About BRAF

The Black Rock Arts Foundation (BRAF) emerged in 2001 as a small but ambitious effort to enrich civic life through art. Its growth since then reflects a spreading awareness of the benefits community-based art projects can bring to a broader society, despite – or even because of – their origins outside the traditional models and institutions associated with artistic expression. Art can thrive outside the walls of museums and galleries, in public places that encourage direct involvement with people who encounter it. BRAF consistently seeks to include an expanding universe of people to participate in creation, presentation, and experience of art.

BRAF partners in many ways with individuals, community groups, other foundations, and city and governmental agencies to accomplish this work. Art projects facilitated in this collaborative way generate social participation that manifests through the creation of the works themselves, and by inspiring people to engage one another throughout that work. Beyond direct monetary grants to artists, additional contributions by BRAF span a wide range, including facilitation of government permitting and planning work, promotion of community awareness and involvement, recruitment of volunteers, identification of locations, resolution of logistical problems, and more.

 A young visitor  to Golden Gate Park encounters the exhibition of The Dreamer  by Pepe Ozan, a project of the Civic Arts Program, and supported by The James Irvine Foundation. Photo: Brad Immanuel, 2007

Many of our goals and techniques grew out of Burning Man, a festival of art, most of it created by participants themselves, held annually in the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada.  We take more than our name from that environment. BRAF builds on lessons learned through organizing the festival and through encouraging artistic expression outside its traditional habitat. The goal is to extend the value and relevance of that experience outward to a broader civic context.

Our Programs

BRAF began with a program to fund and award individual grants to artists. This effort has steadily grown in the number of awards given. Out of these efforts emerged our Civic Arts Program, which supports creation and exhibition of interactive installations and performances in the San Francisco Bay Area, across the United States, and internationally.

A recently piloted project, ScrapEden, represents a collaboration with the San Francisco Department of the Environment to support the installation in neighborhood parks of three projects pairing artists with neighborhood groups to produce temporary artworks that deliver a message about recycling. Partnerships in other communities will extend this pilot into a regional and then national program.

Seeded from a single project facing adversity, the fledgling Civic Arts Program is helping to set a new precedent temporary exhibition of public art. In 2005, artist David Best was forced to tear down a nearly completed temple he had built on his own in San Rafael, California. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom read about the loss of the project in a local newspaper and petitioned city agencies to find place for it in San Francisco. Collaboration between the SF Arts Commission and the Black Rock Arts Foundation followed, resulting in the construction and display of The Hayes Street Temple on the Octavia Street greenway for several months in 2005. This project set a precedent for a series of new works at the site and became a model for how communities can place art in their cities as temporary exhibitions.

Residents of San Francisco have noticed art popping up more and more frequently around the city, in places where it hasn’t been seen before.  Burning Man participants have recognized some works like Stan the Submerging Man, an 18-foot-tall figure made of reclaimed plastic toys and vinyl records, placed in 2007 in the new Victoria Manalo Draves Park near Folsom and Seventh streets.

The Foundation operates from San Francisco California but will continue to strive for a broader reach. In 2006 and 2007, we’ve  increased our visibility, initiated projects in regions beyond the Bay Area including grants for work in Alaska and New York, and even oversees in Amsterdam, Brazil, and South Africa. Most importantly, we’ve brought more art more quickly to a broader community.

BRAF has accomplished this work over the last six years through critical sustaining support of individual donors, many of them from the Burning Man community, and through fees collected through the Burning Man Regional network, which links groups across the globe who share the festival’s values. Along with direct financial contributions, many people have provided in-kind support in the form of generous gifts of time, materials, and expertise.

 Our strong reputation among civic leaders, artists, and donors attests to continuing growth and progress. Open communication will form a solid foundation for future improvement, making sure that all BRAF supporters get a full picture of who we are and what we do.

—Melissa Alexander, Executive Director, September, 2007