Community Calendar

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.

Join the Environmental Defense Center team at your favorite summer community gathering, tgif! The event will be held on July 11th in the EDC Courtyard, 906 Garden Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101 from 5:30-7:30 PM. Known as one of the best happy hours in Santa Barbara, tgif! features live music, refreshing beverages, and local food vendors. tgif! is a great gathering of regional nonprofit and environmental organizations, elected officials, and good people from throughout the South Central Coast. Hope to see you there!
For tickets, season passes, or to volunteer, check out our website: https://www.environmentaldefensecenter.org/tgif/

Join us for our next Film in the Gallery!

This month, we will be screening Andrzej Wajda’s Ashes and Diamonds (Popiół i diament). Based on the 1948 novel by Jerzy Andrzejewski, this film completes the director’s loose war trilogy and is a standalone look at post-World War II Poland. Featuring actor Zbigniew Cybulski in a role which earned him the moniker of “the Polish James Dean”, Ashes and Diamonds has been championed by Martin Scorsese and was included in his Masterpieces of Polish Cinema.

VIP tickets include priority seating and a free drink and snack from our bar.

Attendees will enjoy a welcome drink while we give a brief introduction to our bean-to-bar, dark chocolate making process. Ingredients for decorating will abound and inspire, and you'll learn a few tidbits about how we invent flavor combinations for new delicious, sweet products at our chocolate factory. We will fill chocolate bar molds with luscious 75% dark chocolate, and you will get to decorate chocolate bars with local ingredients, like flowers, salt and fruit. While bars are setting up, we will lead a 20-30 minute chocolate tasting experience while you sip on perfectly paired wines to enhance the flavors. We are happy to provide a non-alcoholic tasting experience for anyone in the group who might require that. Your custom chocolate bars will go home with you in beautiful, resealable Twenty-Four Blackbirds pouches. Don't miss out on this delicious experience!

The Ojai Film Society’s beloved outdoor film series is back at Libbey Bowl, running on select Fridays from July 25–October 3. This year’s theme, Imagine A World, invites audiences to gather under the stars for films that spark creativity, connection, and conversation.

All screenings are free and begin at 7:30 PM.
Walk-ups welcome; RSVPs encouraged.

Here's the line-up:

July 25: Sally

August 8: The NeverEnding Story

August 22: The Greatest Night in Pop (with director Bao Nguyen in attendance)

September 5: 9 to 5

September 18: Speak. (with director Jennifer Tiexiera in attendance)

October 3: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

👉 Learn more & RSVP: ojaifilmsociety.org

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.

Come celebrate Another Day in Paradise with us at Santa Barbara’s premier ice rink on October 11, 2025 from 11AM to 5PM. Tickets will be available at the door for $10 in celebration of our 10 years, your ticket to the event will feature a full day of fun for the whole family at Ice in Paradise!

11:15am-11:45am Skating Lesson

11:45am-12:00pm Skating Show

12:00pm-1:00pm Learn to Play Hockey

12:00pm-3:00pm Public Skating Party

1:00pm-2:00pm Open Broomball

3:00pm-5:00pm Try Curling

Outdoor activities all day!