At Startup Art Fair, we believe in the power of collaboration to support and uplift artists. We are proud to partner with a diverse group of non-profit art organizations that provide essential resources, education, and opportunities for artists at all stages of their careers.
These organizations champion the arts through advocacy, mentorship, exhibition opportunities, and community engagement, ensuring that creativity continues to thrive. Learn more about our partners and the incredible work they do to support artists and enrich the cultural landscape.
art span - room 302
ArtSpan is a 501(c)3 nonprofit committed to cultivating a vibrant, accessible, and world-class arts community in San Francisco. We champion an inclusive arts experience, providing hundreds of local artists with opportunities to showcase their work and to make direct connections with diverse audiences and patrons. We are guided by the belief that artists play a vital role in society, and that broad public engagement with their work is essential to keeping the arts firmly rooted in the ethos of our evolving city.
root division - Room 313
Root Division, a visual arts non-profit, connects creativity and community through a dynamic ecosystem of arts education, exhibitions, and studios. The organization was founded in 2002 as a sustainable arts hub that would constructively address the main challenges facing Bay Area emerging artists: need for low-cost studio space, exhibition opportunities, and arts-related professional experience. Giving back to the community is singular to our unique model where artists receive subsidized studio space in exchange for training and volunteering their time to do everything from teaching art classes to adults and low-income youth to organizing exhibitions.
Bay Area Photographers Collective - Room 323
The Bay Area Photographers Collective (BAPC) is a non-profit community of fine art photographers dedicated to helping each other advance our artistic initiatives. We host peer and professional reviews, workshops, and mount group exhibitions. BAPC strives for experimentation, craft, and creativity and we pride ourselves in our diversity of members, photographic styles, and practices. Since its inception in 1999, members have explored various artistic styles and processes across the spectrum of film and darkroom, alternative processes, and advanced digital technology. We have also experimented with hybrids of photography incorporating sculpture, ceramics, video, and other art forms.
helpers community - Room 315
Helpers Community, Inc is a nonprofit committed to assisting individuals with developmental disabilities and partnering with the organizations that serve them. Founded in 1953 by Sister Miriam Auxilium O’Gara, to serve adults with Down Syndrome, our organization incorporated in 1957 and received its 501(c)(3) status in 1958. Helpers Community began raising funds to purchase and operate some of the first group homes for adults with developmental disabilities in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Black & White Projects - Room 316
Black & White Projects (BWP) promotes creativity, community, and experimentation in the arts to spark ongoing, and often difficult, conversations. Interested in content-driven work, BWP stewards, exhibits, and produces work by interdisciplinary artists pushing formal and contextual boundaries.
Our mission is to facilitate the creation of art and culture, honor people and process, hold space for communities’ needs, function as a laboratory for projects and professional models, spark collaboration, and foster mutual aid and knowledge sharing.