Executive Summary

East Bay Center for the Performing Arts (EBCPA) is a 55-year-old place-based cultural center, whose mission is to engage children and youth in imagining and creating new visions for themselves and their communities through the inspiration and discipline of rigorous training in world performance arts. Our promise to Richmond, California, a community burdened by poverty and violence, is to provide world-class faculty and staff — 90% of whom are local BIPOC artists — to inspire students’ learning and catalyze their healing from trauma, build life-changing, foundational relationships and provide equitable access to relevant and resonant arts education.

As an anchor institution, EBCPA is unique in its work to promote cultural representation and build relationships across diverse groups of people – there is no other youth organization in the Bay Area that houses as many artistic disciplines and cultural traditions, while integrating comprehensive, wrap-around support and college readiness services into high quality arts programs. EBCPA provides 4,000 youth tuition-free arts education through community-based, culturally-specific music, theater, and dance programming, including the intensive, 6-year, 2,000-hour Young Artist Diploma Program; music education in 17 Title I public schools; and 7 youth resident companies that create and perform new works.

Our students, the majority of whom are from the Iron Triangle in Richmond, are 97% BIPOC, 69% socio-economically disadvantaged and 51% English Learners. Over the past ten years, 98% of program graduates have overcome poverty, neighborhood violence, and an under resourced school system to complete high school and go on to top colleges.

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