The San Diego Foundation believes that the arts represent perhaps the most significant underutilized forum for rebuilding community and increasing civic engagement throughout the region. Arts and culture organizations encourage community involvement and participation; increase the potential for people to understand themselves; change how people see the world; and bolster neighborhood pride and identity.

Art Works for San Diego is a new initiative launched in 2008 by the Arts & Culture Working Group. This bold vision for art-based civic engagement and community development is grounded in a growing body of research suggesting that art and culture can be valuable engines of civic renewal and community development.

Expected Results of the Initiative
Art Works for San Diego supports projects that can achieve the following results:

• Provide San Diego residents and visitors with high quality arts and culture experiences
• Incorporate arts and culture into community problem solving
• Enable people to come together and connect with each other
• Build bridges between the arts and culture community and the community at large
• Increase cultural patronage including hands-on involvement, audience participation and philanthropy

Background
The impetus for the Art Works for San Diego initiative derives from research commissioned by The San Diego Foundation in 2005. The resulting report, "pARTicipate San Diego: The Case for Increased Patronage for Arts and Culture in the San Diego Region," established the expanding and deepening all San Diegans’ involvement with arts and culture as a Foundation priority. Download a PDF version of the report.

What can you do to help?
Make a contribution to support the arts and culture of our region!

1. Join Friends of The Foundation. When you join Friends of The Foundation, you may designate your gift to support The Foundation’s Arts & Culture Program.

2. Make a lasting gift to the Arts & Culture Endowment. Your contribution will help build this significant and enduring source of funding for our region’s arts and culture organizations today and far into the future.

3. Create your own fund to support arts and culture. Open a non-endowment fund for immediate grantmaking or an endowment to extend the impact of your gift to future generations. You decide the name of your fund and the organizations or causes it will support.

Contact Felicia Shaw to learn more about The Foundation's Arts & Culture Program or any of these giving options at felicia@sdfoundation.org or 619-235-2300.

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