Entertainment

Artist Ise Lyfe Turns Abandoned Housing Project into Work of Art

Published

13 years ago

June 21, 2013

Abandoned, boarded up, and forgotten about housing complexes sit in communities throughout Oakland. Now, one artist has returned to his hometown to transform one dilapidated East Oakland housing project, Greenside, into a work of art.

Oakland native and renowned international and interdisciplinary artist Ise Lyfe is using the property to showcase a new level of a conceptual multi-media art exhibit.

“I feel it’s really important to take the opportunity to tell the story, not only of this particular site but of folks growing up in public housing,” said Ise Lyfe. “I see housing as a human right, and all people have a right to good housing, healthy housing.”

Ise Lyfe has been featured on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam series and traveled the world telling stories of struggle, pain, sacrifice, growth, and change. Unwilling to forget his hometown, he has pushed himself to the limit to create a body of “provocative” art that tells a story of Oakland’s public housing system in the art exhibit, “Brighter than Blight”.

Greenside housing complex, located on the corner of 77th and Bancroft avenues, has been condemned for a decade. During the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, the project was a major hub for drugs, violence, and illegal activity. Ise Lyfe and his brother Michael Savannah grew up in East Oakland and now call the abandoned complex the “standing dinosaur” of the community.

“For years this site was notorious for illegal activity, but a lot of people have come from this place and survived the struggle of living in Oakland,” said Savannah, who is managing the “Brighter than Blight” project. Oakland’s Affordable Housing Initiative provided the funding for Ise Lyfe to produce the project. The Oakland Housing Authority and District 6 City Councilmember Desley Brooks have also fully supported the program.

“The story of East Oakland is typically told from a negative lens… In the Brighter Than Blight Art Exhibit Ise Lyfe has brilliantly communicated the beauty, creativity, complexity, strength, humor and depth of the lives of the residents of “Greenside”,” said Councilmember Brooks. “This project is the first of its kind in the country between a local artist, a city council office and a Public Housing Authority. I am thankful to Oakland Housing Authority Executive Director Eric Johnson and his staff and the California Affordable Housing Initiative for their vision and courage to move this project forward,” she said.

Ise Lyfe’s conceptual art exhibit will showcase’ photography, paintings, sculptures, and literary works to tell the story of public housing. A tribute to grandmother’s house, video montages featuring testimonials of former Greenside residents and life size print-outs of provoking spoken word pieces are just a few of the art projects being featured. Savannah says the project is geared to serve as “a voice for those who won’t speak for themselves, to speak for the good and bad happening in public housing so stories won’t go untold.”

More than 30 young people, many of whom are living in public housing complexes, will serve as guides, directing guest through the hour-long exhibit; some youth will share their narratives of growing up in public housing in hopes of encouraging people to become apart of the discourse.

Ise Lyfe hopes his work sparks a trend for more art projects of this sort to happen, and project manager Michael Savannah says expanding the project throughout the city is definitely something they are thinking about once this project is completed.

“When we say ghetto and hood, we think Black. With “Brighter than Blight”, I am saying we are brighter than the negative circumstances here,” Ise Lyfe said.

The exhibit will show for two weeks, June 21 – 23 and June 28 – 30. When the exhibit closes, the art will be placed in museums and public housing complexes throughout the city. Admission to the event is free and all are encouraged to attend.

For more information, visit www.facebook.com/BrighterThanBlight. Visit the Post News Group’s website to get a first look at a pieces he has created for the exhibit. Visit www.postnewsgroup.com

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Oakland Post: Week of July 1 – 7, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of July 1 – 7, 2026

Published

20 hours ago

July 5, 2026

Oakland Post

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Arts and Culture

Prescott Circus Theatre Presents Free Summer Performance Series

Now in its 41st year, the Prescott Circus Theatre is a nationally recognized performing arts education program for Oakland youth. The circus offers safe environments that challenge Oakland youth, through circus arts training, to develop the skills and confidence to thrive on stage, in school, and in life.

Published

1 week ago

June 26, 2026

Oakland Post

Prescott Circus showcase pathways pyramid. Photo courtesy of Prescott Circus.

By Post Staff

The Prescott Circus, Oakland’s longest-running youth circus, is returning this summer with its free shows. Join the Prescott Circus’s young stars as they share their joys and talents through stilt-dancing, tumbling, juggling, and more.

At the heart of this one-hour show, which demonstrates teamwork, pride, and joy, are Oakland Unified School District students ages 8 – 17 from more than 10 different schools

This is accomplished through no-cost school and community programs for more than 300 Oakland youth each year. Performing company members from Prescott, where the program began, perform and make appearances at as many as 40 Bay Area events each year.

The summer program is funded in part by Oakland Fund for Children and Youth, California Arts Council, Port of Oakland, and the West Davis & Bergard Foundation.

Performances will be held Tuesday, July 14, 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. (ASL interpreted) and Wednesday, July 15, 11 a.m., at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. For free reservations go to

https://PrescottCircusSummerShows.eventbrite.com

For group reservations for camps, childcare centers, senior centers, go to www.prescottcircus.org

A community show will be held Saturday, July 18, 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., at DeFremery Park,1651 Adeline St., Oakland.

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50 Years Later, ‘Wake Up Everybody!’ Still Resonates During Black Music

The words of the song, “Wake Up Everybody,” debuted by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes in 1975, still resonate today as those words are just as relevant more than a half century later.

Published

1 week ago

June 26, 2026

Oakland Post

iStockphoto.

By Hazel Trice Edney, Special to The Post

Hazel Trice Edney

“Wake up, everybody, No more sleepin’ in bed

No more backward thinkin’. Time for thinkin’ ahead

The world has changed so very much from what it used to be.

There is so much hatred, war, and poverty.

“The world won’t get no better If we just let it be.

Naw, naw, naw, naw, naw, naw, naw.

The world won’t get no better. We gotta change it, yeah– just you and me.”

The words of the song, “Wake Up Everybody,” debuted by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes in 1975, still resonate today as those words are just as relevant more than a half century later.

In a rare, nearly somber moment, the group’s celebrated lead singer, Teddy Pendergrass, introduced the song on Soul Train, the weekly dance and live performance TV show that aired roughly between 1971 and 2006. Pendergrass told the attentive live audience and thousands watching by television that Wake Up Everybody, the title tune of their most recent album, was intended to inspire people to take action with a goal to change America for the better.

“I’m sure that you will all agree that there are things that need to be done in this country today,” he said. “So, what I’d like for you to do is listen very carefully to see what you can do to lend a hand.”

The song’s appeal worked.

“I played that song over and over and over again because it was a constant warning to keep ourselves prepared for the society that we were living in,” says A. Peter Bailey, then a 37-year-old former aide to Malcolm X.

When “Wake Up Everybody” hit the airwaves, Bailey was working as an associate editor of Ebony Magazine. “It was a call to be aware of what we were dealing with in the country that we lived in, the world we lived in, the neighborhood we lived in, the cities that we lived in,” Bailey said in an interview with the Trice Edney News Wire.

He concluded that during Black Music Month 2026, such songs should be recalled and celebrated as a key to changes for the good across America; especially because such songs successfully encouraged people to deal with the issues that might otherwise denigrate the promises of America, including the promise that “All men are created equal,”as stated in the Declaration of Independence.

“The rhythms and blues expressed our joys, our sorrows and our fears,” Bailey recalls. “It was those songs and the singing of those songs by our people that attracted us to the campaigns for justice.”

With his life inspired by that song and others, Bailey, now 88, went on to establish and teach a Black Press class at Virginia Commonwealth University. Also, he has since written three books, including a memoir, “Witnessing Brother Malcolm X, the Master Teacher,” in which he expounded upon successful principles of social justice, some of which are reflected in “Wake Up Everybody.”

Long before the term “woke” became associated with campaigns for justice, Pendergrass led the song that reverberated across America and still holds deep meaning.

The ‘wake up’ call exhorts teachers to ‘teach a new way,’ doctors to heal elders, and builders to ‘build a new land… we can do it if we all lend a hand.”

The song concludes:

“The world won’t get no better if we just let it be. Naw, naw, naw, naw, naw, naw, naw. The world won’t get no better. We gotta change it, yeah – just you and me.”

Hazel Trice Edney wrote this story as part of a four-part series powered by AARP in commemoration of Black Music Month, June 2026.