Grantee Database

WOMENS AUDIO MISSION

Grant Year

2024-25

Grant Program

Statewide and Regional Networks

Award Amount

$46,293.00

Project Description

With support from the California Arts Council, Women’s Audio Mission (WAM) will continue scaling our award-winning music production training, artist recording residencies, mentorship, and performance programs to Los Angeles to meet ever-growing demand for our programs in Southern California. Serving 2,500+ California women/girls/gender-expansive artists from under-resourced communities (96% low-income, 93% BIPOC) every year, WAM addresses the staggering gender inequity in the music and media industries, where fewer than 5% of the people creating the sounds, music, and media in the soundtrack of our lives are women/gender-expansive.

Named “Best Hope for the Future of Music” by the SF Weekly, WAM has been an essential part of the Northern California music ecosystem/community for over 21 years. WAM is ready to bring this successful model to Los Angeles and create a much deeper impact on the music industry.

Organization Summary

WAM has consistently engaged thousands of women, girls, and gender-expansive individuals every year from historically marginalized communities over the last 22 years:

● Girls on the Mic (GotM) annually provides 2,000+ girls/gender-expansive youth from the most under-resourced communities in Northern California (96% low-income/93% BIPOC/ages 11-18) with free music production and media arts training that inspires them to amplify their voices and creativity.

● Local Sirens Concert Series serves 30-40+ under-represented women artists every year (majority low-income; 100% BIPOC) with performance opportunities at premier venues like Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF Jazz, Brava, Dolby, The Independent, Rickshaw Stop, etc to audiences of 2,000+

● WAM’s Artist Residency programs provide free recording studio services and artist mentorship/development in WAM’s professional recording studios to 4-5 local female/gender-expansive artists each year, as well as digital distribution and promotion to expand their audience.

● WAM Core Training/ Adult Education provides music production and industry certification training to 500+ women/gender-expansive students every year

● Paid Internship program: WAM’s paid internship program serves 90 college-age women/gender-expansive young adults (94% low-income; 84% BIPOC)/year with education, career counseling, mentorship and job placement in creative careers at companies like Dolby, Pixar, Pandora, NPR, Sony, Disney, ESPN, etc.

● WAMCon is a national recording arts conference series for women/gender-expansive aspiring recording engineers and music producers. WAM has hosted dozens of conferences in Los Angeles, Nashville, New York, Boston, and virtually reaching 2,000+ women/gender-expansive people from 30+ countries and featuring music producers, songwriters and recording engineers who have worked with everyone from Selena Gomez to Cardi B to P!nk and Rihanna.

Organization

Women's Audio Mission

Address

542-544 NATOMA ST

#C-1

SAN FRANCISCO

94103-2817

County

San Francisco

Region

Bay Area – San Francisco

Phone

(800) 926-1338

Congressional District

California's 12th congressional district

State Assembly District

District 17

State Senate District

District 11

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