Our Mission
Love the Bulb is a non-profit organization that builds community and supports Bay Area art and performance by celebrating and protecting a unique outdoor space for the human imagination. We are dedicated to preserving the creative spirit of the Albany Bulb landfill, to enhancing this inclusive cultural zone for all people, and to protecting its rich natural habitats.
We host conversations about history, the environmental humanities, and cultures of stewardship. We believe poetry and science are both essential to understanding the natural world. We gather oral histories of the East Bay shoreline and consider layers of memory as well as of geology.
The many volunteers and supporters of Love the Bulb work as placekeepers to preserve the freewheeling artistic traditions of Bay Area outdoor arts, such as the sculpture-making that once flourished at the Emeryville mudflats. We advocate for public agencies to recognize the capacity of this unique "loose space" at the Albany Bulb—a critically endangered resource in the Bay Area—to foster creative play, environmental knowledge, and human connectedness.
We present workshops, performances, exhibitions, and participatory events that help people learn about the natural and human history of the San Francisco Bay shoreline and celebrate being outdoors together through music, dance, theater, and art installations.
Our history
Love the Bulb emerged from an urgent sense that one of the San Francisco Bay Area's most unique open spaces was under threat. The Bulb is currently owned and managed by the City of Albany. However, official plans to incorporate the Bulb into the McLaughlin Eastshore State Park call for removing the art, prohibiting the creation of new art, and imposing limits on existing activities including dogwalking and foraging. While the Bulb has long been treasured as an offbeat platform for art, community gatherings and performance, the blueprint for the state park does not protect these uses.
The Albany Bulb has a long history as a refuge for people experiencing homelessness, some of who lived at the Bulb for many years. This community was removed from the Bulb in 2014, and their history was chronicled in a 2015 exhibition called Refuge in Refuse at the SOMArts Cultural Center, which featured collaborations between artists and the residents of the Bulb, some of whom were artists themselves.
In 2016 local residents and artists concerned with a creeping erasure of the Bulb's history and offbeat character formed an organization called Love the Bulb. Since then, Love the Bulb has presented dozens of art, performance and education events and successfully advocated for more art-friendly policies. Love the Bulb has also established a native plant garden and has partnered with the City of Albany, which owns the Bulb, on stewardship projects. BulbLab, a project of Love the Bulb, is a loose collective of artists who use the Bulb both as a location for artmaking and as inspiration for investigations of the relationship of humans and nature.
Love the Bulb became part of Malcolm Margolin's California Institute for Community, Art and Nature in 2017. California ICAN is a project of Earth Island Institute, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization. Love the Bulb is grateful for the support of many individual donors, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the Albany Community Foundation, and Philanthropic Ventures Foundation.
Our future
The aim of Love the Bulb is to permanently establish the Albany Bulb as a new kind of outdoor cultural zone–a free-range, participatory research field station and laboratory for exploring the relationship between humans and nature through the arts. We work to demonstrate the ongoing traditions of local stewardship and care that have made the Bulb the beautiful and inclusive space that it is today. We believe the Bulb can combat nature-deficit disorder and the decline of free-range play and that the quirky nature of the Bulb can help lure future generations away from their screens and into the outdoors.
Inspired by the Adventure Playground movement, Wild Zones and creative art parks around the world, Love the Bulb believes that the Bay Area needs an outdoor space where people can play freely with nature--and each other.
What We've Achieved
Produced scores of workshops, participatory art events, performance, history tours and environmental education events that engage people of all ages and interests.
Presented the BulbFest dance and art festival in 2018 and 2019
Successfully advocated for official policies that acknowledge the value of art at the Bulb
Started a native plant garden, maintained in collaboration with the City of Albany’s Friends of Albany Parks program
Partnered with community organizations not only in Albany but in the neighboring cities of Richmond, El Cerrito, Berkeley, and Oakland
Brought diverse new audiences out to enjoy nature and art at the Bulb
Sponsored events that foster community conversations and connectedness
