The Kenneth Rainin Foundation believes that artists are essential to our lives, as visionaries and storytellers. Their creative power is crucial to helping us reclaim our shared humanity, bridge communities and heal divides. Bay Area artists and cultural organizations continued to adapt to the pandemic and generate work that centered and uplifted our communities. They also propelled equity-driven solutions to build cultural wealth and cultivate connection.

Under the leadership of Ted Russell—promoted to Director, Arts Strategy & Ventures in February—we continued to focus our strategies on helping Bay Area artists thrive. With the combined expertise of Ted and Arts Program Officer Adriana Griñó, our Arts program furthered initiatives focused on reimagining systems, supporting visionary artists and advancing equity.

The Foundation partnered with United States Artists in a new initiative, The Rainin Fellowship, to ensure that diverse, visionary artists thrive in the Bay Area. The Fellowship funds artists working in Dance, Film, Public Space and Theater who push the boundaries of creative expression, anchor local communities and advance the field. The four inaugural Fellows—Amara Tabor-Smith, Margo Hall, People’s Kitchen Collective and Rodrigo Reyes—received unrestricted grants of $100,000, as well as tailored professional supports. We hosted a virtual celebration with the Fellows in April where the power of their work echoed throughout their conversation.

The pandemic’s prolonged uncertainty continued to challenge artists and arts organizations. Our New and Experimental Works (NEW) Program grantees varied their approaches to showcasing performances. Dance Mission Theater produced a virtual film festival focused on parallels between COVID and the HIV and AIDS crises. Site-specific outdoor productions in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury included Joe Goode Performance Group’s exploration of the hippie era through a racial justice lens and Eye Zen Presents’ Queer history tour. In the fall, Z Space and Shotgun Players opened to live indoor performances, enacting extensive COVID safety protocols.

Artist-led public art projects supported by our Open Spaces Program also adapted to connect deeply and safely with their communities. In one example, Mujeres Unidas y Activas evolved “Y BASTA YA!,” a project with NAKA Dance Theater, into a video series. The series focused on Indigenous and Latina immigrant women and issues of race, gender violence and invisibility. The project also encompassed mutual aid and centered language justice for Mam and Spanish speaking communities. The Kala Art Institute, Golden Gate Library and Sue Mark shifted to a virtual model where neighbors shared stories and community history for the collective memory bank in “Commons Archive.”

To address the pandemic’s ongoing impacts, we made shifts in our grantmaking programs. We increased funding and reduced grant restrictions for our project grants, and added early-stage development funding to the production grants we’ve historically offered for public art projects. We also hosted virtual discussions to create a space for peer learning and exchange for practitioners working in the public realm.

In early 2021, we commissioned Vogl Consulting in collaboration with four Bay Area Arts funders to examine local and national pandemic relief funding. We sought to understand its impact on individual artists and small to mid-size arts organizations, with a focus on racial equity. The report illuminated pronounced disparities impacting the region’s Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) artists and organizations. It also highlighted the decline of critical supports and the urgent need for additional resources. These findings inspired our relaunch of the East Bay Arts Relief Fund in November, in partnership with the Walter & Elise Haas Fund and Hellman Foundation. Administered by the Center for Cultural Innovation, this pooled fund distributed more than $380,000 to support the East Bay’s diverse and vitally important cultural communities. Grants were awarded to 223 artists and cultural workers in Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, San Leandro, Hayward and Alameda.

We complemented those efforts by engaging field experts to assess our Arts program strategies using an equity lens. Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project helped us pilot a demographic survey and evaluated accessibility and equity in our NEW Program design. The Cultural Strategies Council examined how our strategic partnerships and grantmaking can advance equity in the Bay Area arts ecosystem. These efforts will help shape subsequent phases of our work in the coming year.

Artists reveal a multitude of stories and possibilities for social change, which alter our perspectives. The SFFILM Rainin Grants supported 20 projects in various stages of screenwriting and development, including two films that center the disability community. Filmed from his wheelchair in Oakland, Reid Davenport connects the antiquated spectacle of the freak show with his own life in “I Didn’t See You There,” which won Sundance’s US Documentary Directing Award. In “Untitled Dwarfism Project,” director Julie Wyman confronts her own complicated diagnosis of dwarfism. She excavates the promise and peril of an emerging drug intended to make Little People taller—and no longer themselves.

Oakland-based Center for Cultural Power is driving change by elevating the power of art and culture to shape new ideas and behavior locally and nationally. This women of color, artist-led organization is at the forefront of narrative change work at the intersection of art, social justice and the climate crisis.

Our investments in reimagining economic and organizational support systems are aimed at addressing historical inequities and systemic racism to help all artists thrive. In March, Grantmakers in the Arts released “Solidarity, Not Charity,” which we funded with the William and Flora Hewlett and Barr Foundations. It highlights how arts funders can transform the sector by investing in the alternative economy leadership of BIPOC, disabled, queer, trans and working class creatives. Our portfolio includes an array of initiatives that demonstrate creatives’ changemaking power.

AmbitioUS, a national initiative led by the Center for Cultural Innovation, counters exploitative systems by supporting a growing hub of new economic models. They have prioritized work led by Black and Native American communities, including trailblazing organizations like Oakland-based RUNWAY and the Sustainable Economies Law Center. Two other trailblazers, BlacSpace Cooperative and East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative, collaborated to acquire Esther’s Orbit Room in 2021 through a direct public offering. This project is part of a community vision to rebuild a thriving Black economic and cultural hub on West Oakland’s Seventh Street.

The Community Arts Stabilization Trust (CAST), which we seeded in 2013 and continue to support, has expanded its work to keep artists and creatives rooted in their communities. In collaboration with other cultural leaders, CAST partnered with the City of Oakland on a constellation of real estate ventures that aims to preserve affordable arts spaces and the city’s Black culture. One project with the Black Cultural Zone Collaborative would provide affordable housing and creative and commercial space at Oakland’s Liberation Park. These and other long-term initiatives exemplify our focus on equity and collaboration.

Supporting Artists That Push Boundaries

NEW & EXPERIMENTAL WORKS (NEW) PROGRAM

Provides project support to small and mid-size dance, theater and multidisciplinary arts organizations that enable Bay Area artists to produce timely, visionary projects. Learn about the 2021 NEW Program grantees.

OPEN SPACES PROGRAM

Supports nonprofit organizations to partner with artists to create temporary, place-based public art projects in San Francisco and Oakland. Recognizing that it would not be feasible for applicants to meet requirements and plan large-scale public art projects, we paused our 2020 grants cycle and did not announce grantees in 2021. The Open Spaces Program re-opened for the 2022 grants cycle.

Changing Systems Together

OPPORTUNITY FUND

An invitation only grant that offers support for projects that will impact conditions for working artists to help them thrive. Learn more about the 2021 Opportunity Fund recipients.

RESPONSE FUND

This discretionary fund supports exceptional and emerging opportunities that will have an outsized impact and move us closer toward our vision of all Oakland children reading at or above grade level, no one suffering from Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Bay Area artists thriving.