East Bay Center
for the Performing Arts
Developing Young Artists | Re-Imagining the World
Since 1968, young artists have been discovering how training in the arts can and does illuminate their fullest capacity as human beings while at East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, in a neighborhood known as the Iron Triangle and distinguished primarily for its chronic poverty and violence.
For over 50 years, in the heart of Richmond, California, more than 50,000 student artists – from all walks of life – have shared a home where they have found within themselves the means to develop skills that enable them to think, lead, and contribute to the world around them.
East Bay Center for the Performing Arts is a surprising place of discovery. Here our student artists— through the breadth, depth, and passion of experiencing classical master works and cutting-edge art forms from around the world—come to know the world’s great performance traditions, the beauty of one’s neighbor, a calling in life, and the life of the mind, in addition to the spark of young imagination.
Through the active creation of original music, film, theater, and dance, coupled with self-determined community projects, we emphasize the cause of social justice, the hard work needed to prepare, the skills to create, and the courage to perform. Over the next 50 years, we plan to reach 75,000 more youth to carry on this work of discovery.
We invite you to join us as a student or supporter or both!
Program Overview
The Center functions much like a living organism existing within the local ecosystems of greater Richmond. Locally, the Center’s reach is fairly broad, touching thousands of pre-K through high school students in the greater Richmond area through in-school and after-school programs. These programs feed into more intensive offerings through classes and lessons at our permanent 11th Street home. Those instructional programs develop transformational young leaders and produce work telling Richmond’s story from a community and youth/young adult perspective. At the Center’s core, our Young Artist Diploma Program – with attendant resident ensembles – provides training and development to a group of passionately committed middle and high school students – many of whom participate in the production projects that link us back to the broader community and specific constituencies within the whole.
Mission
What we Do
What we believe
The future we see
