For forty years, East Bay Center for the Performing Arts has provided educational and artistic training opportunities to predominantly low-income youth of color from West Contra Costa County, who would otherwise have little or no access to arts. Hundreds of thousands of youth have been affected by the Center's hands-on training, long-term partnerships with local schools, and live performance experiences. We directly instruct 2,000 underserved students every year through our main site and public school educational enrichment programs, and we guide them to become artists, thinkers, and creators who are engaged with community issues and civic advancement. Many of our students have gone on to found independent institutions/projects – from Poor Man Records in Richmond, to Howard Wiley's Angola Project, to Gonzalo Rucobo's Bay Area Peacekeepers. They work for larger arts organizations (KQED, Alonzo King's Lines Ballet), find success in the academic world (Yale University, Howard University), and give back as public school teachers, community leaders, and beacons for their peers.
Our immediate presence in one of California's most economically distressed communities — combined with our cultural and artistic diversity, educational programming experience and sustained focus on civic engagement — enables us to reach and impact the "at-risk" urban youth so many institutions, within and outside the arts, are currently striving to reach. Our proven ability to engage these youth at critical points in their lives and help them discover their true gift lies at the heart of all our work.
The Center has won numerous national and local awards for its work. Recent examples include: the 2004 Arts and Humanities Award from the Richmond Arts & Culture Commission, a 2004 Daniel E. Koshland Civic Unity Award from the San Francisco Foundation to Artistic Director Jordan Simmons, the 2002 Juvenile Justice Commission Award for Outstanding Service by an Organization from the Contra Costa County Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention Commissions, and the 1999 Coming Up Taller Award from the President's Committee on the Arts & Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts.
East Bay Center has received significant recognition and funding from state and national funders, including the Ford Foundation, Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, U.S. Department of Education (DOE), and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Currently, the Center receives major multi-year grants from the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, Dean & Margaret Lesher Foundation, Nathan Cummings Foundation, and the Walter & Elise Haas Fund. We also currently receive important funding from the California Arts Council, City of Richmond, Fullerton Family Foundation (Marin Community Foundation), Nelson Fund (Community Foundation Silicon Valley), Zellerbach Family Foundation, Mechanics Bank, and the San Francisco Foundation plus several of their donor-designated funds.