Arts Organizations and Audiences
Each summer Rhythmic Concepts offers week-long, intensive instruction in instrumental and vocal jazz for adolescent and adult musicians. Photo by Andy Mogg, courtesy of Rhythmic Concepts.
The San Francisco Bay Area is home to approximately 1,000 performing arts organizations that reflect Northern California’s amazing demographic and cultural diversity. In 2007, the Performing Arts Program continued to support a broad array of quality programs and organizations to increase exposure to, and understanding of, this rich variety of art forms. Our 2007 grants focused on:
- Increasing support for the arts in under-represented communities
- Expanding opportunities in the arts for young people
- Broadening the aesthetic diversity of performing arts grantees
- Creating opportunities for artists to develop new work
- Supporting artists and organizations working to preserve indigenous art forms
The Performing Arts Program makes grants to ensure that residents throughout the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area and neighboring Santa Cruz and Monterey counties can find meaningful, high-quality cultural experiences close to home. In 2007, the Program made grants to seventeen new cultural organizations, including organizations in Contra Costa and Napa counties. Among other new grantees were a multidisciplinary arts organization housed in a renovated 1920s movie theater in economically depressed Antioch, a contemporary opera company in Oakland, and a storytelling program for elders at the nation’s longest-running senior theater company, also in Oakland.
The Program is committed to funding organizations that provide more cultural experiences to young people, giving them opportunities to learn and build a stronger future for the arts. In 2007, we made a number of new grants in this area—including media arts and aerial dance, and a grant to Larkin Street Youth Services that gives homeless and runaway young people a chance to participate in the performing arts.
We are also committed to supporting organizations that reflect a diverse cultural approach to the arts; many of our grantees present indigenous work by artists who have immigrated to the Bay Area from around the world. In 2007, we added support for two organizations that broaden the region’s cultural offerings: Dimension Performing Arts presents work from China and Taiwan, and Golden Thread Productions, a theater company, explores Middle Eastern cultures. A Hewlett Foundation grant enabled Golden Thread to present its tenth anniversary season, the ReOrient Festival that promoted both new and established artists from the Middle East.
Developing new works often requires years of effort and substantial financial support. In 2007, the Foundation continued its partnerships with the Gerbode Foundation and the Walter and Elise Haas Fund’s Creative Work Fund to ensure that more of the region’s artists have the freedom to create. We also continued our support for CounterPULSE and Intersection for the Arts, which offer low-cost performances in intimate settings for audiences who want to see the new and unusual.
Arts Organizations and Audiences Grants authorized in 2007.
2008 Goals
- Continue to increase aesthetic and geographic diversity in the arts
- Find more opportunities for young people to participate in the arts
- Conduct a yearlong review of the Performing Arts Program
- Continue partnerships with the Walter and Elise Haas Fund’s Creative Work Fund and the Gerbode Foundation to support the creation of new works at artist residency programs and other venues
For more information, please visit the Foundation Web site.
