Why Save The Box Shop?
Regional Challenges: San Francisco has long been recognized for its thriving art community and commitment to innovation and social change. Yet, artists are leaving San Francisco, and our City is losing its creative soul because artists can’t afford to live and work here. Many other artist workshops and maker spaces have shut down.
Our Challenge: Our lease of ~20 years will expire in spring of 2025, and we will lose our space.
Solution: The Box Shop is a collaborative industrial workspace with shared equipment and affordable studios. We exist to help anyone expand their creative dreams and make them a reality through community and resources. We want to purchase a property to build a forever home for The Box Shop, so we can continue providing these services.
Visions and The Future Box Shop
We have the opportunity to create a world-class facility that attracts and elevates the Bay Area artistic and local community. Our vision is a permanent, sustainable, creative space in Bayview-Hunters Point that serves artists, creators, and community and operates a thriving public art space and maker center.
Purchase new property in Bayview-Hunters Point, San Francisco, to sustain our space, work, service, and community.
Build a world-class collaborative arts fabrication studio in the new space and relocate our community to the new home.
Support the livelihood and stability of hundreds of artists, makers, and small businesses who rely on The Box Shop.
Become an even more integral part of the arts community in Bayview-Hunters Point, San Francisco, and the greater Bay Area. Serving thousands more artists and makers a year.
Enable our artists to make monumental pieces of public art that inspire the next chapter of San Francisco culture and future generations.
Impact the lives of thousands of people who come through our doors, participate, and become inspired and empowered to create their own art.
Continue to change the face of industrial arts by making it more accessible to women, femme, queer, trans, and BIPOC communities and other underrepresented artists and makers.
How will we do this?
Why is The Box Shop so Special?
The Box Shop is a collaborative industrial workspace in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood with shared equipment and affordable studios.
A Unique Space - There are no places (left) like The Box Shop
in San Francisco where you can rent studio space and access professional-grade equipment and tools for sculpture and industrial arts with a community of artists supporting you through project- based learning. Our spacious indoor and outdoor workspaces enable the development of locally made monumental, complex, and one-of-a-kind creative projects.
By and for Community - We are rooted in our community, serving not just the artists inside The Box Shop but Bay Area-wide and hyper-locally in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood. We focus on enabling artists in underrepresented communities.
Collaboration and Participation - Beginners, experts, and
people from all walks of life come together and contribute their knowledge and skills to each other’s projects– creating a learning, productive, and creative environment. Beyond our 100+ artists and studio members, 600+ community members come to participate in collaborative art making annually.
Radical Inclusivity - We have a low barrier for entry and focus on enabling artists from underrepresented communities. We are women- and trans-friendly in a male-dominated world of industrial arts. We serve all levels of makers and creators, from professional artists building large-scale public artworks to emerging artists and hobbyists. Members create a range of small to massive projects in metal, glass, wood, digital media, mixed media, and more.
Monumental Public Art - Box Shop artists and collaborative groups develop large-scale, awe-inspiring, and often interactive art that reaches and engages audiences in the tens of thousands.
Funding Our Plan for the Future
We are working to purchase a commercial, industrial property in Bayview-Hunters Point that includes ample warehouse and open yard space to continue serving our community with industrial arts equipment, tools, studio, and working space. The new location will be a permanent home for The Box Shop and our community. Commercial properties in the area comparable to our current location sell for approximately $7-11 Million. Below is our estimated capital campaign fundraising plan and accomplishments:
We have made much progress in the last year toward purchasing our forever home.
Approval of a $1.7M gift from the state of California, Senator Scott Wiener, to help us acquire a new space
Engagement and work with fundraising consultants to help us strategize our fundraising plan
Fundraised a $200K seed fund to help us with real estate planning and fundraising needs
Initiating our capital campaign and fundraising another $200K+ to meet our fundraising goals
Created a business plan and feasibility study to review and assess our plans for purchasing a new space and our future revenue model and sustainability
Received 501(c)(3) (nonprofit) status to support our fundraising and programming need
Outlook: We are thrilled to have fundraised and committed financing of $9M! Yet, over the next three years, we need to fundraise approximately $3M to get us over the finish line headed for a successful new space.
All donations made to The Box Shop are tax-deductible.
