Kearny Street Workshop

Kearny Street Workshop (KSW) in San Francisco, California, is the oldest multidisciplinary arts nonprofit addressing Asian Pacific American issues. The organization's mission is to produce and present art that enriches and empowers Asian Pacific American communities. Notable participants include author and Asian American studies scholar Russell Leong, playwright and author Jessica Hagedorn, author Janice Mirikitani, poet and historian Al Robles, and actor and filmmaker Lane Nishikawa.

Kearny Street Workshop was founded as an artists' collective in 1972 in the International Hotel (I-Hotel) on San Francisco's Kearny Street. The founders Jim Dong, Lora Joh Foo, and Mike Chin and other early leaders were involved in the Asian American movement, a Civil Rights Movement-inspired period of organizational and community building in the 1970s. The National Endowment for the Arts provided some initial funding through the Neighborhood Arts Program (NAP), an initiative of the San Francisco Arts Commission. Though the founders were initially distrustful of government funds, NAP liaison Bernice Bing and founder Jim Dong eventually agreed to use a $2,000 NAP grant to fund a graphics workshop for KSW participants.

In its early days, KSW shared space with a dry goods store on the ground floor of the I-Hotel. The organization originally focused on cultivating Chinese American arts and activism. However, the organization quickly expanded to cater to a multiethnic constituency, holding classes for Asian American activists and artists to practice photography, creative writing, and silkscreen printing. Within the first few years, hundreds of Bay-area students were attending classes, salons, workshops, and exhibitions each day. KSW also opened Jackson Street Gallery in an adjacent I-Hotel storefront space in 1974, where Workshop members held exhibitions, poetry readings, and musical performances.

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