Signature Events

Taste of Vistamar is a community-wide potluck and music event where we celebrate our connections, our heritage and our cultures through food.  Families, faculty and staff bring dishes that represent their heritage to contribute to the event.  At communal tables, all members of the Vistamar community eat, listen to music and bond.  Now in its 12th year, this is one of our best-loved community events.

United Asian Association organized and hosted a school-wide potluck for Lunar New Year this year. A wide range of Asian cultures were represented though the foods that were shared. The celebration for the community was a great opportunity to share Asian cultural experiences and unite our students.

Soulful Celebration is a celebration of Black history and culture, and has become a beloved annual tradition for the entire Vistamar community.  Students contribute individual projects to a live gallery highlighting Black history, arts, traditions and activism.  Families, students, faculty and staff come together to share a meal, tour the galleries and experience a performance of student-written and shared poetry, stories, songs and music.  Now in its 14th year, recent themes have included:
2016: Black LA: Snapshots
2017: Black Excellence
2018: The 90s are All Black
2019: Black in the Day
2020: Black Love
2021: The Harlem Renaissance and the Golden Age
2022: Black Roots: Celebrating Black Culture from Y2K until Now.

In 2018, Vistamar started the tradition of committing a school day to engage with one another in purposeful discussions of identity.  Students, faculty, and staff take the time to experience student-facilitated discussions and activities exploring aspects of belonging and self in place of a regular day of classes.  

Identity Day in 2022 gave us a chance to be together and consider our essential question for the year: what does it mean to belong? Through an extensive program of workshops and activities organized by the SAAIG leaders, we were able to take a day for education and to build greater connections among affinity groups, grade-level peers, and with the community in general.