about

Rachel Weidinger is an artist and community organizer, who makes to illustrate what is possible. Her current work is in building collaboration and alignment practices tools for metanarratives that advance equity and social justice, and anti-gentrification interventions in the urban fabric with Berkeley-based collective IF/THEN. Significant past works include Missing infrastructures/ digital security (2017), Upwell (2011-2015),We Are Very Hungry (2010-2012), Scrap Eden (2006-2008) and Scrap House (2005).


Rachel has been honored as a Fellow for Good at the Institute for the Future, Creative Dissent Fellow at YBCA, Growth Hacking Fellow at the Energy Foundation, and and Artist in Residence at Policy Link and Monson Arts.


In 2011, Rachel founded Upwell.The ocean was our first client. Rachel led the development and evolution of Upwell's innovative big listening practices, coupling this big data approach with working across a distributed network. The project worked on a daily basis to both massively aggregate power for movements, and immediately redistribute that power through networks. Upwell's work was grounded in both offline community organizing and online community management. Upwell concluded operations in March 2015.

Rachel holds an MFA-Social Practice at the California College of the Arts, where Ted Purves was her advisor. She also has a B. Phil in Interdisciplinary Studies from Miami University's Western College Program, and completed the coursework for a masters in Arts Policy and Administration at Ohio State University.

Twitter:__@rachelannyes__