THIS IS A FREE EVENT

The pandemic caused retail vacancies to climb to new highs in SoMa with the exodus of tech workers. To combat urban blight and utilize the arts to reinvigorate SoMa Pilipinas Cultural District’s plans to create Mission Street as its first commercial corridor, multiple City agencies teamed up with Kultivate Labs to create Balay Kreative Studios. Balay Kreative Studios is a 3,600 sq ft pop-up maker space and streaming hub. It houses an artist in residency program, multiple flexible studio spaces, a maker lab with laser cutters, a CNC machine, and woodshop, plus an innovative streaming hub for content creators viewable from Mission Street reminiscent of MTV’s TRL in the '90s.

When the artists are not working in the space, Balay Kreative Studios hosts multiple events from Chef demos, painting classes, and pop-up retail experiences on nights and weekends. In 2023 the space will transform into Republika, a small business incubator and art gallery designed to be the jumping off point for visitors of the SoMa Pilipinas Cultural District.

On this tour you will visit Balay Kreative and learn how the creatives housed in the space are pushing Filipinx creativity forward and building structures and pieces found all over the Filipino Cultural District. This tour will also show how our programs and events center SoMa as the creative nexus of the Filipino diaspora.