With support from the California Arts Council, SMALL ART MUSIC PROJECTS will provide free, family-centered music workshops and performances that foster cultural exchange, creative participation, and arts accessibility for Bay Area children and families. Through hands-on Instrumental Music Open Houses, participants explore a collection of over 100 instruments representing musical traditions from around the world, including African-American, Latin American, South Asian, East Asian, Middle Eastern, European, and American roots traditions.
Since 2014, SAMP has built long-term relationships with low-income, immigrant, LGBTQIA2S+, and culturally diverse families from the San Francisco Bay Area, through joyful, welcoming programming designed to remove barriers to participation. CAC funding will support artist/production fees, educational programming, accessibility efforts, and free public concerts that connect children and families through music, curiosity, and shared cultural experience.
Small Art Music Projects (SAMP) began in 2005 as a fiscal sponsor of Intersection for the Arts, and transitioned into being its own 501c3 in 2014. SAMP’s core organizational programs and services have included a vast array of performance/music education projects, all of which were supported by grant funding including major awards from American Composers Forum, The Ford, Zellerbach, Hewlett, and Bank of America Charitable Foundations, and The California Arts Council. SAMP’s core performance activities have been centered in SF and the Bay Area, and its music educational work has focused on serving low-median income families and their children living in SF. Matt Small, the founder and Artistic Director of SAMP, has an extensive artistic history as a professional bassist/composer/educator/bandleader for the past 25 years, having had his music performed all over the world, and having performed with musical luminaries such as Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble, among many others.