The Red Poppy Art House is a neighborhood center for the intersection of cultural and inter-generational artistic engagement located in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District. The Poppy is an artist-driven organization that seeks to empower and transform society by addressing current social issues that impact our community and society at large through creative processes.
Operating from a neighborhood storefront in San Francisco’s Mission District, we demonstrate the unique, powerful, and irreplaceable capacity of intimate community spaces through hosting over 150 diverse performances, exhibitions, workshops, and artist residencies annually.
The Poppy exists as a true hub, facilitating relationships among cultural visionaries, institutions, communities, arts advocates, and, of course, artists. Acting as an incubator for artists of multiple disciplines, we provide a fertile, informal space for gathering, discussion, and artistic cross-pollination, out of which myriad collaborations form. The intent of Red Poppy Art House is to forge a bridge between high-caliber artistic work and community life through visibility and inclusiveness.
Since its founding, the Red Poppy Art house has sought to serve as a space of encounter between diverse communities. We are committed to the cultivation of a space where emerging art professionals from a myriad of diverse backgrounds are encouraged to step into roles of leadership. We believe this to be not only a matter of equity but of necessity. Facing today’s vast and complicated socio-political-economic landscape, we believe it is critical that leadership and decision-making bodies reflect the diversity and complexity of the full spectrum of communities that comprise our nation.
However, we also know that we will fail to achieve this diversity in its full capacity because the diversity of individuals that become part of our team is continually fluctuating. There is no arrival point to perfect balance, but rather, a continuous attentiveness to bring attention to where there is a lack or need. We know that we will make mistakes. And we wish to state all of this outright because we believe that acknowledgment of shortcomings and failures is essential to growth and that transparency and accountability are what constitutes integrity. We know, from the artists that have come through our doors, one must risk, fail, learn, and risk failing again. We have learned through our own internal challenges and interpersonal conflict within our organization. We are inevitably and always an organization of individual people, each limited by our particular history and experience. We complete each other, all the while our influence and our impact are far greater than we know.
In this particular moment in history in which we find ourselves, we recognize the imperative among all of us within arts organizations, to address the present threat of white supremacy, inclusive of its long arc of development and presence throughout the history and governance of North America. It is for this reason that our commitment to diversity is imperative.