History

Thingamajigs is a genre-crossing arts organization that promotes music and other art forms created with made and found materials or alternate tuning systems.

Since 1998, we have presented world premiere works and performances by over 275 local, national and international artists. Through our diverse programs of festivals, in-school and after-school classes, and individual concerts and community workshops we have been fostering a larger curiosity about our world of music and culture throughout the Oakland and San Francisco Bay Area. Our projects and programs expose community members of all ages to conceptualizing, designing and building instruments from everyday materials, while learning to rethink how music is made and expressed. By focusing on experimenting and reusing found objects, our programs do not concentrate on one musical tradition, but cross genres and boundaries of what music is. Our mission is to develop and nurture the exploration of alternative materials and methods of creating sound, as well as promote DIY and MAKER spaces and collaborations between artists and local communities.