Destiny Arts Center
For General Operating Support
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Amount$225,000
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Program
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Date Awarded11/17/2015
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Term36 Months
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Type of SupportGeneral Support/Organization
Strategies
Overview
Destiny Arts Center exists to eliminate isolation, violence, and prejudice in the lives of young people aged three to eighteen, through free and low-cost dance, theater, martial arts, violence prevention, and youth leadership classes. Taught by professional instructors after school, these classes serve low-income youth and youth of color, both at the Center’s main Oakland site and at twenty-four schools and community centers throughout the area. Each year, the program reaches more than 2,000 youth and 20,000 audience members in North Oakland’s neighborhoods. After purchasing a new facility in 2013, Destiny Arts Center seeks to maintain youth programming at current levels, build out internal administrative capacity, and develop a long-term strategy for growth. Renewed support will help the organization redefine its role in North Oakland following these changes, and re-position its educational programming to best fit that new role.
About the Grantee
Grantee Website
www.destinyarts.org
Address
970 Grace Avenue, Oakland, CA, 94608, United States
Grants to this Grantee
for organizational adaptation
Destiny Arts Center seeks to inspire and ignite social change through movement arts. The center’s professional teaching artists also work with more than 3,000 primarily low-income youth and youth of color, aged three to 18, both at the organization’s home campus in Oakland, and at 24 schools and community centers throughout the East Bay. Each year, Destiny Arts Center’s two youth performing companies collaborate to produce an original piece of musical theater for more than 20,000 audience members. This grant to Destiny Arts Center aligns with the Performing Arts Program’s Youth strategy, and will advance the organization’s adaptation planning and implementation.
for the 2018 50 Arts Commissions for theater, spoken word, and musical theater
In recognition of the Hewlett Foundation’s 50th anniversary, the Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions initiative supports the creation and premiere of 50 exceptional works of performing arts. Destiny Arts Center’s "The Black (W)hole" is a multi-disciplinary theater project that addresses urban youth homicide and gentrification in Oakland by centering Black culture as a vehicle for resistance and spiritual renewal. This supplemental grant will help the organization reconfigure the project in response to changes forced by the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions on public gatherings. This grant advances the Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions initiative.
