YBCA is San Francisco’s center for art, collaboration, discourse, and social movement—transforming how our city, the Bay Area, and our country engage with contemporary art, civic participation, ideas, and issues. Over the past 30 years, YBCA has established itself as a leading member of Bay Area arts ecology, facilitating leading-edge programming across Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Film, and Civic and Community Engagement. More recently, YBCA has collaborated with the artists we serve to co-design groundbreaking programs that reflect and nurture our region’s cultural and creative voices. YBCA’s priorities and programming are directly shaped by the Bay Area’s kaleidoscope of perspectives. We support a community of artists, provide opportunities for incubating and sharing powerful work and ideas, and foster civic engagement by deeply engaging people from diverse communities with diverse backgrounds and life experiences, including those historically marginalized and living in under-resourced San Francisco neighborhoods.

YBCA is at the forefront of building bold, community-driven, democratized curatorial approaches that are models for the cultural sector. We center the artists and the communities we serve as essential partners, creating a welcoming, living art space that nurtures ideas, exchange, and dialogue. Our programming includes long-term residencies, exhibitions, performances, screenings, events, public projects, think tanks, neighborhood commissions, art projects, ongoing public engagement and convenings, creative placemaking, as well as regranting to artists, open calls, arts advocacy, and community partnerships. YBCA’s programming is created within a DEIA framework, with a strong commitment to fostering anti-racism and anti-oppression work.