Name: Celia Center Arts Festival 2024
Start: 2024-11-15T19:00:00-08:00
End: 2024-11-16T22:00:00-08:00
Location: Electric Lodge

The non-profit organization Celia Center will present its fourth Celia Center Arts Festival (CCAF), featuring the work of artists – from diverse backgrounds and across many mediums – who use creative expression to explore their experiences as individuals who were adopted and/or in foster care. Titled “Adopting Resilience, Fostering the Spirit of Creativity: The Voices of the Fostered and Adopted,” CCAF takes place Friday, November 15 and Saturday, November 16 at Electric Lodge Cultural Arts Center, which is a co-presenter of the festival in partnership with Celia Center (1416 Electric Avenue, Venice, CA, 90291).
Celia Center was founded in 2012 by Jeanette Yoffe, a child therapist with a special focus on adoption and foster care issues. She was driven to do so because of her personal story of moving through the foster care system and being adopted. She also wanted to merge her previous career in the arts as a dancer and actress with the cause about which she has become so passionate. Celia Center brings members of the adoption and foster care constellation together through adopt salon support groups, workshops, and events throughout the year.
The festival kicks off November 15 at 7:00PM with the opening reception for CCAF’s visual art group exhibition, curated by artist and adoptee Leigh Chapman. This reception will bring you up close with the artists as well as provide a donation to Celia Center's mission.
The opening reception goes until 9PM, and the show remains on view through November 16th at 10pm.
Festival programming includes an evening film screening of “Somebody's Daughter” at 8PM on Saturday, November 16, “The Worth Inside Me Healing Arts Workshop,” an arts workshop at 4PM on Saturday 11/16 and matinee film screening of “Reckoning With the Primal Wound” at 4PM on Saturday, November 16.
Other programming highlights – which are free – include children’s activities beginning at 12PM on 11/16. Among the highlights are a Make your own Drum Workshop, a book giveaway, Face Painting, Healing Arts Table for children in foster care and/or adoption and their families (ages 4 and up). Also on 11/16 (6:30-7:30PM), there will an artists’ panel and Q&A, “Sharing their Vision, Transforming their Pain”.
Jeanette Yoffe created the Celia Center Arts Festival to provide a platform for artists who have been impacted by foster care and adoption to express their experiences through various creative mediums. This festival aims to bring together the voices of adoptees and foster youth, offering them a space to share their stories, foster community, and deepen the conversation around adoption and foster care.
Yoffe’s motivation stemmed from her personal journey as an adoptee and her desire to understand and connect with her biological roots. She learned about her first mother’s artistic background, Celia Barbosa, which inspired her to create an arts festival that would celebrate and support the creative expressions of others with similar experiences. The festival highlights the challenges and triumphs of those who were adopted as well as those who are in the foster care system, with the aim to provide emotional and psychological healing for all, through the art of self expression.