Our Story

Founded in 1972, during the height of the Asian Pacific American cultural movement, Kearny Street Workshop (KSW) is the oldest Asian Pacific American multidisciplinary arts organization in the country.

Through collaborations with other arts organizations and cultural communities, both locally and nationally, KSW provides a forum for Asian Pacific American artists of different media to reach a wide, diverse audience.

The struggles of the neighborhood defined the art produced by KSW members: low-income housing, strikes by garment and electrical union workers, and eviction of the elderly tenants of the International Hotel.

KSW offers classes and workshops, salons, and student presentations, as well as professionally curated and produced exhibitions, performances, readings, and screenings. KSW makes artists out of community members and community members out of artists. For the past 50 years, KSW has nurtured the creative spirit, offered an important platform for new voices to be heard, and connected artists with community.

Mission

Our mission is to present, produce, and promote art that empowers Asian Pacific American artists and communities.

Vision

We envision a more just society that fully incorporates Asian Pacific American voices informed by our cultural values, historical roots, and contemporary issues.

Our Organizing Principles

Our organizational praxis is ever evolving, but is driven by KSW’s long history of nimble, socially responsive community organizing and most of all, by the community of APA artists, curators, and culture makers at the forefront of the arts in the Bay Area and beyond. As such, KSW upholds its programming on these organizing principles:

Solidarity - We pursue empowerment, community, and resource building across the Asian Pacific diaspora for our artists as well as with marginalized communities across boundaries of race, gender, sexuality and ability.   

Renewal - We create, maintain, and expand healing spaces for APA artists, building individual and communal safety, and communities of mutual care.

Futurity - We speak a language of possibility, truth, and repossession in an effort to better our world. We believe the arts are an integral part of a positive, revolutionary future.

Autonomy - We foster the self-determination of artists to create meaningful work that does not commodify, perform, or uphold the pain of oppression which limits our artists’ reach, nor does the work need to fit standards beyond those of the artist. We recognize our multidimensional humanity.