San Francisco Arts Education Project

The San Francisco Arts Education Project was founded in 1968, and for fifty-plus years has stayed true to its mission: to enrich the lives of children by facilitating hands-on participation in the visual and performing arts—taught by practicing artists.

SFArtsED supports artist residencies in an array of visual arts, dance, drama, musical theater, world rhythms, and choral expression at some twenty public schools and at after-school programs, where we also subsidize all administrative expenses. We offer weekend workshops in everything from collage to fashion design. And at our legendary summer camps, students are immersed in a wide range of expressive disciplines, with nearly twenty percent of campers receiving critical scholarship assistance.

Our musical theater troupe, the SFArtsED Players, offers a rigorous, after-school and weekend training program for serious young performers (ages 9-14), culminating in a fully-realized production every February at the Gateway Theater. Many of these talented students go on to attend Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts (SOTA) for high school, after a stringent audition process.

Artists, singers, and dancers at the high school and college levels benefit from internship opportunities at our summer camps and school programs. And students in SOTA’s technical theater program gain valuable outside experience in lighting, sound, and stage management at every Players’ performance.