Visionary artists illuminate new ways to understand our world and connect to each other. In 2024, Bay Area artists and cultural organizations continued to captivate us through works of dance, theater, film and public art. Despite ongoing challenges, our grantees defied expectations and expanded our conceptions of possibility.

As we celebrated 15 years of formal grantmaking, the Kenneth Rainin Foundation made investments to sustain creativity and well-being and strengthen the power of artists as advocates. We remained committed to listening and our work continued to benefit from our communities’ diverse perspectives.

To commemorate our 15-year anniversary, we honored 16 Bay Area arts leaders with Rest And Care Awards for the Arts. Each organization received a grant of up to $40,000 along with planning and staff capacity assistance to support a six-week sabbatical. The leaders receive personalized coaching and, along with their staff, access to wellness workshops and tools to sustain them before, during and after the sabbatical.

With an average tenure of 19 years, these leaders of grantee arts organizations have a remarkable dedication to their artistic practice and the field. Investing in their humanity is crucial for sustaining their impactful work. This award was a collaboration with the Foundation’s Education Program and recognized the burnout affecting many of our grantees. Along with tenure, organizational capacity and community leadership, we also prioritized leaders who identify as Black, Indigenous or People of Color to acknowledge the disproportionate impacts the pandemic had on them and their communities.

Four visionary artists and collaboratives in dance, film, public space and theater received the 2024 Rainin Arts Fellowship. This annual program, administered by United States Artists, honors Bay Area anchor artists with unrestricted grants of $100,000 and supplemental resources tailored to their needs and goals. This holistic support serves as a catalyst for a realm of generative possibilities for artists to thrive in their practices, in turn strengthening the region’s arts and culture ecosystems.

The Rainin Arts Fellows bring distinct cultural and generational perspectives and draw upon rich artistic and activist legacies in the Bay Area. They include Adrian L. Burrell (Film), Antoine Hunter/Purple Fire Crow (Dance), Ayodele Nzinga, MFA, PhD (Theater), and Michael Arcega, Paolo Asuncion and Rachel Lastimosa’s TNT Traysikel (Public Space). This year’s unique selection process underscored the Foundation’s artist-centered approach by recognizing visionaries who received multiple nominations from local artists and cultural leaders in past years. The process also reduced applicants’ labor by allowing them to re-use previous applications.

The Rainin Foundation’s unique partnership with SFFILM aims to create a more inclusive film landscape by funding films that address social justice issues and diverse storytelling. The SFFILM Rainin Grant Program is the largest granting body for independent narrative feature films in the US. The SFFILM Rainin Filmmakers with Disabilities Grant supports filmmakers exploring stories from these historically excluded communities through narrative and documentary forms.

These two programs provided 20 filmmaking teams with unrestricted grants for screenwriting, development or post-production along with a residency at FilmHouse, SFFILM’s premier artist residency space. Projects feature character driven stories that explore heartbreak and joy, familial obligation and multigenerational conflict, haunted histories and illness and healing. Previous filmmaking grantees continue to attract critical and popular acclaim. Sean Wang’s Dìdi (弟弟) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, winning both the US Dramatic Audience Award and the Special Jury Prize for Best Ensemble Cast, was selected as the Opening Night film for the 67th annual San Francisco International Film Festival, and went on to win Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay at the 40th Independent Spirit Awards.

We are committed to trust-based practices that center our grantee communities’ perspectives and self-defined needs. This approach led us to collaborate with other funders in 2023 to develop the Common Application for the Arts, an increasingly adopted tool that saves grantseekers’ time and resources. These practices also helped us shift power by engaging Bay Area artists to evaluate applications and make funding recommendations.

Through surveys, workshops and interviews our artistic communities shared feedback on ways we could better support applicants and grantees. This led us to clarify criteria and terminology for our New & Experimental Works (NEW) Program. For our Open Spaces Program we streamlined the initial application stage and increased award amounts to recognize the impacts of inflation. And to more fully resource artists, each project team can work with an experienced advisor who offers high-level guidance for complex, large-scale public art projects. As one of the few organizations investing in temporary public art, we want to minimize barriers for artists seeking grants.

The Foundation shared learnings in three research reports to help the field better understand the Bay Area arts landscape and the challenges artists are facing. Lessons from 10 Years in Cultural Real Estate (PDF) documents how partnerships, market incentives, covering costs, maintaining an ownership stake and supporting individual artists were keys to Community Arts Stabilization Trust’s success.

Reexamining Capacity Building (PDF) analyzes the experience of grantees from our now complete Impact Program. The report identifies systemic issues and offers recommendations to meaningfully support small and mid-sized dance, theater and multidisciplinary arts organizations. Insights include the continuing challenges facing groups, the field’s focus on organizational growth over stability and the need for systemic solutions. BAVC Media’s Bay Area Film Production Memo and national research study identify strategies to boost film production and workforce development in the region and highlights the economic and social benefits.

The Rainin Foundation is committed to amplifying the collective power of historically excluded communities to enhance all artists’ ability to thrive. A new two-year grant helped launch California for the Arts’ new Grassroots Artists Advocacy Program and its first cohort of five Bay Area artist advocates. This trailblazing fellowship program aims to embolden diverse artists, culture bearers and creative workers as advocates to advance their communities’ well-being and equitable systems change.

The philanthropic field is increasingly recognizing the urgent challenges and long-standing inequities facing the performing arts. In June, we joined the Ford Foundation’s convening of performing arts funders to identify ways to partner and use our shared assets for field-wide support strategies. Locally and nationally, we will continue to seek collaborative solutions that increase equity for our grantee communities.

Supporting Artists That Push Boundaries

New & Experimental Works (New) Program

Open Spaces Program

Provides early-stage development and production support grants for artist-driven temporary, place-based public art projects in San Francisco and Oakland. Learn about the 2024 Open Spaces Program grantees.

Changing Systems Together

Rest And Care Awards For The Arts

Invite-Only Grants

Response Fund