Moving as one: Community in the art of Nā Lei Hulu

Weaving together a cultural community while celebrating individuality can be challenging. The artists of Nā Lei Hulu I Ka Wēkiu understand this deeply. For over two decades, the Hewlett Foundation’s Performing Arts Program has funded this company of dancers as part of our efforts to support meaningful artistic experiences for communities in the Bay Area.…

Video: The future of women’s economic empowerment

In September 2024 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, our Gender Equity and Governance Program’s Women’s Economic Empowerment team brought together nearly 100 grantee partners advancing macroeconomic approaches supporting women across East and West Africa. For three days, researchers, advocates, policy experts, and women’s rights organizations came together to envision women’s economic empowerment in 10 years…

Navigating the future: AI, cybersecurity, and journalism at Verify 2024

The complex mix of emerging threats and opportunities posed by AI and the persistent, now multi-decade, presence of hackers inside U.S. companies and critical infrastructure dominated the conversation at this year’s Verify media roundtable. The three-day event this spring gathered 90 attendees — including journalists, government officials, cybersecurity experts, researchers, and tech executives — to…

Radical imagination in arts leadership

The Hewlett Foundation Performing Arts Program believes in a San Francisco Bay Area where all people can engage in artistic experiences that foster self-expression and community participation. In pursuit of this goal, we partner with arts organizations at the cutting edge of both creative and organizational development. We support them in building the leadership backbone…

The power of waves: How community radios are fostering inclusive governance in Senegal

The Hewlett Foundation’s Inclusive Governance strategy, part of our Gender Equity and Governance Program, focuses, among other priorities, on strengthening independent and pluralistic media that both monitors government and reflects the perspectives of underserved populations in a select number of countries, including in Senegal. Senegal’s media landscape is made up of at least 27 daily newspapers,…

#FutureOfTheArts: Stories of resilience from arts communities

Over the past three years, the performing arts community has shown incredible resilience. Through all the challenges presented by the pandemic, artists continued creating and the Bay Area arts community came together in the spirit of mutual aid to support one another. This spring, with the worst of the pandemic hopefully behind us, the Hewlett…

Disentangling the economy from neoliberal financialization

This piece was originally featured in The New Common Sense newsletter from our Economy and Society Initiative. Read more from this edition. Financial systems have a way of extending their reach into the broader economy and into the lives of ordinary people. But during the neoliberal era of the past half-century, the financial system does not merely reach: It…

Highlights from the Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions

In 2017, we launched the Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions in celebration of the foundation’s 50th anniversary. The awards support extraordinary artists working with Bay Area nonprofits to create works with themes deeply meaningful to local audiences. We commissioned 50 works over five years across five performing arts disciplines: music composition, theater & spoken word, dance,…

Statecraft and policy design in the new political economy

This piece was originally featured in The New Common Sense newsletter from our Economy and Society Initiative. Read more from this edition. We are in the midst of an essential and transformative change in the commonsense paradigms of economic policy. This emergent post-neoliberal paradigm can be seen across a range of policy debates: the renewed interest in market competition…

How Climate Leadership Initiative is accelerating climate philanthropy

The Hewlett Foundation has, for well over a decade, supported organizations around the globe that advance ambitious solutions to the climate crisis. The individuals within these institutions are smart, dedicated, effective, and committed to ensuring more voices are part of advocating for policies and practices that lead to a sustainable, healthy, and prosperous future for…