It’s not about sound bites and who can shout loudest and who wins and who loses. It’s not about voracious consumption, bling, status or prestige. It’s not about possession and greed, fear and loathing or anger and violence as a means to an end.

It is instead about that most important human quality – the ability, through creative expression, to passionately engage with each other and with the world around us. It’s about the rare opportunity to be provoked in a smart way and walk away with more questions than answers. It’s about rethinking your assumptions and questioning your presumptions. It’s about long, sustained conversations and wondrous aesthetic experiences that are increasingly rare in the contemporary world. It’s about art that matters in really profound ways in a world in which nothing of consequence seems to matter any longer. It’s about connecting with each other and creating a richly textured, deeply meaningful life.

In striving to accomplish this, we know that, like the artists who create the work we so fervently want to share with you, we need to break some of our own boundaries. We need to step out of our long traditions of neat packages of artistic “product” and create a completely new, multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural, artistically challenging and humanly satisfying contemporary arts center, one that today’s world needs and deserves.

Using the lens of our “Big Ideas” we are creating that arts center by establishing a framework of thought and ideas that invite exploration and engagement. The robust film, visual arts and performance programs that are the hallmark of YBCA, coupled with our endlessly creative and evolving approach to public programs, revolutionizes the way you engage with contemporary art. We think that this is the most important work we can do right now and we think it’s what you want as well.

The information above can be found on the official website of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. For more details about the organization and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit their website: http://www.ybca.org