Pacific Felt Factory arts complex is located in a 6,000 sq ft historic 1865-era brick warehouse in San Francisco’s Mission District, an area where gentrification is quickly displacing arts’ spaces and local artists.

 

PFF serves the Bay Area arts community by providing affordable arts space in a city with rampant displacement of our artists.  20 artists have affordable studios in which to work, and the SF arts and Mission District communities have an exhibition/meeting/event space for low to no-cost. We collaborate with other artists and arts organizations to provide peer review and collaboration, classes/workshops and guest speakers, and support programs for professional development. PFF’s ongoing programming and public arts events strengthen our community through sustainable arts and culture.

 

Building History

Once a working factory for wool felt production, the building, located at 2830 – 20th Street in San Francisco, is owned by Art Space Development Corporation/ArtsDeco, a local non-profit arts organization. In the late 1990s, during the first dot.com boom, community activists came together to protest the razing of some warehouses full of artists by a market-rate condo developer on the site.  The Mission community stopped the development until an agreement was reached securing one of the remaining warehouses for the Arts.  This agreement was memorialized by the SF Planning Commission in a designation of the historic PFF building  as a community benefit to forever be exclusively used for the Arts. The raw space, in a collaboration with founders Spike Kahn and ArtsDeco, was finally developed into 14 below-market-rate artist studios, with an additional 500 sq ft exhibition/event/meeting/small performance common space. We opened in April 2015.

 

What We Offer

The Pacific Felt Factory/PFF building is where the contemporary art community can make and exhibit their art, experiment, collaborate, and sustain. PFF is dedicated to cultural equity and sustainable art careers.  Artists, cultural producers, writers, arts non-profit organizations and professionals are under one roof; PFF hosts professional development workshops, creative events, pop-up exhibits and screenings, and fosters opportunity for those underserved in the arts.

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The Studios — Below-market-rate studios for 20+ career artists. Selection of the artists is based on quality of work, diversity, community service, commitment to career, and need, among other criteria.

 

FlexSpace — An open, flexible space for communing with fellow PFF members that transitions into a performance venue, screening room, pop-up exhibition space, community meeting room, or small music venue.

 

Public Programming — By collaborating with other arts organizations, curators, and artists, PFF offers relevant and useful workshops, panels, screenings, performances, and receptions, as well as respected guest speakers: artists, makers, curators and gallerists, writers, innovators and entrepreneurs, who will be invited to share their vision, knowledge, and creativity, focusing on industry-centered professional development.

 

For more information on membership through the Studios or ThinkSpace, visit the Space page.

 

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