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Performing Arts

Encouraging artistic expression and its enjoyment.

For forty years, the Hewlett Foundation’s Performing Arts Program has played a leading role in the San Francisco Bay Area, a region rich in cultural diversity. From our inaugural grant to the San Francisco Symphony to this year’s award to the Firebird Youth Chinese Orchestra, Hewlett funds have supported all forms of artistic expression, for all communities. To date, more than $217 million have been granted to 428 organizations in theater, dance, music, opera, musical theater, film, and video.

Now the area’s largest foundation funder for the arts, the Hewlett Foundation is also a long-term investor. By giving high-quality performing arts groups multiyear operating support, we promote three essential goals: artistic vitality, community engagement, and organizational health.

In 2006, this solid support proved critical for the nonprofit arts sector, faced with recent shifts in the Bay Area’s economy and demographics. Not only did we expand the aesthetic and geographic breadth of our grantmaking. We also supported the creation of new, affordable cultural facilities and cultivated future artists and audiences by supporting efforts to increase arts education for all California schoolchildren.

With space to thrive, with a new generation of performers and patrons in the wings, Bay Area arts organizations continue to give value, meaning, and enjoyment to people’s lives—a hallmark of Hewlett philanthropy.

In 2006, the Performing Arts Program made grants totaling $41,322,180.