Visionary artists create expansive works that help us experience—and express—joy, compassion and possibility. In 2023, Bay Area artists continued to push the creative boundaries of film, dance, theater and public art. Our grantees are also leading the way toward a more just and equitable arts ecosystem by experimenting with innovative funding and support models.

The Kenneth Rainin Foundation championed their creativity through our grantmaking and partnerships. We were also thrilled to welcome a new Arts Program Officer, Sarah Williams. Her wealth of first-hand experience with artists and nonprofits plays a vital role in supporting our grantees. Under Ted Russell’s leadership, the Arts Team centered equity and trust to better meet artist-defined needs.

The existing systems for funding and making art are not sustaining the creative lives of all artists. The Rainin Foundation continues to invest in an array of alternative economic and support models to advance equitable outcomes. A long-term partner for this effort is the Center for Cultural Innovation’s AmbitioUS. This cross-sector initiative draws on core principles of self-determination and community wealth rooted in the Solidarity Economy. The initiative, now at the five-year mark, has developed a hub of solutions that center Black, Indigenous and people of color. In 2023, we made a grant to their newest program, Sol Center for Liberated Work. This multi-racial, multi-sector effort uses advocacy, research, coalition building and grantmaking to secure social and economic protections for all workers.

Our vibrantly diverse arts community is primed to create new pathways so that artists have the resources they need to create and thrive. Emerging Arts Professionals’ Artist Adaptability Circles uses a community-created, artist-led model of grantmaking and mutual aid to help historically under-resourced artists access paid work. This program illustrates how funders can support artist-defined issues and projects that fall outside of traditional grant programs.

Grantee innovations are strengthening and empowering the arts community through shared services. The Guilded Freelancer Cooperative provides administrative functions and essential benefits like contract management, tax preparation and health care. Our funding supports their Northern California office to prototype a new front- and back-end invoicing and payment system. After a two-year pilot, Silicon Valley Creates’ ArtsWeb identified successful elements and embedded those into BlacSpace Cooperative in Oakland and ArtsWebHub in Santa Clara County. Long-time partner Theatre Bay Area is researching and piloting an equity-focused suite of shared administrative services and resources for theaters.  

The Rainin Foundation continues to catalyze solutions to secure safe, accessible and long-term affordable space for artists to thrive. Using a community land trust model, first-time grantee Artist Space Trust acquires properties through bequests and donations and ensures they remain permanently designated for affordable first-time artist ownership or occupancy.

In 2023, we also celebrated the first decade of success for Community Arts Stabilization Trust (CAST), a first of its kind real estate holding company for the arts and culture sector. Recognizing the need for a bold solution to the Bay Area’s affordability crisis, the Rainin Foundation launched CAST with a $5 million grant. Over the past 10 years, CAST has excelled at developing a constellation of spaces stewarded by and for the arts community. Its first pilot project achieved a major milestone in 2023 when CounterPulse purchased its San Francisco venue. Our continued funding helps sustain CAST’s groundbreaking, community-centered approach to safeguarding the cultural landscape.

Visionary filmmakers continued to give voice to diverse stories and advance social change. The 2023 SFFILM Rainin Grants supported 17 projects in various stages of screenwriting and development. Both intimate and epic, these films reverberate with deep insights that challenge dominant viewpoints. In “Blue Veil,” Shireen Alihaji marries music and memory for a first-generation Muslim teenager. In post-independence Zambia, Nuotama Bodomo’s “Afronauts” hero sets his sights on the Space Race. And in Neo Sora’s “Earthquake,” a looming catastrophe collides with youthful abandon in near-future Tokyo.

The 2023 SFFILM Rainin Filmmakers with Disabilities Grant supported three filmmakers—Vivien Hillgrove, Andrew Reid and Daniela Muñoz—whose films expand our understanding of disability within our communities. And five previous SFFILM Rainin grantees premiered at Sundance—a major accomplishment for the filmmakers. Among them were Raven Jackson’s “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt,” Savanah Leaf’s “Earth Mama,” Babak Jalali’s “Fremont” and Erica Tremblay’s “Fancy Dance” as well as Alison O’Daniel’s “The Tuba Thieves,” which received an SFFILM Rainin Grant for Filmmakers with Disabilities in 2020.

The Foundation also champions filmmakers through the BAVC MediaMaker Fellowship, which supports diverse, emerging documentary filmmakers focused on social issues. The Fellowship, along with our investments in Cinemama (also known as the Oakland Film Center) and SFFILM’s FilmHouse, support artist-driven hubs for workshopping films, accessing industry professionals and collaborating.

The Rainin Arts Fellowship recognizes and supports diverse, visionary Bay Area artists with unrestricted grants of $100,000 and tailored supplemental resources. In April, we announced our third cohort of Fellows—Mohammad Gorjestani (Film), Joanna Haigood (Dance), Related Tactics (Public Space) and Sean San José (Theater). Their collective work sustains the region’s activist legacies, mobilizing a range of site-specific storytelling and community-based creative practices. Administered by United States Artists, this Fellowship is founded in trust, mutuality and transparency that honors the work and varying needs of these cultural anchors.

Despite the pandemic’s lingering effects on performing arts, our 2023 New & Experimental Works (NEW) grantees embraced artistic innovation in their community-centered storytelling. In “Kinematic/Kinesthetic,” AXIS Dance redefines ability and embodiment by using robotics technologies to assist disabled dancers in exploring new movement potential. First-time grantee Surabhi Bharadwaj/Siddhi Creative integrates animation and 3D projections with classical Indian dance in “The Maze & Finding Joy.”

Other projects grapple with grief and survival and include themes of justice and healing. Sins Invalid’s “Crip Survival: Finding Hope In Climate Grief” reckons with the emotional toll of abandonment on disabled communities at the frontlines of climate disasters. In “YES!,” KAMBARA+ and drag queen Black Benatar (aka Mx. Beatrice Thomas) create a performance experience for teens and young adults about navigating consent and learning embodied skills. And in neighborhood workshops and performances, Afro Solo Theatre Company’s “STOP! SHOW! & CONTROL!: The Art of Surviving A Police Stop” shines a light on the troubling reality of police interactions impacting Bay Area Black communities.

We continued listening and learning from artists through Let’s Talk: What Artists Need To Thrive, a partnership with Authentic Arts & Media. This online series focused on three communities that have been historically excluded in philanthropy: queer artists, artists with disabilities and Indigenous artists. Along with an audience that included other arts funders, we heard artists call for more trust, transparency and accountability from funders, along with greater equity in funding.

Our 2023 NEW Program debuted changes to advance equity. In response to the arts community’s request for simplified application and reporting requirements, we collaborated with the Fleishhacker Foundation and Zellerbach Family Foundation to launch the first-ever Common App for the Arts. This single application streamlines the process for grantseekers. It was designed with replication in mind and we’re thrilled that a growing number of arts funders are embracing it. To shift the power of grantmaking decisions closer to the community, our NEW Program used a review panel of four Bay Area artists to make funding recommendations. Recognizing the challenges to securing operational and project support, we also awarded projects at 100% of the requested amount.

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 2023 NEW Program grantees.

OPEN SPACES PROGRAM

Supports artist-driven temporary, place-based public art projects in San Francisco and Oakland. In 2023, we paused our grants cycle to explore how to deepen our support of artists doing this work and our commitment to the field of temporary public art. The program will re-open in 2024. Learn about the Open Spaces Program.

Changing Systems Together

INVITE-ONLY GRANTS

An invitation-only grant that offers support for projects that will impact conditions for working artists to help them thrive. Learn more about these grant 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 Bay Area artists thriving, all Oakland children reading at or above grade level and no one suffering from Inflammatory Bowel Disease.