FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 4, 2025
Contact:
Anthem Salgado
Strategist for Communications
[email protected]
NEWS RELEASE
Walter & Elise Haas Fund Announces its Inaugural Creative Power Awards Recipients
$1.575 Million in Unrestricted Funding to Support Bay Area Artists and Cultural Organizations
San Francisco, CA – The Walter & Elise Haas Fund is proud to celebrate nine recipients of its inaugural Creative Power Awards (CPA), honoring Bay Area artists and cultural practitioners across all disciplines, who apply their creativity and transformational leadership to strengthen community connections and advance collective belonging, healing, and social justice.
Jamie Allison, Executive Director of the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, says, “CPA reflects the Fund’s belief in the creative power of artists, cultural practitioners, and arts and culture organizations to be part of the remedy to our times. We’re investing in artists who increase people’s capacity to imagine a better future and build cultures of solidarity and joy.”
Each awardee receives a one-year unrestricted grant of $100,000 and the opportunity to select an arts & culture organization to receive a one-year unrestricted operating grant of $75,000. The 18 total recipients represent socially engaged individual artists, cultural practitioners, and community-based arts & culture organizations that make outstanding contributions to the Bay Area arts ecosystem. This unrestricted grant award frees artists and organizations to prioritize art-making and community-building without constraints.
The CPA individuals integrate social practice and community engagement directly into their artistic work. Their approaches to bridge-building are remarkably diverse: multilingual instructions guide community papermaking, theoretical concepts transform into choreographed movement, and LGBTQ photo collections find permanent homes in archival collections. Community organizing emerges through public art and storytelling—in the dialogue of a play set in Oakland, in disability justice work performed by an ensemble of disabled dancers, and in the shared energy of an immersive dance floor. The strength of cultural heritage resonates throughout their work, evident in jazz horns and blues vocals, indigenous practices, and films that honor community leaders.
Community collaboration was at the core of the development of the Creative Power Awards. Its design was based on community feedback on the Fund’s former art grant, Creative Work Fund. CPA is a bold evolution that doubles the award amount and awards it directly to individual artists. CPA employs a three-phase community-centered process: confidential community nominators identify artists and cultural practitioners, artists nominate organizations, and a community panel selects the final awardees.
“The Creative Power Awards’ inaugural awardees represent vision and leadership, what it means to turn an idea into a collective experience, to turn struggle into an opportunity for healing and joy, and to turn space into a place of belonging,” said Relationship Manager, Natalia Vigil.
The Creative Power Awards program is a partnership with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, representing a commitment to supporting artists at all career stages who reflect and engage with the diverse communities of the Bay Area. Further, the Fund partnered with United States Artists as program design advisors.
2025 Creative Power Awards Recipients: Individual Awards
Alex Locust (Glamputee), Performing Arts, Disability Justice
Cat Brooks, Theater and Literary Arts, Community Organizing
Christine Wong Yap: Visual Arts, Belonging and Mental Well-being
DE ALMA: Interdisciplinary Arts, Community Organizing
Faye Carol: Music, Performing Arts, Arts & Culture Education
J. Miko Thomas (Landa Lakes): Multidisciplinary Arts, Community Building
Sarah Crowell: Dance, Community Building
Tina Valentin Aguirre: Multidisciplinary, Community Building
Tommy Wong: Visual Art, Civic Engagement, and Community Organizing
2025 Creative Power Awards Recipients: Organizational Grants
67 Sueńos, Oakland immigrant youth leadership development
Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco, Chinatown arts and cultural space, and advocacy
The Dance Brigade, A New Group from Wallflower Order: Dance Mission Theater, feminist, multicultural dance and theater
Lower Bottom Playaz, North American African Theater
Queer Ancestors Project (QAP), LGBTQI+ youth printmaking and writing workshops
School of The Getdown, Black music and cultural traditions
Sins Invalid, disability justice-based movement building and performance
Vital Arts: low-income artists advocacy
Weaving Spirits Two-Spirit Performance Festival, Native American traditional music and experimental performance
A Community-centered Award Process
A panel of five Bay Area artists, cultural workers, arts administrators, and leaders in the field reviewed all applications and selected final awardees. The 2025 panelists were:
Ani Rivera, Executive Director of Galería De La Raza; Jose Abad, choreographer, performance artist; Marcel Pardo Ariza, visual artist; Lisa Marie Rollins, writer, director, interdisciplinary theater maker; and Rachel Lastimosa, cultural worker, producer, and performer.
Conflicts of interest and bias were considered in this community-centered review process.
About the Walter & Elise Haas Fund
The Walter & Elise Haas Fund is a leading voice in trust-based philanthropy. Established in 1952 by Walter A. Haas, Sr. and Elise Stern Haas, the Fund is a testament to its founders’ appreciation for the San Francisco Bay Area and their commitment to providing opportunity and access for all.
The Fund’s vision is a Bay Area where all people can reach their fullest potential and live with a sense of purpose, dignity, and joy. The organization’s values center around Family, Shared Responsibility, Belonging, and Possibility.
About the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation invests in creative thinkers and problem solvers working to ensure people, communities, and the planet can flourish. Together with our partners, we are harnessing society’s collective capacity to solve our toughest problems. As a nonpartisan philanthropy, the Hewlett Foundation has made grants in the U.S. and globally for nearly six decades, based on an approach that emphasizes dialogue across difference, long-term support, collaboration, and trust. Learn more at www.hewlett.org.
Image Credit: Dance Brigade