The Wallace Foundation announced yesterday a new initiative to support performing arts organizations to the tune of $52 million — in addition to millions of dollars in past grants.
There are 26 organizations in 18 cities sharing grants to be released over the span of six years, including three in the San Francisco Bay Area: San Francisco Performances, Cal Performances, and the Oakland East Bay Symphony. Other recipients are dance and opera companies, orchestras, theaters, and multidisciplinary arts institutions across the country.
The initiative is called "Building Audiences for Sustainability," and it is aimed at "developing practical insights into how arts organizations can successfully expand their audiences." Dwindling and aging audiences represent a major problem for the performing arts all around.
S.F. Performances plans to use the initial, "learning cycle," funding to build future audiences "by targeting the city’s growing community of downtown-centric professionals who are open to new cultural experiences." The project includes intimate salon programs at clubs and small theaters, featuring young artists.
The initial amount for S.F. Performances is $355,000, of which $60,000 will be used for audience research activities. The organization's president, Ruth Felt, thanked the Wallace Foundation's "strong endorsement and generous support, which will enable us to learn and to strengthen our work presenting exciting live performances and building audiences for innovative and important young artists."
Cal Performances’ Executive and Artistic Director Matias Tarnopolsky said he is "thrilled to join distinguished colleagues locally and nationally recognized by the Wallace Foundation in creating new and exciting projects that ensure the vitality of the arts and culture in our society now and long into the future."
The $500,000 initial grant to Cal Performances will serve "to seek to broaden participation in 18-to-30-year-olds, the millennials," considering that soon this generation will make up almost 40 percent of the U.S. population and potentially a powerful source for ticket purchases (estimated by Cal Performances as currently less than 10 percent of its audience) and making contributions. The Wallace award is considered as "the first major national investment to underpin Cal Performances’ newly announced program Berkeley RADICAL."
Oakland East Bay Symphony’'s share of $65,000 is meant for initial research, to be followed by additional grants yet to be announced. Here too the emphasis is "to deepen and sustain relationships with new audiences," especially considering the East Bay's increasingly diverse population.
OEBS Executive Director Steven Payne said the grant "comes at such a critical time in the orchestra industry and for the Oakland Symphony. Many orchestras are entering a period of great experimentation as they look for new ways to reach new audiences.
"The Oakland Symphony is concluding an in-depth strategic planning process, and this award will enable us to fund some specific ideas that have been generated from the community wide conversations in which we have engaged."
Among grant recipients elsewhere: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Lyric Opera of Chicago, New York Philharmonic, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and Seattle Symphony Orchestra.