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Performing Arts

Encouraging artistic expression and its enjoyment.

The Foundation’s Performing Arts Program embraces the region’s rich cultural diversity, from the traditional to the cutting edge. In 2007, grants ranged from the San Francisco Ballet to the Tibetan Association of Northern California, to symphony and jazz orchestras from Santa Rosa to Carmel. Since its inception in 1966, more than $232 million has been granted to 459 organizations in theater, dance, music, opera, musical theater, film, and video.

Now the largest funder of Bay Area arts organizations, the Hewlett Foundation is also a long-term investor. By giving multiyear operating support to high-quality performing arts groups, we promote three essential goals: artistic vitality, community engagement, and organizational health.

Recognizing that appreciation of the arts begins early in life, in 2007 the Program continued its work to promote arts education in public schools. Research commissioned by the Foundation provided policymakers with information about California schools’ failure to meet state standards for teaching the arts and about how to remedy the problem.

In 2007, the Performing Arts Program made grants totaling $18,539,000.

Serving Bay Area Communities

The arts offer another rich means to intervene to change young lives. At Larkin Street Youth Services in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, staffers work to divert homeless and runaway youths from sex work, drugs, and crime. With Hewlett support, Larkin Street has developed a performing arts program that provides homeless youth with the opportunity to gain confidence in their creativity, exit street life, and make the transition to adult independence. In a very different setting, Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center in San Pablo, which emphasizes serving youth, provides education in a variety of Mexican art forms, sponsors cultural exchanges between the United States and Mexico, and develops community awareness of Mexican heritage through the arts. The Foundation supports Los Cenzontles with multiyear general operating funds and in its work to help develop long-range plans to serve more people.