“SOMArts is…” is a vibrant video fundraising campaign hoping to raise $90,000 due to a funding reduction in our annual operations grant. By amplifying the voices of the artists, curators, community members, and board leaders impacted by the organization’s mission, they tell the story of why SOMArts matters–now more than ever.

When the pandemic hit, we used every reserve dollar to keep staff working and support local families, and with a recent 10% cut to our SFAC operations grant, we are working tirelessly to keep our doors open.

For over 40 years, our work, creative vision, and commitment to fostering free to low-cost arts access turned an undisclosed SOMA warehouse beneath the freeway into a cultural oasis: a place where new worlds are dreamed into being, intergenerational bridges are built, and where more just futures become possible.

SOMArts has come to mean many things to many people–an incubator, a gallery, a stage, a launching pad, a gathering space. Today, as financial challenges and uncertainties mount, we, like many arts nonprofit organizations, are struggling in a climate that seeks to diminish the transformative power of the arts.

Artist As Witness artists, photo by Claire S. Burke