The San Francisco Children’s Art Center (SFCAC) has nourished the creativity of San Francisco youth for nearly 45 years with a mission to empower children to develop their sense of self through creative exploration. SFCAC engages children ages 2-10 years with our unique methodology that provides process-oriented visual arts experiences grounded in experiential and social constructivism learning principles. SFCAC’s professional teaching artists provide children with agency and ownership of their artmaking choices through creative engagement that is relevant to their needs, interests, and lives. Using an inquiry-based approach to art materials, we guide young people through the process of creating and nurture them to trust their own creative impulses. We provide children with different entry points for thinking through the art materials and constructing symbolic expressions of their ideas. We believe that through process-oriented artmaking, young people develop language to share their stories, learn to solve challenges, connect authentically with others, and grow in ways that support the full realization of their potential. In discovering their creative powers, children grow to view the world as a place filled with possibilities, one where they can shape and express their own voice and vision.

We believe that art makes children powerful. SFCAC commits our work towards anti-racism and anti-bias. Every child has the right to creative self-expression and we use our power and leverage our spirit to center the work of artmaking with children towards the goals of racial equity, justice, and collective liberation. We work to reverse inequities in access to arts experiences for young people in our city and continually evolve our inclusive arts practices to make arts engagement accessible to all. Through applying a lens of social justice and equity to our work, we empower youth through creative self-expression through amplifying their individual voices and supporting their communities.