Kala Art Institute (Kala) provides professional working facilities to artists working in all forms of printmaking as well as photography, book arts, and digital media. Through its Artists-in-Schools program, more than 20 artists affiliated with Kala annually present classes in nine Bay Area schools and two summer camps. Kala's eight- to 12-week residencies in schools culminate with exhibits of student work. With this grant, Kala will increase the number of schools served to 10 or more.
Grant Amount: $10,000 [2008] Project Dates: 03/05/2008 through 03/05/2009
Project Web Site: www.kala.org

Fiscal Sponsor: Alameda County Office of Education
The Alliance for Arts Learning Leadership, based in the Alameda County Office of Education, is recognized for thoughtful, groundbreaking work in arts education, including its broad-based partnerships, engagement of parents and families, and consistent models for evaluating its work and communicating its vision. The Fund's grant enables the Alliance to further build its Arts Active Parents group and spread quality arts education to classrooms, schools, and districts throughout the county.
Grant Amount: $60,000 [2007], $60,000 [2008] Project Dates: 07/09/2007 through 07/09/2009
Project Web Site: www.artiseducation.org

ArtSpan produces San Francisco's annual Open Studios event each fall. It also has a long-standing partnership with a nearby elementary school, where it offers an 11-week visual arts program in all elementary grade classrooms. The Fund's grant supports ArtSpan's expansion of this program to serve a second elementary school with a predominantly low-income student population.
Grant Amount: $10,000 [2008] Project Dates: 12/19/2008 through 12/19/2009
Project Web Site: www.artspan.org

Attitudinal Healing Connection works with adults and children on reducing violence in their community. Its largest program, ArtEsteem, uses the California Visual and Performing Arts content standards along with principles of attitudinal healing-building self-awareness, self-esteem, and the ability to work cooperatively with others-to introduce arts learning to low income children and youth. ArtEsteem began in West Oakland, but now provides workshops in visual arts, cultural arts, and design to classrooms and after school programs across Oakland.
Grant Amount: $25,000 [2008] Project Dates: 02/06/2008 through 02/06/2009
Project Web Site: www.ahc-oakland.org

A professional association serving the region's leading craft artists, the Baulines Crafts Guild also links high school student apprentices with master artists, providing in-depth learning opportunities for youth and building intergenerational relationships. In 2008-09, six or more youth in its Student Apprentice Project will work closely with professional mentors in their studios, learning new techniques and creating original works. The apprentices' studies culminate with an exhibit where they show their work alongside the master artists.
Grant Amount: $10,000 [2008] Project Dates: 05/07/2008 through 05/07/2009
Project Web Site: www.baulinescraftguild.org

Founded in 1976 to serve the emerging field of video arts, the Bay Area Video Coalition has emerged as a training center in media-related fields for adults and youth. Among its youth programs, Digital Pathways serves 20 low-income teenagers over an 18-month period of biweekly classes and placements for participants in entry-level positions in the media arts industry. Youth participating in Digital Pathways can focus on either audio or video production skills. This program builds mentoring relationships between working artists and youth, recruits and serves youth from schools with limited arts offerings, and fosters the creation of high quality youth media works.
Grant Amount: $45,000 [2008] , $45,000 [2009] Project Dates: 03/31/2008 through 03/31/2010
Project Web Site: www.bavc.org

Brava's theater academy primarily serves youth from low-income families and its Mission District neighborhood. The Fund's grant is helping Brava to make a cluster of successful workshops into a conservatory-style training program, instituting new rigor and structure through staff support, faculty training, and curriculum development.
Grant Amount: $50,000 [2006], $40,000 [2007], $30,000 [2008] Project Dates: 06/14/2006 through 06/14/2009
Project Web Site: www.brava.org

The California Alliance for Arts Education brings together key constituents to support and advocate for visual and performing arts education for preschool through post-secondary students in California schools. Its Web site and e-mail newsletter communicate up-to-date information, and its programs foster policy discussion and development. The Alliance has grown rapidly and taken on new responsibilities over the last two years; a general support grant helps it to remain stable, nimble, and effective through a period of expansion.
Grant Amount: $35,000 [2007], $35,000 [2008] Project Dates: 03/29/2007 through 03/29/2009
Project Web Site: www.artsed411.org

California Poets in the Schools places professional poets in classrooms statewide, although its largest program is in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Fund’s grant supports its recruitment and training of new poets and its assistance to local area coordinators—who act as liaisons with school districts, help poets find teaching placements, and coach newly assigned poet teachers. The grant also supports subsidized poet-residencies at schools with low-income student populations and limited discretionary funds to hire artists.
Grant Amount: $20,000 [2008] Project Dates: 07/07/2008 through 07/07/2009
Project Web Site: www.cpits.org

California Shakespeare Theater's Artistic Learning program pairs professional artists with classroom teachers in Oakland public schools in order to help the teachers integrate theater arts into their teaching. The theater artists visit classrooms eight or more times each semester and work with teachers to plan themes and lessons and execute a curriculum together. In 2008, the Artistic Learning Program is serving 650 low-income youth in fourth through 12th grade.
Grant Amount: $15,000 [2008] Project Dates: 03/21/2008 through 03/21/2009
Project Web Site: www.calshakes.org

Cantare Con Vivo is a well-regarded community choir that also offers Oakland students choral music lessons. The choir provides in-school and after-school classes at two public elementary schools and sponsors an All Stars middle school choir, serving children from 10 schools across Oakland. The Fund's grant enables Cantare Con Vivo to start a second middle school choir for treble voices in response to growing demand.
Grant Amount: $7,500 [2008] Project Dates: 05/22/2008 through 05/22/2009
Project Web Site: www.cantareconvivo.org

Cazadero Performing Arts Camp is well known for its intensive summer camp program for children and youth interested in studying music. The Fund’s grant is helping to support JumpStart—an introductory program for middle school students, their music teachers, and their parents that is held on six three-day weekends during the school year. Cazadero recruits primarily from East Bay public schools for JumpStart and provides full scholarships to those who cannot afford camp fees, increasing access to quality music instruction to low-income youth.
Grant Amount: $7,500 [2008] Project Dates: 07/07/2008 through 07/07/2009
Project Web Site: www.cazadero.org

Since 2000, the Center for the Art of Translation's Poetry Inside Out program has introduced children in bilingual classrooms to great Spanish language literature, coached them through translations of short poems, and invited them to write their own poems in Spanish and English. Its rigorous, 15-week curriculum serves 800 third- to eighth-grade students. The Fund's grant helps it to continue this work, honoring the cultural heritage of the children of Spanish-speaking immigrants, and to develop new curricula.
Grant Amount: $35,000 [2007], $25,000 [2008] Project Dates: 03/29/2007 through 03/29/2009
Project Web Site: www.catranslation.org

Chinese Cultural Productions features artists who work in both traditional Chinese and contemporary forms. Dancers from its Lily Cai Chinese Dance Ensemble lead classes in traditional Chinese dance after school on four campuses with large Chinese immigrant and Chinese American student populations. Three are San Francisco public schools and the fourth is a parochial school in the city’s Chinatown. A program goal is for participating students to feel greater pride in and knowledge of their heritage.
Grant Amount: $20,000 [2008] Project Dates: 07/25/2008 through 07/25/2009

Fiscal Sponsor: Community Initiatives
A group of the Bay Area artists who provide classes in public schools and after-school programs is testing the idea of creating a professional association that would provide training, employment information, insurance, and other professional services to teaching artists. The Fund's grant provides seed support for initial programs and membership recruitment.
Grant Amount: $10,000 [2008] Project Dates: 12/19/2008 through 12/19/2009
Project Web Site: www.teachingartistsorganized.org/index2.html

Fiscal Sponsor: Emery Education Foundation
A small, two-school Alameda County district, serving a predominantly low-income student population, Emery Unified School District is working to increase student achievement by building community and parent involvement and developing a strong arts education program. Efforts to strengthen arts learning in Emery schools include professional development in arts integration for many of its teachers, and hiring an arts integration coordinator, a parent liaison and new, credentialed arts teachers for in-school and after-school programs. This grant is supported equally by the Fund's Arts and Education programs.
Grant Amount: $100,000 [2008] Project Dates: 07/11/2008 through 07/11/2009
Project Web Site: www.emeryusd.k12.ca.us/

Galería de la Raza, based in the Mission District, has a distinguished track record for presenting Chicano and Latino artists. Responding to demand voiced in community meetings, it is creating a computer arts center in its former store. The center allows Galería de la Raza to expand a multi-generational arts mentorship program so that it serves 65-80 youth each year and to provide computer access to low-income children and adults from the neighborhood. Among other activities, participating youth will help their parents (many of whom are immigrants) create e-mail accounts, blogs, and web pages to connect with family members in Latin America.
Grant Amount: $35,000 [2006], $20,000 [2007], $20,000 [2008] Project Dates: 12/11/2006 through 12/11/2008
Project Web Site: www.galeriadelaraza.org

The Imagine Bus Project offers free and low-cost after-school visual arts workshops at 10 sites serving low-income San Francisco children. Instructors are professional artists trained in youth development and arts education standards. The Fund's grant will help a planned expansion to 25 sites over three years.
Grant Amount: $35,000 [2007], $30,000 [2008] , $25,000 [2009] Project Dates: 07/09/2007 through 07/09/2010
Project Web Site: www.imaginebusproject.org

Leap…imagination in learning (Leap) places teaching artists and architects in Bay Area public schools to lead residencies. The Fund’s grant focuses on sustaining the quality of Leap’s core programs through professional development of its teaching artists and on gradually expanding programs in the San Francisco Unified School, where it will serve 16 elementary and middle schools in 2008-09.
Grant Amount: $15,000 [2008] Project Dates: 09/16/2008 through 09/16/2009
Project Web Site: www.leap4kids.org

Luna Kids Dance is working to build strong, standards-based dance education programs in the Oakland Unified School District. At three participating elementary schools, Luna Kids Dance offers weekly dance classes, professional development for teachers, and out-of-school family dance activities. This program gradually has been growing to serve every grade level. In 2008 it will expand to a fourth, middle school, campus.
Grant Amount: $10,000 [2008] Project Dates: 02/25/2008 through 02/25/2009
Project Web Site: www.lunakidsdance.com

Fiscal Sponsor: Marcus A. Foster Educational Institute
Launched by a classroom teacher at West Oakland's Prescott Elementary School, Prescott Circus Theatre now provides free after-school programming in circus arts at multiple Oakland public schools, serving primarily low-income children. The Prescott Clowns, leading middle school-age participants in the Prescott Circus, perform at 50 or more community events a year, and a performing group of Junior Clowns is also in high demand. In the coming year, the circus will serve eight sites and invest in teaching artists in order to improve the student-teacher ratio in its high-demand classes.
Grant Amount: $15,000 [2008] Project Dates: 02/25/2008 through 02/25/2009
Project Web Site: www.prescottcircus.org/

The Museum of Children’s Art offers hands-on, age-appropriate arts classes for children and families in its museum, in schools, and at other community sites. The Fund’s grant assists the Museum with implementing two aspects of its recent strategic plan: strengthening professional development of teaching artists, and hiring an evaluation consultant to revise its survey instruments and improve data-gathering systems.
Grant Amount: $40,000 [2008] , $30,000 [2009] Project Dates: 11/21/2008 through 11/21/2010
Project Web Site: www.mocha.org

The arts are one of the only academic fields in which outside professionals deliver a significant amount of the instruction given in public schools. Because teaching artists' employment, training, and service are so important to the arts education field, a Chicago-based arts policy expert has launched a study of them in several California sites and in communities across the country. The Fund's grant supports the research being conducted in San Francisco and Alameda County.
Grant Amount: $20,000 [2008] Project Dates: 11/11/2008 through 11/11/2009
Project Web Site: www.norc.org

Originally formed as a teen performing group, the Oakland Youth Chorus now provides one of the largest music education programs for Oakland public schools, working with some 1,000 students per year at 23 sites. Its curriculum is clearly aligned with California's Visual and Performing Arts framework, and it reaches many children who otherwise would not have opportunities to study music. The Fund's grant is helping the Chorus address both programmatic and organizational development goals identified in its strategic plan.
Grant Amount: $40,000 [2008] , $40,000 [2009] , $30,000 [2010] Project Dates: 07/11/2008 through 07/11/2011
Project Web Site: www.oaklandyouthchorus.org

Oaktown Jazz Workshops promotes, preserves, and presents live music through several family-oriented music events, lecture-demonstrations, youth and adult jazz festivals, and free jazz workshops for young students. These workshops are offered twice each week after school at two Oakland community centers. The 25 participants have opportunities to work with some of the region's and country's leading jazz artists, and the youth ensemble that grows out of this workshop is excellent. The Fund's grant supports the Workshops' continuing focus on serving inner-city, low-income youth.
Grant Amount: $7,500 [2008] Project Dates: 12/10/2008 through 12/10/2009
Project Web Site: www.oaktownjazz.org

Opera Piccola is dedicated to making opera and theater widely accessible. Its most robust program, ArtGate, places teaching artists in classrooms during and after school, where they teach art-making skills and develop work with young students based on the participants' ideas. The Fund's grant supports both ArtGate and strategic planning for Opera Piccola as it manages the departures of both its artistic and managing directors.
Grant Amount: $25,000 [2008] Project Dates: 12/12/2008 through 12/12/2009
Project Web Site: www.opera-piccola.org

Performing Arts Workshop (PAW) is one of the oldest San Francisco organizations advancing arts education for San Francisco children and youth. Its programs serve students in local public schools, transitional housing, and after-school programs; and it sponsors professional development in the arts for classroom teachers. The Fund's grant helps PAW pursue its strategic plan and extend the arts to more young people from low-income families, including English language learners and students with special needs.
Grant Amount: $35,000 [2005], $35,000 [2006], $35,000 [2007], $35,000 [2008] , $35,000 [2009] Project Dates: 10/07/2005 through 10/07/2010
Project Web Site: www.performingartsworkshop.org

Serving elementary and middle school-age children from four San Francisco Richmond District school sites, the Richmond District After School Collaborative provides after-school academic and enrichment programs that include a strong arts component. Participating students study art for one hour a day, three days a week. Over the course of a year, they immerse themselves in two of four disciplines-dance, music, visual arts, or poetry. The Fund's grant is helping the collaborative to sustain program quality and small classes while reaching 300 or more children and youth.
Grant Amount: $20,000 [2008] Project Dates: 05/27/2008 through 05/27/2009
Project Web Site: www.rdnc.org

Artists renting studios at Root Division in San Francisco’s Mission District are required to volunteer for the organization or in its community. One of its largest volunteer programs places artists in classrooms and after-school programs to lead six-week sessions. Root Division members who have educational backgrounds and experience in arts education train these volunteers before they are placed, help them develop curricula, and observe and critique their teaching. This community service program enhances the volunteers’ professionalism and skills and benefits the children who receive free art lessons.
Grant Amount: $10,000 [2008] Project Dates: 08/04/2008 through 08/04/2009
Project Web Site: www.rootdivision.org

One of the largest arts education organizations serving the San Francisco Unified School District, SFArtsED is working to deepen its relationships with the schools it serves. Teachers and administrators at four schools that have long worked with SFArtsED are documenting their best practices in arts education and being trained as mentors to educators at other campuses. Through these mentors, over the course of a semester SFArtsED will facilitate and evaluate a network among faculty at seven or more schools. It hopes to expand and further develop that peer mentoring network in future years.
Grant Amount: $20,000 [2008] Project Dates: 02/07/2008 through 02/07/2009
Project Web Site: www.sfartsed.org

The San Francisco Film Society produces the San Francisco International Film Festival and has been expanding its scope to offer more year-round presentations, educational activities, and services to filmmakers. Two years ago it began working with staff in the San Francisco Unified School District on the annual Young at Art festival. Now wanting to deepen this partnership, it is studying the state of media arts education in San Francisco public schools, looking at what other nonprofit organizations provide, and assessing the capacity of district teachers. This study, supported by the Fund, will enable the Film Society to design an appropriate media arts education program and will inform the District's Arts Education Master Plan.
Grant Amount: $25,000 [2008] Project Dates: 12/16/2008 through 12/16/2009
Project Web Site: www.sffs.org

San Francisco Opera is committed to the premise that opera is a living art form that can be enjoyed by anyone—including children and youth. Following a recent study of its capacity in arts education and hiring of a new director of education, the Opera is piloting two model programs—one for elementary and middle schools and one for high schools. The programs include: introductory workshops led by teaching artists; educational DVDs; opportunities for students to attend simulcasts, dress rehearsals, or performances; and artists working with students to create mini-operas in their classrooms. The Fund's grant supports piloting these programs in 12 or more schools.
Grant Amount: $50,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 11/21/2008 through 11/21/2009
Project Web Site: www.sfopera.com

The San Francisco Symphony has a long history of serving the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) and encouraging students' enjoyment of and participation in classical music. Through Opus, a new program, Symphony musicians will work closely with middle and high school music teachers, shaping their contributions to meet the classrooms' needs. Activities include coaching students, special workshops, advising music teachers, instrument repair, and free concert tickets for students and their teachers. Beginning in seven schools, over three years Opus will expand to serve 16 campuses.
Grant Amount: $83,333 [2006], $83,333 [2007], $83,334 [2008] Project Dates: 07/15/2006 through 07/15/2009
Project Web Site: www.sfsymphony.org

Stagebridge brings together seniors with children and youth through storytelling activities. Its StoryBridge program provides two-day summer storytelling institutes for classroom teachers and places trained senior storytellers in Oakland and Berkeley public schools to teach the elements of a story and coach students through developing and telling their own tales. The program culminates with student performances at their schools. The Fund’s grant is helping Stagebridge to rewrite its Storybridge curriculum guide to include more information about working with English-language learners, to revamp its assessment tools, and to intensify the training of its senior artist-teachers.
Grant Amount: $25,000 [2008] Project Dates: 08/26/2008 through 08/26/2009
Project Web Site: www.stagebridge.org

Started with a focus on serving sixth- grade classrooms, Streetside Stories has become an extensive in-school and after-school program for first- through eighth- graders that leads them through writing and performing their own stories. In the last three years, Streetside Stories doubled the number of students served. The Fund's grant helps it to hire a deputy director for programs who will oversee teaching staff and manage relationships with new and current program sites, making possible continued program growth.
Grant Amount: $40,000 [2007], $30,000 [2008] Project Dates: 11/27/2007 through 11/27/2009
Project Web Site: www.streetside.org

Based in industrial West Oakland, The Crucible offers classes, workshops, and studio space to young and adult artists working in fine and industrial arts—including foundry work, blacksmithing, glass fusion, jewelry-making, and woodworking. The Fund's grant supports The Crucible's efforts to serve more young people with sequential workshops after school, during the summer, and on weekends. This effort focuses on reaching more low-income youth from The Crucible's neighborhood.
Grant Amount: $15,000 [2008] Project Dates: 12/19/2008 through 12/19/2009
Project Web Site: www.thecrucible.org

Fiscal Sponsor: University Corporation, San Francisco State
A service learning class in the dance department at San Francisco State University places college students as dance instructors at youth agencies, community centers, and church halls in the Visitacion Valley, Bayview-Hunters Point, and Ingleside neighborhoods of San Francisco. The college students, mentored by a veteran dance teacher, offer young students in these neighborhoods opportunities to take classes twice each week. The most motivated young children also take weekend classes at the university. The project is fostering a next generation of dance educators and arts learning opportunities to children in low-income neighborhoods.
Grant Amount: $24,000 [2008] Project Dates: 12/19/2008 through 12/19/2009
Project Web Site: musicdance.sfsu.edu/community/Village_Dancers

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' Young Artists at Work is an intensive nine-month-long multidisciplinary program serving up to 30 high school students from diverse backgrounds. Each spring, participants choose between two disciplines, which they study with adult artist mentors twice each week along with weekly media arts workshops. In summer, participants are placed in community internships. In 2008, the Center is expanding the program to include mentoring by museum curators and support of an exhibition curated and produced by participants in Young Artists at Work.
Grant Amount: $25,000 [2008] , $25,000 [2009] Project Dates: 03/31/2008 through 03/31/2010
Project Web Site: www.ybca.org

Youth Speaks is a nationally-recognized proponent of spoken word poetry by youth. Its workshops, in-school presentations, and performances reach approximately 43,000 youth each year. The Fund's grant is dedicated to a mainstay Youth Speaks program-after school writing workshops for which youth meet twice each week in small groups at ten Bay Area sites. Workshops excel at bringing together young people from different schools, neighborhoods, and life experiences, and enabling them to strengthen their creative and critical thinking skills.
Grant Amount: $35,000 [2008] , $30,000 [2009] Project Dates: 03/31/2008 through 03/31/2010
Project Web Site: www.youthspeaks.org

Fiscal Sponsor: Z Space Studio
Word for Word, a theater ensemble (part of the Z Space Studio), has developed a well-received theater and literacy program for classrooms. Recently Word for Word completed an evaluation and curriculum revision of its Literature from the Inside Out program. The Fund's grant is helping the company to invest in program improvements that were uncovered in its assessment and to recruit and train more teaching artists. At least two workshops featuring the revised curriculum will be presented to teachers in the San Francisco Unified School District and a minimum of three 10-week artist residencies will serve the district in 2008-09.
Grant Amount: $25,000 [2008] Project Dates: 07/07/2008 through 07/07/2009
Project Web Site: www.zspace.org/wordforword.htm

A leading source of affordable music lessons for people of all ages, the San Francisco Community Music Center is expanding its scholarship program, opportunities for students to play together in groups, and free concerts by student ensembles. The Fund's grant supports implementation of the Center's new five-year plan in which, among other goals, the Center seeks to serve more low-income students and advance a 'Creating Community: Making Music Together' initiative.
Grant Amount: $50,000 [2004], $50,000 [2005], $50,000 [2006], $50,000 [2007], $50,000 [2008] Project Dates: 12/14/2004 through 12/13/2009
Project Web Site: www.sfmusic.org

Founded in the 1970s in response to the military coup in Chile, La Peña Cultural Center has developed into a nationally recognized presenter of traditional music from around the world, a forum for cross-cultural and cross-generational exchange, and a site for community members to take classes in music, dance, and theater. It fosters an array of grassroots arts efforts, from community choruses to teen hip-hop groups. La Peña's mission of contributing to positive social change by creating understanding among people of different cultures is closely aligned with the Fund's Arts goals. A core support grant helps with implementation of a strategic plan, leadership and succession planning, and piloting of arts education programming in East Bay public schools.
Grant Amount: $40,000 [2007], $40,000 [2008] , $40,000 [2009] , $40,000 [2010] Project Dates: 11/27/2007 through 11/27/2012
Project Web Site: www.lapena.org

In its third year, the San Francisco Theater Festival presents short performances by an array of Bay Area theater companies. The free program takes place on 10 stages in Yerba Buena Gardens and nearby facilities. The Fund's grant helps to sustain the Festival's growth: It plans to present 85 groups and reach an audience of 10,000 people in 2008.
Grant Amount: $4,000 [2008] Project Dates: 05/20/2008 through 05/20/2009
Project Web Site: www.sftheaterfestival.org

The greater San Francisco Bay Area is home to the nation’s second-largest South Asian community, whose population has doubled in the last decade. The 3rd I South Asian Independent Film Festival annually gives these residents access to films that reflect their experiences. The Fund’s grant supports the festival’s efforts to reach diverse Bay Area South Asians through screenings and interpretive programs organized with community-based organizations, professional associations, religious groups, and social service agencies. It also contributes to sustaining the festival’s family programs and efforts to reach more South Asians under age 18.
Grant Amount: $7,000 [2008] Project Dates: 09/25/2008 through 09/25/2009
Project Web Site: www.thirdi.org/~sf

The 509 Cultural Center presents visual arts exhibitions at two locations in San Francisco's Tenderloin. In 1989, it began transforming the alley behind one of its galleries into a green space, filled with art and available for free events. The site, Cohen Alley, now known as 'The Tenderloin National Forest.' is close to completion, and the Fund's grant partially supports the final phase of its transformation—installing stone walkways, artist-designed benches, a small stage, and a greenhouse. The Fund's grant makes possible fuller use of the site for cultural programs serving the Center's low-income neighbors.
Grant Amount: $7,500 [2008] Project Dates: 12/19/2008 through 12/19/2009
Project Web Site: www.luggagestoregallery.org

Fiscal Sponsor: Arriba Juntos
Mission Community Council was founded in 2000 when 35 community organizations serving Mission District residents decided to get together to identify and work together on community priorities and challenges. One joint project has been to transform the 16th Street Mission District BART Plaza into a cultural venue, with the hope that increasing official, sanctioned activities at the space will contribute to neighborhood safety, cleanliness, and vitality. The Council has worked with BART and other agencies to develop a rotating exhibit program, monthly performances, and quarterly festivals at the plaza. These serve a diverse audience that includes many low-income members.
Grant Amount: $7,500 [2008] Project Dates: 02/13/2008 through 02/13/2009
Project Web Site: www.micocosf.org/plaza16press2_20061006_pr.php

Staff at the contemporary dance organization CounterPULSE and at the Alliance for California Traditional Arts noted that some immigrant artists feel inappropriately pigeonholed as traditional or folk artists when they explicitly want to break with traditions of their homelands or want to evolve beyond the boundaries of traditional forms. Such artists feel estranged from venues and programs for traditional artists and poorly understood by contemporary dance presenters. The experimental program Performing Diaspora, supported in part by the Fund, offers commissioning fees, free rehearsal space, and work-in-progress productions to help such artists develop new works that will be presented by CounterPULSE in public discussions and an annual festival.
Grant Amount: $15,000 [2008] Project Dates: 12/04/2008 through 12/04/2009
Project Web Site: www.counterpulse.org

Crosspulse is the artistic company of percussionist/rhythm dancer Keith Terry, whose specialty is body music—a discipline that encompasses a wide range of cultural traditions. The Fund's grant supports an inaugural biannual International Festival of Body Music that will bring together Bay Area practitioners of traditional, culturally specific body music alongside a famous Brazilian body music group, the Canadian Inuit throat singers, and performers from France and Turkey. Festival activities will include public performances, school assemblies, workshops for practitioners, and classroom workshops featuring a curriculum about hand games from around the world. The festival's formats have the potential to contribute to building cross-cultural relationships among its artists and audiences.
Grant Amount: $15,000 [2008] Project Dates: 09/22/2008 through 09/22/2009
Project Web Site: www.crosspulse.com

Fiscal Sponsor: Dancers' Group
For 10 days in April, dance organizations throughout the region open their doors to the public, inviting them to free classes, demonstrations, and performances. Annually Bay Area National Dance Week introduces people to the breadth and quality of the local dance community. Its goals are to involve a growing and more diverse audience in dance.
Grant Amount: $5,000 [2008] Project Dates: 03/21/2008 through 03/21/2009
Project Web Site: www.bayareandw.org/

Dancers' Group offers artists' services, workshops, and public programs focused on strengthening the Bay Area's dance community. Its new series, ONSITE, is designed to reach a broad cross-section of the public by mounting free dance performances outside of studios and theaters. In 2008, ONSITE will feature a major new site-specific work by choreographer Anna Halprin at Stern Grove in San Francisco.
Grant Amount: $10,000 [2008] Project Dates: 05/06/2008 through 05/06/2009
Project Web Site: www.dancersgroup.org

The Lower San Antonio district of Oakland is one of the most culturally diverse neighborhoods in the Bay Area. Community activists in the neighborhood worked together as the Eastside Arts Alliance, acquiring a building and developing it to include subsidized housing, small businesses, and a cultural center. The Fund's grant helps the Alliance sustain its longest-running, free cultural program, the Malcolm X Jazz Festival in San Antonio Park.
Grant Amount: $20,000 [2008] Project Dates: 11/07/2008 through 11/07/2009
Project Web Site: www.eastsideartsalliance.com