Editor: Li Ruixuan Images and the video are provided by Gray Area Foundation for the Arts
Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, Inc. is a 501(c)3 Non-Profit. It is San Francisco's premier cultural hub catalyzing creative action for social transformation – applying antidisciplinary practice towards some of the most complex challenges facing our world.
Gray Area’s mission is to apply art and technology to create social and civic impact through education, incubation, and public events. It prioritizes cultivating, sustaining, and amplifying a diverse creative community. Using digital tools to create art and design projects that benefit society, it tests and scales projects with high impact potential, teaches digital tools to support artists and technologists, and inspires the community by promoting meaningful new work. By applying the promise and inspiration of digital art to a broader social context, Gray Area’s programs are transforming cities into creative outlets, applying technology to solve problems, and shaping how art is created and consumed in the digital era.
For over a decade they have generated platforms that enable creators of diverse backgrounds and perspectives who defy categorization to transcend boundaries within the deep artistic collaboration. Through public events, education, and incubation, they engage art directly with the critical issues facing the rapidly unfolding reality.
Gray Area Showcase 2021 Spring
Gray Area Showcase 2021 Spring
Approach: Empowering Communities through Value-Driven Digital Creativity
The Future is Creative
On Gray Area Learn, artist-educators teach responsible creativity to students, teachers, industry professionals, and organizations. The courses equip learners with artistic toolsets that engender values to support a sustainable, equitable, and humanized society.
Gray Area underlies the socio-cultural power of artists as distinctly trained in a complex set of technical tools, distinct ways of thinking, and deep societal awareness. And it amplifies artists’ aptitudes in order to take a leading role in shaping a workforce that is more equitable, accountable, and responsible for our collective future.
Gray Area Showcase 2021 Spring
[Five Steps in Gray Area Learn: Inspire, Educate, Incubate, Showcase, and Lead.]
A Total Learning Experience
Gray Area Learn offers a full educational cycle by engaging the communities with a “lifestyle” – a full range of cultural activities, creating a positive feedback loop from audience inspiration to community leadership.
The public events’ programming draws audiences into Gray Area’s year-round education offerings, and then their projects can enter the organization’s incubator to refine and scale. After completing the programs, community members often return to teach and exhibit their works, inspiring audiences anew.
Programs: Emancipatory 21st Century Creative Learning
Creative Code Immersive
Gray Area trains artists, designers, and technologists with software-based creative experimentation. Integrating art, design, technology, and social impact, it applies experimental tools that amplify voices, underlined challenges, and scale possible solutions.
Gray Area Showcase 2021 Spring
Cultural Digital Literacy
Gray Area teaches a variety of perspectives on contemporary cultural production in order to challenge dominant understandings of our world. How can we construct alternative socio-political imaginaries that question existing relationships between participation and spectatorship? What can we learn about creative labor, social movements, and art practices by looking at the intersections between art, technology, science, and the humanities? What theoretical tools can help us arrive at a deeper understanding of these intersections? The workshops and classes in this program consider new paths towards transdisciplinary research and combine sociological, anthropological, philosophical, and art theory perspectives.
Youth Creative Action
Gray Area strengthens high school and college students’ future-ready skills by exploring new frontiers in digital experiential learning. With a focus on participatory learning through cultural action, students develop knowledge, skills, and social values from direct experiences outside of traditional institutions. Students in the youth programs will:
- Gain working knowledge on topics ranging from interactive environments, 3D art, AR/VR, projection mapping, and physical computing.
- Develop soft skills including critical thinking, creative problem-solving, and collaboration.
- Access resources and social capital through mentorship and alumni networks.