot is your raucous guide into this colorful world, with its infuriating injustices and thrilling triumphs. You’ll meet some of our story’s heroes – and villains – and get a glimpse into their lives and music. Expect plenty of hilarity and vaudevillian antics as we delve into questions like: Who kidnapped Fats Waller? Why did Jelly Roll Morton own so many suits? How did Scott Joplin uphold his artistic vision amid a slew of rejection? What does “funky butt” mean?

Embrace the duality of this elevated art form birthed by the underworld of vice. Surrender to the “weird and intoxicating effects” of delicious live ragtime and stride piano. Celebrate the lives of these debonair and debaucherous pioneers – from the national fame and fistfuls of hundred dollar bills, to the alcoholism and fatal venereal disease. And experience their music, which traveled from the 10-cent whorehouses to Carnegie Hall.

Concerts in the Gallery is an exceptional program of performances by outstanding singers and musicians. The concerts take place within the main gallery at Studio Channel Islands, creating a unique and intimate setting for sumptuous musical performances.

The series is programmed by composer/conductor Don Harper and concert pianist Armen Guzelimian; drawing upon their extensive connections with international performers, each concert is a celebration of the rich variety music making around the world.

You can’t stop the beat! 🎶

The smash-hit musical Hairspray is coming to Thousand Oaks this fall — packed with show-stopping numbers, laugh-out-loud moments, and a heart as big as its hair!

Join us October 10–26 at the Scherr Forum Theatre, Bank of America Performing Arts Center, Thousand Oaks.

🎟 Reserve your seats today at 5StarTheatricals.com

October 1- 31 - Join us for a month-long celebration of new vegan dishes all over Santa Barbara!

For the second year in a row, businesses across the region will showcase exciting special vegan menu items for an entire month, giving everyone the opportunity to explore creative plant-based dishes crafted by talented local chefs.

How It Works:

1- Visit participating restaurants across Santa Barbara.
2- Try their exclusive vegan offerings.
3- Share your experience—rate and review the dishes you try, comment, post photos of your favorite meals, and tag us at @veganchefchallengeWest.

This event is open to everyone, not just vegans! It’s about bringing our community together to celebrate incredible food and support our region's chefs.

Get Involved: Looking for ways to connect? Volunteer with us! We’re seeking passionate individuals to help with outreach, event promotion, and community building throughout the month. It's a great way to meet like-minded people and make a difference! Volunteer using this link: TinyURL.com/VOLVCC

Join us in making Santa Barbara an even more inclusive, vibrant, and compassionate community.

For details on participating businesses, menus, sponsorship opportunities, and more, visit our website at veganchefchallenge.org/SantaBarbara.

"Through most of our lives and work, Cedric and I have had deep commitments to collaboration, internationalism, and solidarity movements."
–Elizabeth Robinson, 2024

This exhibition documents the life’s work of Cedric J. Robinson and Elizabeth Peters Robinson, placing it in the global context of the Black radical tradition. The Robinsons were renowned for their seminal scholarship and activism that had wide-ranging influence at UC Santa Barbara (UCSB), in academia, and across many public arenas. The exhibition is drawn from the Cedric J. and Elizabeth P. Robinson Archive (“Robinson Archive”) and supplemented by a variety of materials from other collections in UCSB Library’s Special Research Collections, as well as personal contributions from Elizabeth Robinson.

A deeply influential educator, Cedric Robinson (1940-2016) was a well-known scholar of racial capitalism and the Black radical tradition, and an active participant in political movements, both at home and internationally. For more than 30 years, Elizabeth Robinson has been an educator, social worker, former associate director for media at KCSB-FM radio, activist, and community media producer.

This exhibition was curated by Yolanda Blue, the Library’s Curator of American and International History, Politics, and Cultures Collections, in collaboration with New York University and UCSB Library staff.

This exhibition showcases historic Broadway posters from collector Richard C. Norton, a comprehensive selection of musical theater posters 1972 to the present ranging from the famous to the obscure, from the celebrated to the damned. These posters offer insight into the evolution of American musical theater, graphic design, marketing, image branding and audience engagement. Far more than advertisements, they reflect the artistic, social and commercial contexts of their time—revealing how productions were first introduced, how stars were celebrated, and how visual trends paralleled theatrical innovation. As ephemeral objects, their preservation provides rare evidence of the material culture surrounding performance. By examining these posters through an academic lens, we can better understand Broadway’s influence on American theater, music and popular culture. The exhibition invites viewers to explore how theater has been represented and remembered, and how visual media contributes to the construction of cultural memory.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a lecture featuring Nicholas van Hoogstraten, author of Broadway Poster Art: 1945–1969 (Schiffer Publishing, 2024).

About the Richard C. Norton Musical Theater History Collection:
The Richard C. Norton Musical Theater History Collection consists of materials documenting musical theater including 25,000 playbills, 800 typescripts, and 1,500 published libretti, as well as sheet music and 78rpm records. Norton is the author of A Chronology of American Musical Theater (Oxford UP, 2002) a landmark work with details on thousands of Broadway productions. The collection was assembled to support the research for his book.

UCSB Library presents an art installation by artist Elena Yu, exploring histories of the Ethnic and Gender Studies Collection (EGSC) and space in celebration of its 30th anniversary.

In Fall 2023, Yu was invited to create artworks in response to the history of the EGSC. The artist was drawn to two untouched back rooms - former staff offices left exactly as they were when vacated in 2022. Inside, decades of belongings sat frozen in time. In February 2024, the Library was preparing to renovate the rooms. Librarians had sorted and removed items to be sent to the University Archives and gave Yu access to use the remaining materials in her artworks. She was inspired by encountering ephemera related to the history of Ethnic Studies at UCSB and the day-to-day occupations of the library staff, including file cabinets full of book dust jackets and printed correspondences, and bulletin boards whose contents speak to the specific interests of former staff, who were charged with the upkeep of the collections and space.

This exhibition is part of a campus-wide arts partnership with the UCSB Arts Equity Commons (AEC) to support opportunities for engagement of faculty, students, and staff through the presence and practices of contemporary artists. AEC was established in 2022 as a consortium of the Department of Art, Department of History of Art and Architecture, and the Art Design & Architecture Museum through a systemwide grant from the UC Office of the President. The artist would like to thank Gary Colmenar, Angel Diaz, Alyce Harris, Sara Kelly, Marisol Ramos, Jonathan Rissmeyer, and Kim Yasuda for their support of this project.