Arts Organizations and Audiences
With Hewlett backing for San Jose Taiko, drummer Marian Urushima is able to bring her artistry to a broad Bay Area audience.
Cited in an Urban Institute study as one of the top three metropolitan areas for artists in the United States, the San Francisco Bay Area is home to approximately 1,000 performing arts organizations. Not only is this arts landscape richly populated; it reflects Northern California’s amazing demographic and cultural diversity. This year, the Performing Arts Program supported a broad constellation of quality programming to increase exposure to, and understanding of, this rich variety of art forms. Our 2006 grants were targeted toward:
- Broadening the aesthetic diversity of performing arts grantees.
- Increasing support for the arts in under-represented geographic communities, with a focus on Contra Costa and Sonoma counties.
- Creating opportunities for artists to develop new work.
- Supporting artists and organizations working to preserve indigenous art forms.
2006 Highlights
In November 2006, we awarded grants totaling $25 million to four of the Bay Area’s premier performing arts institutions to mark the Foundation’s fortieth anniversary of philanthropy in the arts. The San Francisco Symphony received $5 million toward the endowment of its extensive education programs; the San Francisco Opera received $10 million for its permanently restricted endowment; the American Conservatory Theater received $5 million for new works; and the San Francisco Ballet received $5 million for its new works endowment.
The grant to the San Francisco Symphony will support “Adventures in Music,” established in 1988 to fill the gap caused by declining music education in public schools. This comprehensive program introduces children to music from around the world through in-school ensemble performances, program curricula, student journals, and classroom resources. The program reaches every San Francisco public school student and culminates in a specially designed San Francisco Symphony concert in Davies Symphony Hall.
Six new grants in 2006 demonstrated our ongoing commitment to extend support into new geographic and artistic areas. New grantees included an improvisational theater company, Bay Area Theatresports; the Firebird Youth Chinese Orchestra; the Horizons Foundation, to expand its LGBT performing arts grantmaking; the Monterey County Symphony; and Sonoma’s major regional theater and musical theater company, Sixth Street Playhouse/Santa Rosa Players.
2007 Goals
- Continue to broaden the aesthetic and geographic diversity of performing arts grantees
- Offer youth greater access to training and participation in the performing arts
- Expand support of artists working in contemporary aesthetics, indigenous art, and emerging art forms
- Fund organizations providing essential management and information services
