Culture Forward is sponsored by The Svane Family Foundation. A $5 million initiative supporting arts and culture projects in downtown San Francisco, open to individual artists, collectives, and organizations.

Culture Forward ’25/'27 — The Svane Family Foundation A $5 Million Program to Support Arts and Culture Projects in Downtown San Francisco Discover upcoming events 〰️ City Arts Salons | $25,000 An intimate salon series in Civic Center featuring live conversations with artists and thinkers, with pre- and post-show on-stage mingling that turns audiences into active participants.

Arrivals, Again | $25,000 A participatory art installation using site-specific painting, sound, and maps to guide audiences through an outdoor journey across Downtown SF, accompanied by an exhibition and event series hosted by Pallas.

Jeffrey Cheung / Unity Press & Skateboarding Unity Fest 2025 | $100,000 An art, music, and skateboarding festival bringing together people of all identities and ages from the Bay Area, across the US, and abroad. Market Street Arts / Mid Market Foundation Building on last year’s success, UNSTAGED returns with expanded performances, bold public art, and live events that transform the Mid-Market corridor into a thriving cultural zone.

SFFILM School and Family Programs at SFMOMA | Twelve immersive film events engaging over 3,000 students, educators, and families at SFMOMA with filmmaker Q&As and curated screenings in the heart of SoMa. Bringing People Together Through Jazz | $50,000 A new series of community-focused jazz events combining live music, visual art, food, and local markets—all designed to draw a new generation of audiences to the SFJAZZ Center.

SOMArts’ Vogue Ball for All | $25,000 An all inclusive workshop series culminating in an all-ages fashion show and community Vogue Ball in SoMa, celebrating joy, expression, and LGBTQ+ culture.

The Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco The Chinese Culture Center’s 60th Anniversary Festival | $50,000 A vibrant street festival transforming Chinatown’s Grant Avenue into a dynamic arts corridor with large-scale installations, performances, and intergenerational engagement.

Tenderloin Museum 10-Year Anniversary Programming | $50,000 A year-long celebration marking a decade of the Tenderloin Museum with expanded space, community storytelling, and multidisciplinary events highlighting the neighborhood’s legacy.

Yerba Buena Gardens Festival The 2025 Children's Garden Series in Yerba Buena Gardens | $75,000 A beloved family series returns with 22 free, outdoor performances from June to November, showcasing music, dance, and theater in accessible, joyful settings Downtown. Creativity Explored x The Open Invitational | $100,000 A new, free national art fair spotlighting neurodiverse artists from progressive art studios across the country.

Live @ 220 Montgomery | $75,000 A year-long series of 100 free events featuring community storytelling, multicultural performances, and local artists. Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) Nexus: SF/Bay Area Black Art Week & 20 Years of MoAD | $75,000 A five-day citywide celebration of Black art and culture featuring exhibitions, open studios, screenings, artist talks, and events, coinciding with MoAD’s 20th anniversary.

Cultura y Arte Nativa de las Americas (CANA) Day of the Dead Night Market at Yerba Buena Gardens | $50,000 A November 1, 2025 event honoring Día de los Muertos with an Indigenous blessing and procession, a community altar, food and artisan booths, live mural painting, and performances by Indigenous dance groups and Latinx musical acts. Celebrating Ten Years of Stories!

| $50,000 A season of joyful, family-friendly events across Bay Area libraries, transit stations, and festivals—culminating in a landmark celebration at the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public Library in December 2025 Julio Cesar Morales / Dilo! Club Unicornio Mexican Institute of Sound | $50,000 A free public concert and Latinx block party in Jackson Square.

Tenderloin Futures: Collective Memory & Intersectional Liberation | $50,000 A yearlong cultural revitalization project activating 111 Taylor Street, the historic site of the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, through AR walking tours, exhibitions, festivals, and cross-generational arts programming.

Lily Kwong for Art at a Time Like This A sculptural native garden and seed dispersal hub that transforms a neglected downtown parcel into a living artwork, rooted in Lily Kwong’s practice of land-based art and community engagement.

The Tender Year Festival: Love in Spirit & Sound, Laureates and Champions, and Community Renewal in the Tenderloin | $25,000 A year-long arts celebration in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, uplifting themes of justice, healing, and renewal through gospel, jazz, poetry, and public ritual.

Bhangra & Beats Night Market | $25,000 Free fall events transforming three blocks of the Financial District into a high-energy celebration of South Asian culture with music, dance, food, art, and family-friendly activities.

Local Sirens: Women in Music Concerts, Studio Residencies and Training | $15,000 Free quarterly concerts, artist residencies, and music production training in SoMa/Mid-Market, promoting 500+ underrepresented women and gender-expansive artists annually through immersive performances, residencies, and hands-on audio education Down on the Corner | $10,000 A free, site-specific public art project at 111 Taylor Street in the Tenderloin honoring the legacy of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot and uplifting transgender visibility and prison systems change through aerial dance, original music, and video projection.

San Francisco Art Week and Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco SFAW x ICA SF Lounge at Transamerica Pyramid Center | $100,000 A nine-day public lounge and cultural hub (Jan 17–25, 2026) at the Transamerica Pyramid Center.

Serving as a central gathering space during the citywide celebration of art and design, the lounge will welcome artists, collectors, and the public, fostering connection across the Bay Area’s creative community.

Asian Art Museum Foundation of San Francisco Public Programming for Rave into the Future: Art in Motion | $75,000 A series of performances, talks, and family-friendly events accompanying the exhibition Rave into the Future: Art in Motion (Oct 24, 2025–Jan 12, 2026) The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot Play | $75,000 The Tenderloin Museum presents The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot play, an immersive production that recreates the landmark 1966 queer uprising in a 1960s-style cafeteria setting on Larkin Street.

SF: Past / Present / Future | $50,000 GCS Agency will present SF: Past / Present / Future, a three-part program running from November 2025 through March 2026. A historical skate and art exhibition and book launch (Past), a boutique art fair at the Fairmont during SF Art Week (Present), and student-engaged tech and digital media exhibitions with local universities (Future).

Root Division’s First Annual Artist’s Fair | $50,000 Root Division will debut the inaugural SOMA Artists’ Fair on December 13, 2025. This free, all-ages event will feature 30+ emerging artists through an affordable art marketplace, performances, hands-on workshops, food vendors, and an after-party at The Stud.

TIAT (The Intersection of Art and Technology) TIAT Downtown Events Series | $50,000 A six-month series of regularly scheduled immersive public programs highlighting creative innovation across digital media, art, sound, and performance. Staged in Downtown San Francisco, the series celebrates the convergence of art and emerging technologies as drivers of cultural regeneration.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) YBCA Free Monthly Music Series | $50,000 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) will continue its Free Monthly Music Series, a program the first Thursday of every month in the YBCA Forum that showcases live performances in dialogue with YBCA’s current exhibitions.

Performing Diaspora and Seed Community Engagement | $25,000 CounterPulse celebrates its 35th anniversary with Performing Diaspora and Seed residencies, supporting artists whose work bridges traditional and contemporary forms. The program will present six free performances, public work-in-progress showings, and neighborhood engagement events across the Tenderloin, SoMa, and Mid-Market districts.

Lily Kwong & Art At A Time Like This ICA SF and Art at a Time Like This, will present landscape artist Lily Kwong's major new site-responsive project EARTHSEED DOME in the Transamerica Redwood Park. This 3D-printed living soil installation merges ancestral building practices with emerging technology, serving as both a public artwork and seed dispersal hub to restore urban ecology.

SF Creative Writing Institute Dispatches from the City of Awe | $25,000 A yearlong storytelling initiative commissioning local writers and collecting first-person narratives from San Franciscans. Through a mobile listening booth, writing workshops, and public events, the project will engage up to 1,000 participants and culminate in readings, an anthology, and a digital archive—spotlighting resilience and connection.

The Soul Sessions | $15,000 The JaZzLine INSTITUTE presents The Soul Sessions, a 12-week live music series at Biscuits & Blues in early 2026. $5 tickets, weekly performances feature top Bay Area jazz, blues, and soul musicians, guest artists, Q&As, BAJABA awards, and jam sessions.

Moth Belly Gallery & The Tenderloin/Lower Polk First Thursday Art Walk Tenderloin Art Walk Second Wednesdays & Bay Area Arts Magazine Release | $15,000 A three-month Second Wednesdays pilot project with exhibitions, performances, and activations across neighborhood venues. The series culminates in the release of Bay Area Arts Magazine, spotlighting 20 local artists and expanding cultural participation in Downtown San Francisco.

San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company Every Saturday Night | $100,000 A new musical honoring the Fillmore District’s legacy, spanning from the 50s era “Harlem of the West” through moments of upheaval, Urban Renewal, and displacement. In development since 2022, the musical is presented at A. C.

T. ’s Strand Theater in Mid-Market/Civic Center with performances in October and November 2026, including a free student matinee. The project is led by Fillmore-based artists Michael Gene Sullivan and Danny Duncan, and supported by community partnerships, pop-up performances, and citywide outreach to attract thousands of visitors downtown while activating a key arts venue.

Forced Perspective: The World of Boots Riley| $75,000 Marking the public opening of Art + Water, a new creative space and artist workspace hub, will be an immersive, all-ages exhibition that transforms Pier 29 into a cultural destination with film sets, props, soundscapes, and hands-on experiences in the exhibition Forced Perspective: The World of Boots Riley.

Opening in Summer 2026, the exhibition will include a free opening weekend and monthly public program curated by Art + Water, Riley and Bay Area collaborators.

Chinatown Media and Arts Collaborative 5th Annual Chinatown Contemporary Arts Festival | $75,000 A free, all-ages, neighborhood-wide arts festival in fall 2026 activating Chinatown with installations, performances, family workshops, food, and vendors across Grant Ave and nearby streets, drawing families, students, and young professionals from adjacent Downtown communities.

This festival, centered around the arts hub Edge on the Square, will extend along Grant Ave and nearby streets and feature dozens of Asian diasporic artists, and well over 120 cultural and business organizations with bilingual media and community outreach.

San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade and Celebration Committee, Inc. SF Pride 2026 Main Stage & Cultural Revitalization: Artist Honoraria Fund| $50,000 The 56th Annual SF Pride Parade and Celebration! A major activation of Civic Center Plaza and surrounding Downtown neighborhoods with free, world-class performances by 200+ local LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and drag artists during Pride Weekend, drawing approximately 1.

3M attendees annually and positioning arts and culture as a driver of economic activity, safety, and visibility downtown. Presented on June 27 and 28, 2026, this grant enables San Francisco Pride to cover artist fees for a wide array of performances taking place at the event, which includes family programming alongside youth- and Gen Z–driven music lineups.

Society of Art and Living Archives Living Archives Living Archives: San Francisco | $50,000 Living Archives: San Francisco is a year-long cultural revitalization initiative rooted in historic Jackson Square, centered on social practice and collective inquiry.

The project reinterprets early San Francisco art and cultural history through exhibitions, walking tours, talks, salons, and hands-on workshops—making historical research tactile, engaging, and exploratory.

Bhangra & Beats Night Market | $50,000 Two free, all-ages cultural night markets—one in the summer and one in the fall celebrating Diwali (Festival of Lights)—featuring music, dance, food, artisans, and family-friendly activities that draw crowds to the SoMa/Yerba Buena area.

The project is led by Non Stop Bhangra in partnership with Into the Streets and additional community partners, activating public space with over 30 retail vendors and 20 food vendors per event.

Yerba Buena Gardens Festival The 2026 Indigenous Arts Series in Yerba Buena Gardens | $50,000 Yerba Buena Gardens Festival | The 2026 Indigenous Arts Series in Yerba Buena Gardens A program of three free, all-ages outdoor events—Native Contemporary Arts Festival in June 2026, Good Medicine comedy in summer 2026, and San Francisco Indigenous Peoples Day on October 12, 2026—celebrating Indigenous artists through dance, music, theater, and spoken word.

Developed and produced with long-standing Indigenous cultural partners, the event will engage over 2,600 attendees alongside over 11 performing groups.

Saint Joseph's Art Society & Mechanic's Institute LitLounge–Where Books, Authors, & Cocktails Converge | $25,000 Lit Lounge is a quarterly evening series that activates two of San Francisco’s most storied downtown landmarks, Saint Joseph’s Arts Society in SoMa and the Mechanics’ Institute in the Financial District, through lively author conversations, communal reading, games, and literary inspired cocktails.

Launching in March 2026 and recurring every third month, the series builds on a successful pilot last fall and will run through the end of the year with rotating venues, affordable ticketing, stipends for local authors, and bookstore partnerships.

Across four entertaining and inspiring evenings, audiences will gather in the MI’s iconic library and reading rooms and SJAS’s beautifully designed salons to discover new literary voices, connect with fellow book lovers, and experience downtown San Francisco as a place for ideas, conversation, and community.

Black Music Month Festival| $25,000 An all-ages celebration of Black Music Month in June 2026 presented at Great American Music Hall in the Tenderloin, featuring an intergenerational lineup of Black Bay Area artists spanning jazz, blues, gospel, country, R&B, hip-hop, and beyond. The project is produced in close collaboration with community and media partners with affordable admission.

Litquake Downtown | $25,000 A wide-reaching program of 25 free, public literary activations across Downtown SF from January through December 2026, including the Litquake Festival that spans neighborhoods from Chinatown and the Financial District to Mid-Market, SoMA/Yerba Buena, Tenderloin, and Union Square.

Programming includes author talks, youth and student events (Kidquake), translation and craft convenings, book fairs, and BIPOC/LGBTQ+ curated showcases at secured venues such as SFPL, KALW, Yerba Buena Gardens, MoAD, and others, supported by extensive media reach, numerous partners, and robust marketing to engage over 4,000 attendees in Downtown. American Conservatory Theater (A. C.

T.) A program of 8 to 10 free sidewalk concerts by local, emerging, and female-identified musicians outside A. C.

T.' s Strand Theater on Market St. to animate Civic Center/Mid-Market neighborhood and complement the run of the world-premiere of ||:girls:||:chance:||:music:|| in March and April 2026 at the Strand.

The play chronicles friendship, self-discovery, and the salvation of art-making for four highly-gifted teens whose lives collab and collide one pivotal summer at a prestigious Berkeley girls’ music program. The free concert series will partner with local arts organizations and align with pre-show music performances with select play performances, underscoring the fierce creativity of Bay Area youth and enlivening the Market St.

neighborhood around A. C. T.'

s Strand Theater. Freedom Comes When One Walks Through It | $12,000 A free, dance-based public art project connecting public libraries and prisons through testimonies from incarcerated women, presented as site-specific aerial performances that invites the public to engage with themes of freedom, justice, and belonging.

Presented the first three weekends of October 2026, the Downtown presentation will take place along the Fulton Street Plaza side of the Main Library with two daytime performances and a participatory Justice Circle, supported by art, music, and library partners. World Cup Arts Market Series | $75,000 A five-day waterfront arts market and public viewing series during the World Cup, in collaboration with the SF Port.

The program will feature large-scale match screenings, live performances, and a curated marketplace of local artists, transforming the shoreline into a vibrant, family-friendly gathering space that drives foot traffic, supports small business sales, and activates the city.

Arrivals: Celebrating Immigrant Art at the Ferry Building & Beyond | $25,000 A multi-site exhibition and activation series celebrating immigrant artists, anchored by a major show in the Ferry Building. Through public events, a silent disco, performances, and SF Open Studios programming, the project creates a citywide pathway connecting Downtown landmarks with working artist studios, galleries, popup spaces and communities.

Bay Area Creative Foundation 2026 Creative Youth Celebration | $25,000 A free, day-long youth arts festival at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts showcasing Bay Area high school talent across multiple disciplines. Through performances, exhibitions, and interactive programming, the event creates an inspiring, intergenerational platform for young artists to build a lasting sense of belonging in Downtown San Francisco.

A free, large-scale outdoor performance premiering during SF Pride’s Trans March, combining vertical dance, live vocals, sound design, and large-scale costuming across Downtown buildings. Celebrating trans visibility and community history, the work transforms the cityscape into a powerful, living stage of movement, memory, and resilience.

2026 Circus in the Parks | $50,000 A free summer series of outdoor circus performances across multiple San Francisco parks including Yerba Buena Gardens, Salesforce Park and PROXY.

Featuring a local ensemble of circus artists performing curated acts with live music by the Circus Bella All-Star Band, the program brings joy, spectacle, and community gathering into public space—inviting audiences of all ages to experience the magic of live interactive performance.

SOMA Pilipinas and Filipino Mental Health Initiative Sunset Sala First Fridays | $50,000 A monthly series of free, monthly cultural gatherings at Yerba Buena Gardens anchored by an illuminated Sun Dome sculpture. Blending music, dance, wellness, and community ritual, these vibrant “living room” evenings create a joyful, intergenerational space for connection—centering Filipino culture while activating Downtown at dusk.

Future of Us Festival | $25,000 A citywide festival (July 4–12, 2026) featuring creative activations that transform public visions of the future into large-scale artworks and experiences. Anchored by Downtown activations and a network of partner events, the festival invites audiences to experience, reflect on, and shape collective futures through art, music, and civic imagination.

Market Street Arts & Theater Festival | $100,000 A neighborhood-wide performing arts takeover transforming Mid-Market into a live, walkable stage. Featuring Broadway artists alongside local performers across theaters, streets, and public spaces, the event creates an energetic, accessible cultural corridor that invites audiences to explore, discover, and experience live performance throughout the district.

San Francisco’s Missing Conversation | $50,000 Missing Link Club (MLC) introduces free experimental programming in Downtown San Francisco from June through September. The series includes workshops, talks, screenings, exhibitions, and parties, alongside the launch of Culture Slop, a new print publication integrated directly into the program.

Developed in collaboration with the team behind SFAQ and Ever Gold [Projects], the magazine’s editorial content extends into live programming. MLC is grounded in a simple observation: cultural literacy develops through shared lived experience. Missing Link Club establishes a shared third space for collective understanding across disciplines.

It brings artists, technologists, and cultural practitioners into alignment through direct engagement, fostering dialogue and trust. Museum of the African Diaspora 3rd Annual Nexus: SF/Bay Area Black Art Week | $50,000 A dynamic day-to-night kickoff for Nexus: SF/Bay Area Black Art Week, featuring new, free admission Thursday for the public opening of MoAD’s new exhibition, and a signature Artist Ball.

Bringing together artists, creatives, and a broad swath of cultural and community leaders, Nexus positions Downtown San Francisco as a vibrant international destination for innovation, culture, and Black creative excellence. 2nd Annual Luminesce Ball | $25,000 A two-day festival celebrating ballroom culture, preceded by an eight-week free workshop series exploring vogue performance and runway.

Produced by SOMArts and Oakland To All, Luminesce part 2 will culminate in a kiki session, practice ball, and finally, an evening ballroom competition; creating an inclusive, intergenerational platform for radical self-expression and cultural celebration.

Tenderloin Museum | RINGSIDE at Newman’s | $50,000 An immersive exhibition and public program series reviving the legacy of San Francisco’s legendary Newman’s Gym and celebrating the museum's new space. The exhibition features a full-scale boxing ring installed in the gym’s original footprint, historic archives, and oral histories produced with UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library Oral History Center.

Public programming includes USA Boxing sanctioned matches with Abaddon Boxing Gym, panels with boxing historians and athletes, performances by choreographer and MMA fighter Kelly del Rosario, literary events with Rita Bullwinkel, and film screenings of archival footage.