(Editor's note: Our continuing series that looks at Oakland Local's picks for people/organizations to watch in 2011. See all profiles in this series.)

Better known around the neighborhood as K Dub, Keith Williams has been working with youth and the arts in Oakland since 2005.

After graduating from Long Beach State, K Dub began participating in mural projects around Long Beach and Los Angeles where he realized that public art can bring all types of people together and build better community. He brought that model to the Bay Area in 2005 in the form of Hood Games.

Hood Games is an X Games type of event for youth in underprivileged areas who wouldn’t normally have access to extreme sports activities. Hood Games is more than just a skate event for youth though. All of these events have had live art, DJ’s, live performances, dancing, deck designing, food, free giveaways and more in order to entice more than just skaters to the events.

Town Park, (at DeFremery Park), was the first skate park to open in Oakland. The city of Oakland donated the grounds to the building of the park, but then provided no further assistance in the process. The park was built by hand by KDub and associates from parts of other parks being taken down. Most of the ramps in West Oakland came from a park in Pleasant Hill that was going to be demolished.

Building Town Park was a direct response to wanting something for the kids in West Oakland to do other than drugs and violence.

“I think that Oakland not having a skate park has contributed too much of the violence,” said Oakland native and pro skater Karl Watson. And the park has been a huge success.

On any given day at any given time, there are people skating Town Park. Young and old, it’s the only part of DeFremery that is always occupied. When he’s not teaching, working with MOCHA or building museum installations, K Dub can be found holding small contests at Town Park or the skate park at Youth Uprising.

“I do this because I used to skate," he said. "I loved skating. The best thing that came from it was that gypsy lifestyle. You could open up a magazine and see a park or a pool where a pro skater skated and you could get on three buses and get there.

"Skating forces you to leave your immediate environment and explore," he continued. "You might even meet the skater there; you’d never be able to do that with Kobe Bryant at the Staples Center.”

K Dub was one of the artists involved with creating "How We Roll" - an exhibition of skate culture from an African American perspective at the African American Museum at University of Southern California. It took months of compiling photos, footage, artwork and interviews of black skaters, and later surfers and roller skaters, to create a showcase that had never been done before. K Dub said after seeing the “Beautiful Losers” show in Yerba Buena and countless smaller shows before that, he realized that African Americans were clearly a part of skate culture, but weren’t getting proper credit. Prior to "How We Roll," which recently closed, he had a joint installation at Oakland Airport that featured his own, as well as local youth art.

K Dub also buses kids from East and West Oakland down to Los Angeles for the annual X-Games events so they can watch and meet their favorite skaters and skate pro ramps. Currently he is working on an indoor space that will serve all the same functions as Town Park, but be useful all year.

He teaches art throughout the local school districts and is part of an art collective called Soul Salon 10 and will have an installation called “Chinese Mayor” at Era Lounge opening Feb. 4 for First Fridays.

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