Rachel Lucero

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Kreative Growth Recipient

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Content Creator, Community Organizer, and Home Cook

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Rachel Lucero 〰️ Kreative Growth Recipient 〰️ Content Creator, Community Organizer, and Home Cook 〰️

Rachel Lucero is a Filipina-American content creator, home cook, and community organizer based in San Francisco. You may have seen Rachel through her platform, “The Sago Show”, where she challenges viewers to explore connections between Filipino food, history, and identity, all while teaching viewers how to make their favorite Filipino foods. Rachel has appeared at Pistahan SF, in university classrooms, and in profiles by Taste Cooking, Tatler Asia, and TFC-US. Rachel is a member of Malaya Movement San Francisco, an organization advocating for Filipinos locally and in the homeland, and for human rights, democracy, and national sovereignty in the Philippines.

“For a lot of people food is one of the strongest connections that we can have sometimes with our culture. It’s a really beautiful gateway to learn more about our culture and our history. Because there’s so many aspects to our food that are layered in through colonization through the different groups of people who have been in the Philippines and Filipino food has also evolved over time and because Filipinos now live all over the world Filipino food has really adapted to whoever to wherever we are.”

— Rachel Lucero

Rachel is just one of six recipients of the Kreative Growth Grant, a $3,000 to $6,000 grant Balay Kreative gives to Filipinx artists in the Bay Area, in order to launch new works of art and culture in the Filipino Cultural District in San Francisco.

In an interview with Iggy Mora and Jimmie Gabiola, Rachel talks about her upcoming project, Lasa and Legacy, why she chooses cooking videos as her medium, and how she anticipates her journey with the Balay Kreative Grant might help make a mark on the SOMA Pilipinas community.

Profile by Tianna Mae Andresen

Introduce yourself and your project

My name is Rachel Lucero and I'm in the film and video track for Kreative Growth. My project is called Lasa and Legacy, and it's a special series as part of the Sago Show.

What drew you to the Balay Kreative Kreative Growth Program?

I was really drawn to the Balay Kreative Growth grant because the community of artists that Balay has cultivated here in SOMA is really something that I wanted to be a part of. I saw the grant as a way to level up The Sago Show. I really appreciate what Balay is doing, bringing artists together in SOMA and just cultivating this creativity here in the neighborhood.

How did it feel learning you were selected to be a recipient?

Being selected as one of the Kreative Growth recipients, I was so overwhelmed with joy just because I felt it was a testament to everything that I had worked on so far. As a creator you have those moments of self doubt, am I getting my message across? Is this resonating with the audience?

I was really excited putting my project together with my proposal for the grant. I really admire so many of the past recipients. I feel super honored to be in this cohort.

“I was so excited that I was going to be able to bring these special single show episodes to the community and get to feature stories from people that I’ve really admired in this community. It’s really full circle because at the beginning of the Sago Show I was by myself in my apartment kitchen. And now to bring it to the community, I think is really beautiful for the show.”

— Rachel Lucero

What do you hope to gain from your experience?

As part of the Kreative Growth program, I really want to be able to level up the Sago Show. I mentioned before that I am really excited to work with the community, but I think that this is a really big turning point for the Sago show bringing it from my kitchen into the community. I hope to do more events with the community as well and to just be able to really tell stories from SOMA and San Francisco.

What kind of statements are you looking to make with your art?

I wanted the Sago Show to be a way for people to learn how to cook a Filipino dish and also learn about our history and I wanted anyone to be able to access that, especially because, previous to living in the Bay Area, I lived in places where I didn't have access to a Filipino restaurant or even an Asian grocery store. I hoped that my videos could help someone else learn how to cook and also learn about the history behind some of our favorite dishes.

Specifically with Lasa and Legacy, is that food can be a way for us to learn not only about ourselves and our culture, but also about the ways that Filipinos have resisted here and in the Philippines for generations. I want my viewers to also think about how they can be a part of that. There's so much activism going on in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Filipinos have been here resisting for generations. I think it's important for Filipino Americans to see in our generation how we play into that too, and how we can fight for a better future.

What would you say to aspiring Filipino artists? Why is it important for Filipinos to create?

It is important for Filipino Americans to express how we feel about what's going on in the world especially because we are distanced from our homeland so I think we have a really unique viewpoint and should express that through our art. Expressing our art is also communicating to others, our feelings, our traumas, our stories, and I feel strongly that art exists not in a vacuum, food doesn't exist in a vacuum. Art allows us to speak our mind and express how we feel specifically for Filipinos and a lot of us being displaced and out here in the diaspora in the United States.

I would say to aspiring young Filipino artists just be authentic and create from the heart. Don't be afraid to ask your family members for their stories too. I learned so much on the Sago Show talking to my mom and dad about things that they experienced and now talking to folks in the community as well. I'm excited to see a new generation and I hope that other artists will keep creating from the heart and telling our stories and putting them out there.

Can you describe how you got into cooking? What is your relationship with cooking and the Sago Show?

When I first started the Sago Show, it was really a video diary of me experimenting in the kitchen, and also learning about the stories behind different Filipino dishes. I actually didn't get into cooking until I really moved out of my parents house. All of a sudden, I was cut off from all of my favorite Filipino foods and I had to figure out how to cook for myself. Starting out I was a really bad cook. I don't really have any formal training and cooking or anything really like that, but I just practiced a lot.

During the pandemic, when I was holed up in my apartment, that was the time when I really wanted to be able to cook Filipino food. I would FaceTime with my mom while I'm cooking and ask her for feedback.

“What I didn’t realize was that there were so many other Filipino Americans out there who, like me, Filipino food was really like our first love for our culture. The thing that we knew growing up and that they had no idea about the different stories that we’ve talked about on the Sago Show.”

What can we expect from you during your time as a Kreative Growth Resident Artist?

With Lasa and Legacy, I want to focus on special stories of Filipino activism here in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's gonna be a little different from the Sago Show. Usually, the Sago Show is filmed just in my kitchen and recorded on my mic in my bedroom, but this time we're going to be in the community and hearing interviews and stories as told by members of some of the Filipino folks that were at the forefront of Filipino activism in the last generation.

We will be documenting Rachel and all the other recipients journeys, follow @Balaykreative to keep updated and be the first to see what each recipient's final project is!

You can also keep updated with Rachel through the following platforms: