Intersection for the Arts

In a 650 square foot store front in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District the Red Poppy Art House (founded in 2003 and fiscally sponsored by Intersection for the Arts), presents 120 live performances a year, conducts weekly Family Art workshops, coordinates off-site performances and provides financial, marketing and artistic support to four artists-in-residence. The Red Poppy’s mission is to bring together diverse strands of an artistic community, a neighborhood comprised of lower-income Central American and Mexican immigrants and bohemian-"hipsters," and it has proved remarkably successful despite scant institutional support. Artistically its resident world music ensemble, Nefasha Ayer, has received commissions from the de Young Museum and the San Francisco Foundation and it’s curatorial directors Todd Brown and Meklit Hadero have been engaged by Hewlett grantees such as the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the SF Museum of Modern Art to develop original programming and outreach efforts to link down-town art institutions with community-based artists and presenters. With first-time support the Red Poppy will be able to support administrative staff members on a full-time basis to ensure that the quality and increasing quantity of artistic and educational programming that the organization provides is sustained, that performance space for artists to present their work is preserved, and financial barriers for audiences to experience it are lowered.