The roots of SFArtsED go back to the early 1960s when the SFAC created the Neighborhood Arts Program to foster connections between local artists and the wider community. By 1968, two women armed with little more than milk cartons, yarn, and clay were determined to take community engagement one step further by making art an integral part of the City’s public school curriculum. Pedagogical visionaries, sculptor Ruth Asawa and architectural historian Sally Woodbridge, recognized the impact the arts could have on a child’s life. So together they kick-started the Alvarado School Art Workshop–the organization that evolved into the San Francisco Arts Education Project–with a $50 grant and a fierce commitment to make arts education available to all school children regardless of neighborhood or income level. SFArtsED exists today to advance and perpetuate that 50-plus year legacy by producing artist-led creative and participatory experiences for young learners and their families, so that individually and collectively ALL are empowered to discover and share creative abilities in the face of contemporaneous social, cultural, and economic challenges.
The roots of SFArtsED go back to the early 1960s when the SFAC created the Neighborhood Arts Program to foster connections between local artists and the wider community. By 1968, two women armed with little more than milk cartons, yarn, and clay were determined to take community engagement one step further by making art an integral part of the City’s public school curriculum. Pedagogical visionaries, sculptor Ruth Asawa and architectural historian Sally Woodbridge, recognized the impact the arts could have on a child’s life. So together they kick-started the Alvarado School Art Workshop–the organization that evolved into the San Francisco Arts Education Project–with a $50 grant and a fierce commitment to make arts education available to all school children regardless of neighborhood or income level. SFArtsED exists today to advance and perpetuate that 50-plus year legacy by producing artist-led creative and participatory experiences for young learners and their families, so that individually and collectively ALL are empowered to discover and share creative abilities in the face of contemporaneous social, cultural, and economic challenges.