Home Microphone was born from necessity. As Altadena community members, parents, and long-time artistic collaborators who lost our family home to the Eaton Fire, we recognize that our community needs more than emergency relief; we need sustained spaces for creative expression, collective processing, and intergenerational connection. With over 20 years of combined experience as performing artists and teaching artists utilizing spoken word, hip-hop, solo performance, screenwriting, and Theater of the Oppressed, we knew we had gifts to offer. Most importantly, as Altadena renters and total loss survivors, Altadena is not a community we serve from the outside; it was our chosen forever home, a home we have no clear way of returning to, and its creative recovery is now part of our shared mission.

Our vision for Home Microphone is built on a fundamental belief: communities can heal through storytelling and the practice of witnessing and being witnessed on your home stage. When the Arts and Culture Coalition of Altadena (ACCA) surveyed local artists and creative workers, 91% expressed desire for community events. This confirms what we felt in our bones: Altadena’s artistic community needs consistent opportunities to connect, create, and bear witness to our stories of survival, resilience, and recovery. Home Microphone hosts monthly open mics and biannual workshops where displaced residents write and perform their own narratives, becoming stewards of their stories, and central actors in our community’s ongoing creative recovery.

Home Microphone addresses inequalities the fire exposed. By providing free pop-up performance spaces in non-traditional venues throughout Altadena— from empty lots, community centers, libraries, churches, and parks— we challenge the narrative that disaster recovery belongs only to those who can afford to return. We, at Home Microphone, are building a consistent, creative, home-away-from-home for displaced Altadenans of all ages, backgrounds, and socio economic classes. We reject the paradigm that artists must seek artistic validation beyond their communities. Home Microphone believes that local stages matter, that neighborhood voices carry authority, that homegrown creative practice builds the foundation for equitable recovery.

When the systems meant to protect us failed us, we as artists returned to the practices that have always sustained us: community, creativity, mutual aid, and the revolutionary act of gathering together to witness and be witnessed. Rebuilding and restoring Altadena requires every resident bringing their gifts forward. Home Microphone creates space for this exchange and a collective reimagining of our future. 

Together, we are rebuilding our beloved community, one open mic at a time.