Community Outreach

Founded in 1978 as one of the original Fort Mason resident organizations, the Children’s Art Center was established to provide creative art classes for preschool and elementary aged students. Currently serving over 100 Bay Area families per week, the Art Center's one-room studio is a haven of individual expression. Here, children can trust in their own creative impulses rather than feel pressure to construct prescribed art "products."

2007-2008
After thirty years, the Art Center is proud to have remained true to its founding philosophy and to have survived as an arts organization over decades of change. In recognition of this landmark year, the Art Center has plans to reinvigorate its Community Outreach Program that offers off-site classes in underserved neighborhoods. This initiative has been possible through a generous donation of $5,000 per year in matching grant funds for the next five years. Work is currently underway to implement after school art classes at Raphael House, a shelter for homeless families in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood.

2005 - 2006
Art Education Lecture Series. SFCAC was awarded a grant from Schulte Grants for the Arts and Crafts, a program of the Fort Mason Foundation, to present a series of workshops about the role of art-making in child development. The series of workshops was held between Fall 2005 and Fall 2006.

  • Designing a Child-Friendly Art Space - Karen Hampton, October, 6, 2005
  • Illuminating Children's Creative Processes - Gail Tarantino, November 19, 2005
  • Finding a Creative Home - Naomi Rifkin, January 14, 2006
  • Enriching Children's Lives through Making Music - Cindy Cohen Levy, February 16, 2006
  • Children as Visual Thinkers - Gail Tarantino, April 22, 2006
  • From Blueprints to Bridges - Shirl Buss, June 25, 2006
  • Fantastic Trash: Recycle, Reuse, Recreate - Linda Janklow, July 22, 2006
  • Necklace Books, CD Books, and Pop-Up Books -- Oh My! - c.j. grossman, August 5, 2006
  • Pictures + Words = The Writing Collage - Lauren Hall, September 24, 2006

1998-2004
Transitional Home Art Class Programs Working with organizations such as Raphael House, Clara House and Holy Family Day Home, the San Francisco Children’s Art Center offered classes to children in transition. Classes were offered for children ages 3 to 11. These programs gave children the opportunity to express themselves through individual and group art-making and provides a supportive environment for exploration to develop perceptual skills, creative problem-solving and critical thinking.

Various Dates
Community Partnerships and Programs SFCAC has partnered with the following organizations: Richmond Village Beacon Assisted by offering art classes at a community-based after-school program Museum of Craft and Folk Art Helped Plan collaborative family workshops

1998 - Present: Scholarship Program
History: Late in 1998, a generous SFCAC family established a Scholarship program for on-site classes. Their goal was to help make participation in the program at Fort Mason a possiblity for the vast numbers of local families who aren't a part of SFCAC's Outreach programs, and for whom regular tuition may be a bit of a stretch. In the first year, close to ten new families were able to attend classes at the Art Center on partial scholarships thanks to this donor family's generosity. Their thoughtful gesture also inspired the Art Center to permanently establish and solicit funding for an ongoing scholarship fund for on-site classes.

Recently, the Eugene & Rose Kleiner Family Foundation helped expand this scholarship program four-fold. Renamed the Raphael Bouganim Memorial Scholarship, in honor of a beloved artist, musician and father with ties to the Children's Art Center, the fund will provide partial to full tuition assistance for a minimum of 5% the Art Center's total enrollees in the coming year.

Click HERE to download a Scholarship Application form [PDF, 50k]. Scholarship applications are accepted 3 times per year at the onset of each class session.

For more information about the Children's Art Center's Community Programs, please call (415) 771-0292 or send us an email.

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