Performing Arts Program Open Inquiry

Performing Arts Program Open Inquiry is a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation that funds performing arts organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area through two complementary strategies: Communities and Artists. The Communities strategy supports organizations helping Bay Area residents discover and experience artistic and cultural practices meaningful to their lives.

The Artists strategy supports culture bearers in shaping policies and practices that improve their creative agency and economic well-being, particularly around housing, wages, and labor protections. Eligible applicants are Bay Area-based performing arts organizations aligned with the foundation's community-centered and artist-centered priorities across a broad range of performing arts forms.

You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience. Our Communities strategy aims to ensure Bay Area communities discover, develop, and experience artistic and cultural practices that bring meaning, inspiration, and joy.

The arts are a powerful means for individuals and communities to understand and express themselves, and to create connections across differences. We believe that communities across the region should have the opportunity to engage with art that is meaningful to them. The Bay Area’s demographic composition and economic opportunities influence who, how, and where the arts are created, experienced, and practiced.

We support a broad range of performing arts forms and practices that are relevant to and reflective of people living throughout the region. Our Artists strategy seeks to ensure Bay Area artists and culture bearers shape and benefit from the services, policies, and practices that most impact their creative agency and economic well-being.

Artists and culture bearers are the authors and facilitators of creative acts, education, and experiences that deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world. Increasing challenges around housing and space affordability, wages, labor protections, transportation, among others, are threatening both the financial stability and the creative agency of artists.

Our grantmaking strategy aims to increase assets for Bay Area artists to advocate for their needs, with durable models of self-governance and a robust network of support for innovative ideas. This support helps create a more inclusive and properly resourced environment, where artists and culture bearers have greater control of their working conditions and can realize their full potential.

Our Youth strategy supports equitable access to high-quality arts education opportunities for all young people in the Bay Area. Participating in the arts enables young people to find their voice; learn about their own and others’ cultures; and draw upon their creativity as a resource for learning, self-expression, and social navigation.

We aim to ensure that all Bay Area youth, ages five to 25, have access to high-quality, sequential, multidisciplinary arts education. This work is realized through two approaches: delivery of arts education programming for youth in the Bay Area, and support for arts education policy and advocacy work by grantee partners to encourage public investment at the state and local levels.

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