Art & Soul Oakland

Art & Soul Oakland is a free, family-friendly downtown street festival celebrating Oakland's Black cultural heritage through jazz, blues, hip-hop, gospel and R&B across multiple stages, alongside artisan vendors and food booths drawn from the city's many cultural communities. Running since 2001 in the tradition of the earlier Festival at the Lake, it centers civic pride and grassroots arts in the heart of downtown Oakland around Frank Ogawa Plaza (renamed Oscar Grant Plaza).

Attendees consistently praise the quality and variety of the live music lineup across the festival's stages, and the diversity of food vendors offering dishes drawn from Oakland's many cultural communities. Reviewers describe the crowd as friendly and well-mannered and note that security and cleanup crews kept the event running smoothly, with several calling it an easy, worthwhile way to spend a free or low-cost day out.

The most recent actually-held edition ran September 17, 2023, as the 21st annual Art & Soul Oakland, staged jointly with the 7th annual AfroComicCon at Oscar Grant Plaza. The lineup leaned into a 50-years-of-hip-hop theme with Latyrx & Friends (Lyrics Born and Lateef the TruthSpeaker), Yo-Yo and Suga-T alongside blues and jazz sets, artisan vendors, two food courts, an Afrofuturism-themed fashion show and cosplay contest, and family activities. The event was free to the public and ran a single day, noon to 6pm.