The Creative Work Fund has awarded SOMArts Cultural Center and lead artists Peter Foucault and Chris Treggiari (a former Art in Storefronts artist) $40,000 to support the launch of the Mobile Arts Platform (MAP), a mobile sculpture that serves the community through a series of curated exhibitions of art by local artists. The MAP program consists of a redesigned van and trailer combination that serve as a transient gallery space activated through a series of five “pop-up” exhibitions. These exhibitions are collaborative partnerships between two SOMArts programs—SOMArts Technical Services, and the SOMArts Main Gallery—and local cultural and neighborhood-based festivals. The five exhibitions represent a significant expansion of SOMArts gallery programming and will be coordinated by SOMArts Curator and Gallery Director Justin Hoover.

The goal of the MAP is to increase arts participation and deepen community engagement through the arts via an innovative intervention into three local street fairs and festivals. Working with the festival organizers, Foucault and Treggiari will design a novel platform for the arts that augments the vision of each festival. This initiative builds on the long history of SOMArts Technical Services Program, a program that has provided support services to street fairs and festivals for more than 30 years, including wheelchair-accessible lifts, staging, catwalks, bleacher seating, sound systems and consultation.

SOMArts Executive Director Lex Leifheit commented, “SOMArts has a 30-year history of helping cultural fairs and festivals in San Francisco grow and thrive through the support of our Technical Services Program. This partnership with Peter Foucault, Chris Treggiari, as well as cultural and civic organizations, will provide Bay Area citizens with opportunities to create art, and will build awareness of the arts as a vital form of creative expression that can be experienced on many different levels."

With CWF funding, the MAP will expand opportunities for artistic participation and engagement by commissioning and presenting multi-disciplinary work; integrating the arts further into San Francisco’s street festival culture; nurturing the arts and artistic collaboration; and providing the structure for interaction with the arts in an unconventional setting.

The Mobile Arts Platform (MAP) is now accepting submissions for spoken word and poetry from individuals living or working in San Francisco, especially those in Potrero Hill. To apply, please download this applicationand submit by email, two written samples of your poetry, no longer than one page or 500 words by 5:00 pm Wednesday, September 29, 2010.

There is also a call for San Francisco-based visual artists. Please download this application.