The World Stage is an educational and performance arts gallery in Leimert Park Village, the heart of LA's African American cultural community. The Stage, as it is affectionately called, was founded by the late world renowned master jazz drummer Billy Higgins and by poet and community arts activist Kamau Daáood in an attempt to fill a cultural void that existed in the Los Angeles community.

The Stage opened its doors on June 1, 1989 and was initially formed as a loose collective of artists and arts supporters. Since that time, the World Stage has grown to assume a pioneering and pivotal role in the flowering of an arts movement in Leimert Park that has been hailed as the black cultural mecca by the Los Angeles Times.

The mission of the World Stage, a 501 (c) 3, non-profit organization, is to provide leadership to secure, preserve and advance the position of African American music, literature and works in the oral tradition to a local, national and international audience by providing workshops where classic and emerging forms of creative expression can be supported and presented.