Creative Groups San Francisco

Connect at creative groups and events in San Francisco

430kMonthly events

60mMembers

4.5App store rating

200kGroups

Gen Z Creatives and Weirdos

Sun, Nov 22, 1:00 AM

From Young East Bay Creatives Chill and Chat

For this first meeting, we will play it by ear: I will bring Catan for us to play (and will teach those who do not know how), but we can also share our music, poetry, or art with one another too. The end of the meet up is always the same: we go over local shows coming up, and scheudule our attendance as a group.

3 attendees

Side Project Saturday for Designers

Sat, Nov 21, 7:00 PM

From Designers: Mission Creatives Meetup

4.8

Come down and work alongside fellow designers and creatives. Whether you prefer drafting tables, traditional digital, or AI tools—all mediums are welcome. Come down and learn and explore! **Who should join:** Product designers, UI/UX researchers, graphic artists, and anyone who wants to work on their project. **What to bring:** * Your laptop, tablet, sketchpad or tools of choice. * Current project or a blank canvas. * An open mind and creative spirit. The coffee shop has all the conventional options, a few lunch selections, and the best smoothies in town. Kindly patronize them. Thanks!

2 attendees

Side Project Saturday for Artists

Sat, Nov 21, 7:00 PM

From Artists: Mission Creatives Meetup

4.9

Come down and work alongside fellow artists and creatives. Whether you prefer traditional art, or the latest AI tools—all mediums are welcome. Come down and learn and explore! **Who should join:** Artists of all kinds, from hobbyists to seasoned creators, all are welcome. Just have fun working alongside friends. **What to bring:** * Your art materials of choice. * Current project, or a blank canvas. * An open mind and creative spirit. The coffee shop has all the conventional options, a few lunch selections, and the best smoothies in town. Kindly patronize them. Thanks!

1 attendee

Annual Fort Mason Craft Friends Social

Sun, Nov 15, 11:00 PM

From Gist IRL SF

4.7

**RSVP via:** https://app.gistirl.com/event-details/w9fjjqcpWDl2rf44fDWa **Early Bird Discounts | More $ Later** Hello New Friends, This event is like no other - you'll meet at least 10 new friends here with our rotating 1-1 conversations! Come spend the afternoon surrounded by beautiful handmade goods, discovering independent makers alongside people who share your eye for art at the Renegade Craft Fair. We'll start with an hour of quick, app-paired chats to break the ice, and then we'll break into small groups to explore the bustling artisan pavilions together. We're going to kick things off by chatting one-on-one. The Gist IRL app takes the guesswork out of mingling by pairing you up, so you can easily figure out who shares your taste in ceramics, textiles, and independent art. Once the rounds wrap up, the real fun begins. You'll choose a few folks you really hit it off with, form a little squad, and walk through the Renegade Craft Fair to explore the artisan booths together. By the time the fair closes at 5pm, you'll have found some favorite new makers and shared the afternoon with people who love local design as much as you do. Whether this small group becomes your go-to crew for artisan markets and craft fairs, or you just head home with a unique souvenir and a great memory, it's going to be a wonderful Saturday. The Plan: - 3:00PM: Check-In. Follow the link to set up your quick profile on your phone. - 3:05PM - 4:25PM: One-on-One Rounds. The app pairs you for focused chats. Find out who shares your appreciation for independent makers, thoughtful design, and handcrafted goods. - 4:25PM+: Form Groups & head into the fair pavilion. Reconnect with your favorite matches, form groups of 3-5, and head into the fair pavilion to check out the booths together — your group leaves together today. Let's skip the usual routine of wandering the aisles solo and collecting business cards you never look at again, and instead actually explore the craft fair side-by-side with folks who might just become your regular crew for future craft fairs, makers markets, and design walks to explore together. Plus, if you want to swap notes on what you bought after the fair wraps up, you can easily stay in touch through the app without ever needing to hand out your phone number. I can't wait to discover some amazing local art with you all this afternoon. A few favorite spots nearby: The Interval at Long Now - Housed right inside Fort Mason, this conversational cafe and salon serves artisan coffee, fine teas, and light bites surrounded by kinetic clockwork and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Equator Coffees - Situated at Fort Mason's historic entrance gatehouse, this breezy cafe pairs specialty espresso drinks and fresh pastries with outdoor seating facing the bay. Dandelion Chocolate - Located a short stroll away on Chestnut Street, this inviting cafe specializes in bean-to-bar hot chocolates, specialty coffee, and decadent house-baked chocolate treats. Over the Moon Creamery - A neighborhood staple on Chestnut Street, this charming dessert shop is known for its small-batch ice cream scoops tucked into warm, freshly baked cookies. The Original Ghirardelli Chocolate & Ice Cream Shop - A scenic walk along the waterfront into Ghirardelli Square, this iconic spot offers plenty of seating to share classic hot fudge sundaes and thick shakes. **RSVP via:** https://app.gistirl.com/event-details/w9fjjqcpWDl2rf44fDWa **Early Bird Discounts | More $ Later**

32 attendees

Beer & Beats - Music Feedback & Collaboration

Wed, Nov 18, 3:00 AM

From Anthem Music Academy - Music Producers and Artists

4.9

JOIN THE DISCORD FOR MOST INFORMATION. Discord (very important updates): https://discord.gg/UNgGtXmu6K No RSVP needed on Meetup.com, but we do have a check-in link on our Discord. Want to just see a video or two about what this is?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn-cOooQ0oA Take a tour of the campus where the event is held: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1EvgwM0vSE What Happens Each Week? Feedback & Listening • Play what you made, a work‑in‑progress • Get constructive critiques, mix notes, and creative ideas from a supportive crowd. Open‑Studio Sessions (3 Commercial Studios!) • Grab a workstation, plug in, and start building beats, recording vocals, or jamming with new friends. Networking & Vibes • Meet producers, engineers, artists, and music‑tech pros. **Links** Discord (very important updates): https://discord.gg/UNgGtXmu6K Level‑up your skills with our music education programs: https://anthemmusicacademy.com/

3 attendees

Drink & Draw 21+ In San Francisco Every 3rd Thursday! FREE to join!

Fri, Nov 20, 2:00 AM

From San Francisco Artsy Stuff

4.8

Grab your art supplies and come join us for a community Drink & Draw at 540 Bar in San Francisco to join.21+ FREE TO JOIN (but please 2 drink boozy/not min to support our local only small businesses) All levels of skills are welcome! Every 3rd Thursdays 6-8pm 21+ RSVP to let me know you’re coming! These activities are free because we pay for them, please support by: Grabbing a beverage or few (boozy or not) to support the bar, who lets us use the space on the monthly! They’re a small business owned by a trio of Richmond neighbors 💕 This is a labor of love by me (Risa) Supplies and cost of running this event are out of pocket. If you liked the event and would like to donate please venmo @Risa-Culbertson much appreciated! I’ll keep this running for as long as i can! Follow us on IG @Risa_Iwasaki_Culbertson @540bar We’re small businesses/ local artists. Come hang!

14 attendees

Hiking to a bright future together

Thu, Nov 19, 10:00 PM

From ArtsTech SF

4.7

Hiking in solarpunk spirit of systems change and radical collaboration. Let's meet under the tall dome at the Palace of Fine Arts and walk together to Mabuhay Gardens. Walk and discuss how we get to a brighter future together. 2-4 PM, November 19th, 2026. This hiking tradition began years ago when David Hodgson and I, Bobby Fishkin, started gathering multi-disciplinary collaborators for hikes. Do you have an inter-disciplinary interest addressing global challenges and in reaching a future fit for our future selves? Do you want to de-risk hypothetical ways to change the world in real time together? Are you a social innovator, a solarpunk, a systems change leader, a multidisciplinary agent of change? Come join our conversation while hiking. Hiking is good at creating rhythms of thought, pace of mind, and a social cadence for collaborative creativity and improvisational thought. We will have a good hike. Please RSVP so we know to look out for you: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2004566063056 Later that day at Mabuhay Gardens (435 Broadway, San Francisco): 4-6:30 PM: Solarpunk Happy Hour 6:30-8 PM: Contact Improvisational Dance workshop with Juliana Mendonca 8-11 PM: Live Music Jam + Solarpunk Riffs If you wish to book or design or create events at Mabuhay Gardens: https://themab.org/book-event-space/

1 attendee

Contact Improvisational Dance at Mabuhay Gardens with Juliana Mendonca

Fri, Nov 20, 2:30 AM

From ArtsTech SF

4.7

6:30-8 PM contact improvisational class with Juliana Mendonca 8-11 PM open dancing continues: live musicians' jam and solarpunk riffs (words that reflect the future we wish for) Contact Improvisational Dance at Mabuhay Gardens is an ongoing series of classes and jams, led by multiple collaborators of themab.org. Juliana Mendonca opened the series with two Fluid Dance evenings, and she returns to lead this one. THE CLASS WITH JULIANA MENDONCA (6:30-8 PM) Fluid Dance is Juliana's somatic movement practice. It grew out of her water-based work, Aquatic Intelligence (formerly Liquidanza), and tonight she brings it onto the dance floor. Through breath, rhythm, weight-sharing, and contact improvisation, we explore fluidity, relational awareness, and embodied connection: how to move with ease, give and receive weight, and listen to each other through touch. You are invited to arrive exactly as you are, with your joy, your longing, your stillness, or your movement. Whatever lives within you is welcome. No experience needed. What to bring: Comfortable clothes you can roll, lean, and move in, and a water bottle. AT 8 PM: SOLARPUNK RIFFS OVER LIVE MUSIC At 8, the class opens into more than a contact jam. Darrell from Camp Contact will also help invite the contact improvisational dance community. Loke, of the funk jam band «As/Is», anchors the music. Loke is joined by a new circle of musicians for the night, and solarpunks riff freestyle over the groove with spoken, improvised visions of regenerative futures. The music answers the words, and dancers carry the contact practice into both. Dance, play, play an instrument, speak, or witness. Musicians are welcome to bring an instrument and sit in. What are SolarPunk riffs? Short, spoken, improvised visions of the futures we'd love to live in, riffed over live music. See a 15-minute uplink of Shared Origin, Mutual Futures from Mabuhay Gardens, originally broadcast live to 70 countries as part of the global ORIGIN festival. TEXTS FROM STEVE PAXTON, FOUNDER OF CONTACT IMPROVISATION These words are part of History Texts Back, a series where real words from history arrive as messages on your phone, as if they were meant for tonight: "a martial art, but without the martial... an art-cooperation." (1975) "Improvisation is a very difficult nut to crack because it can't really be defined. It deals with the future, maybe only the next second but the future. Its definition is in the result of it." (1986) "Maybe it isn't art... for a while. Maybe it has to exist for a while before people see the art of it or the art in it." (1986) "I'm talking about the democracy between two people. Did I, through energy and exchange between two people find out a secret that I could share with you? Yes, it's one that was already known." (1998) Contact improv, live music, and spoken word, improvised together in one room, isn't a familiar form yet. Maybe it isn't art for a while. Dancers, musicians, and solarpunk riffers will each be improvising and listening, with none of them leading: an art-cooperation, defined by whatever we make together that night. A note from Bobby: This is a gathering the week of my birthday in celebration at a favorite place - Mabuhay Gardens. I'm a San Francisco artist and community builder, and Artistic Director and Solarpunk in Residence at Mabuhay Gardens. My work comes from a belief that intuition, exuberant creativity, and authentic stretch goals can unlock phase shifts in people and in systems. I'm drawn to the unfinished task of protecting and growing the conditions where people can imagine a future fit for their future selves, in a more-than-human world. I do that by exploring everyday micro-utopias: preferred futures specific enough to be walked toward together. So for my birthday I wanted a room where everyone gets to be an improviser, and where we meet each other in the vignettes of micro-utopian kind. The building has long been a center for inspirationally positive deviance - it has hosted legends including Louis Armstrong, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Dead Kennedys, Iggy Pop, The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, The Specials, Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Herbie Hancock, REM, Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Green Day, Soundgarden, George Lopez, Bad Religion, and Dave Chappelle. HOW TO ARRIVE Thursday, November 19 6:30-8:00 PM: The Waters Within, a contact improvisational dance class with Juliana Mendonca 8:00-11:00 PM: Solarpunk riffs over a live musicians' jam, open dancing, and Bobby's birthday celebration Mabuhay Gardens, 435 Broadway, San Francisco Suggested donation $20, pay what you want - any amount welcome, and no one turned away for lack of funds. Full listing with videos: https://luma.com/0zbutx52 Let's meet in the flow.

Your Life Is Full of Stories! Write Out Your Memories

Sat, Nov 14, 10:00 PM

From East Bay Adventures for Friendly People Over 40

4.8

In this two-hour workshop Katharine Harer will help you bring back to life people you have known and places you have been. You remember more than you think, not just sights and sounds but feelings, smells, tastes. Write out memories here, and go home with some new skills for bringing out those stories only you know, only you remember, only you can really tell. - Katharine has taught memoir, as well as a variety of creative writing classes, at the San Francisco Writing Salon for 8 years. Before that she was a beloved English professor at Skyline College and has published seven collections of poetry, the most recent, Deconfliction, in 2020, and a full-length volume of poems, Jazz & Other Hot Subjects, in 2016 Her poetry and nonfiction have been published widely in literary journals, newspapers, magazines, and anthologies Event Website Link [ https://berkeleypubliclibrary.libnet.info/event/1695811](https://berkeleypubliclibrary.libnet.info/event/16958111)

9 attendees

Drink and Draw at Jupiter

Tue, Nov 24, 3:30 AM

From East Bay Drink and Draw

4.9

Come draw, paint, or do whatever other art you're working on! Bring your own supplies. We're usually on the second floor -- look for all the people with sketchbooks and/or drawing tablets. In case you'd like to share your art or just stay in touch, we have a Discord server: [https://discord.gg/k7Vbwgm5ey](https://discord.gg/k7Vbwgm5ey)

4 attendees

Solarpunk Happy Hour at Mabuhay Gardens

Fri, Nov 20, 12:00 AM

From ArtsTech SF

4.7

Solarpunk Happy Hour at Mabuhay Gardens ABOUT EVENT 4–6:30 PM: a solarpunk happy hour and mixer, kicking off a full evening at Mabuhay Gardens (and Bobby Fishkin's birthday). Solarpunk asks what it would take for our most preferred futures to become our most probable futures. What would a world in which we cared for the multidisciplinary potential of cooperation look like and feal like? Our hyper realistic imminent aspirationally optimistic solarpunk wishes are good to be in conversation on. This is a relaxed gathering for people who are building that world, or curious about it: artists,regenerative technologists,catalytic weavers, social permaculturalists, civilization gardeners, dreamers, and anyone interested in conspiring. Come for a drink and a good conversation. Meet people working on regenerative futures across the Bay Area, share what you're dreaming up, What are you building, tending, or imagining right now? \- Bobby's birthday welcome\. Friends of Bobby\, start the celebration here\. Stay for the rest of the night- 6:30–8 PM: Contact Improvisational Dance workshop with Juliana Mendonca. No experience needed. 8–11 PM: Live musicians' jam with solarpunk riffs (spoken, improvised words about the future we wish for), open dancing, and Bobby's birthday celebration. RSVP for the workshop and jam: https://luma.com/0zbutx52 WHERE Mabuhay Gardens, 435 Broadway, San Francisco (https://themab.org) Come as you are. Leave with depth perception into a preferable future via community.

Field Trip: Verasphere at WEAD Artist Salon

Sun, Nov 15, 11:00 PM

From Upcycle Alameda

5.0

**Some of you have probably heard Eve and Logan talk about marching in the SF Pride parade with Verasphere. Maybe you have even seen their photos of the amazing, colorful costumes. Well, now is your chance to meet the artists behind Verasphere: David Faulk (aka Mrs. Vera) and Michael Johnstone!** **This event will combine an artist talk with a community discussion and a chance to do some crafting. We will be making costume accessories (gloves or mask) out of non-traditional materials (some upcycled).** **Please note that while Eve and Logan are co-hosting this event, it is actually being produced by the West End Arts District (not Upcycle Alameda).** **Pay-what-you-will tickets are available here:** **https://events.humanitix.com/wead-salon-verashpere** **Light snacks and beverages will be available for attendees but the cafe will not be open for business during our event.**

2 attendees

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Frequently asked questions

Meetup connects people with similar interests through local groups and events. It helps users discover activities and join communities in areas such as arts and culture.

Yes, San Francisco hosts a variety of creative events. Meetup members can find arts groups and cultural gatherings suited to their interests throughout the city.

To find creative groups near you, use Meetup's location search feature. Specify San Francisco as your area and explore groups focused on arts and cultural activities.

Creative groups in San Francisco cover diverse interests, including visual arts, performance arts, and literary gatherings. Join groups that match your specific creative passions.

Yes, you can join multiple Meetup groups to explore a variety of creative interests. This flexibility allows you to diversify your experiences and meet a wide range of people.

Attending every event is not mandatory. RSVP to the events that fit your schedule and interests. This allows flexibility to engage at your convenience.

Meetup is free to join, sign up, and explore groups. Some events might charge a participation fee, which is determined by individual organizers.

RSVPing for an event on Meetup is straightforward. Select the event of interest and click the RSVP button to confirm your attendance and receive updates.

Joining art groups fosters creative expression and cultural engagement. It connects you with like-minded individuals and provides opportunities to share and develop your passions.

Availability of events varies. While San Francisco boasts diverse creative activities, specific categories may have limited events based on organizer presence.

Event organization quality can differ since Meetup doesn't directly manage events. Experiences depend on the organizers' capabilities and commitment.

Meetup lists both online and in-person events. Specific event formats are determined by organizers, giving options for varied user preferences and current guidelines.

While Meetup facilitates connections, forming friendships depends on individual engagement and member interactions at events and group activities.

Yes, Meetup is suitable for beginners. Many groups welcome individuals new to creative fields, offering supportive environments for learning and growth.

Yes, some creative events are hosted virtually. This provides flexibility for enjoying creative activities online, even beyond San Francisco.