Youth Art Exchange

Youth Art Exchange (YAX) was founded in 2000 as Out of Site Youth Arts Center by an architect, Beth Rubenstein, and a visual artist, Jennifer Stuart, in response to growing needs for arts education for public high school students. As practicing artists and educators, YAX’s founders recognized the power of arts education to open doors for young people while the opportunities for public school students were rapidly diminishing. These youth, primarily low-income students and students of color, were those that were most lacking opportunities to deeply engage with the arts. YAX was founded to fill this gap in access to the arts, which is increasingly relevant with growing disparities in the city.

With over 20 years of youth-centered arts learning, our staff and faculty have expertise in program delivery that supports and enhances youth development. Our work at the intersection of arts education and youth development has expanded with the needs of our constituencies. Our numbers of arts disciplines and students citywide has grown, as well as the addition of workforce-skill based summer intensives, a summer STEM architecture-based intensive for rising 9th graders, in-school classes, annual arts education convenings, and an active Youth Advisory Board. In 2018, we launched [x]space arts hub in the Excelsior as a new chapter in creating artistic exchange with the broader community. In 2019, we began our partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco to hold programs at the Columbia Park Clubhouse in the Mission.