“The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage (the Center) announced its 2022 grants and fellowships today in support of cultural events and artistic work that will enliven and enrich the Philadelphia region and represent diverse identities, personal experiences, and historical narratives. The 42 awards total $9.5 million: $7.2 million in project funding, plus $1.4 million provided as unrestricted general operating support for the 30 local organizations receiving project grants, and $900,000 going to 12 Philadelphia-area artists as Pew Fellowships.”

“Many of the newly funded projects spotlight artists and communities of color, engaging with topics such as the rich history of social dance within Philadelphia’s Black communities, the contributions of Japanese artists working in the U.S. in the mid-20th century, and the cultural traditions and contemporary practices of Mexican artists and migrants. Several projects will bring creative work to public spaces and nontraditional venues such as a public park, a community recreation center, and a botanical garden, while others will investigate historical archives to illuminate lesser-known stories.”

“Following a pivot to pandemic recovery funding for arts and heritage organizations in 2021, these 2022 grants mark a return to the Center’s project support for public programs and events, while its fellowships for Philadelphia’s artists—awarded annually since 1992—remain in place.”

Read the full announcement here.

From Yancey Consulting: “This is the story of Artist Relief 2020. It was an INCREDIBLE initiative.

9 months
161,000 applications
$21 million raised
3,916 artists funded
$5,000 each
100s of practitioners, administrators, artists, individual donors, and institutional funders mobilized

Take in the story. And then take in the recommendations and qualitative and quantitative reports. After doing so, let me know what you think and what we can do about crisis preparedness and resolving economic disparities.”

1. We Are Bound: Excavating the Story of Artist Relief 2020

In 2020, nearly 4,000 artists in dire financial straits received $5,000 each in relief grants from a coalition of seven U.S. funders. These funders came together and launched a $21 million relief fund for artists during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

You can access the digital flipbook here.

2. We Are Bound: RECOMMENDATIONS

We Are Bound:RECOMMENDATIONS. As a population, independent artists were devastated by COVID 2020. In the United States, the pandemic laid bare the minuscule and brittle securities that artists, makers, gig workers, freelancers, and other self-employed creators had in the form of financial reserves and social safety nets. As a companion piece to the We Are Bound: Excavating the Story of Artist Relief 2020, Lisa Yancey drafted this comprehensive set of recommendations in WE ARE BOUND: RECOMMENDATIONS, which addresses crisis preparedness and the systemic problem of economic disparities for artists in the creative economy.

You can access the digital flipbook here.

3. We Are Bound: Report on Qualitative Analysis of Artist Relief Application Narratives (Cycles 1-9)

Produced by Collaborative Consulting Group (CCG), this report set out to capture the story of artists and creatives who sought funding from the Artist Relief grant initiative. CCG managed and analyzed a representative sample of more than 1,300 Artist Relief grant applicant narratives.

You can access the digital flipbook here.

4. So Far Past the Brink: COVID-19 and the Ongoing Conditions that keep Creative Workers in Free Fall

Produced by Americans for the Arts, this report provides a quantitative analysis of aggregated results from a national online survey of just over 33,000 artists and creative workers from April through November 2020. It examines five sector-wide socioeconomic inequities exacerbated and exposed by the pandemic: economic insecurity, job insecurity, exploitative working conditions, inequities in the digital environment, limited access to health care, and housing and food insecurity.

You can access the digital flipbook here. It’s downloadable.

“Groundbreaking ballerina Misty Copeland announced today the launch of The Misty Copeland Foundation (MCF), a new non-profit organization that aims to bring greater diversity, equity, and inclusion to dance, especially ballet. The MCF’s signature program, BE BOLD, is a free afterschool dance program, that is designed to serve girls and boys, ages 8-10, in community-based, child-focused settings. BE BOLD is an acronym, which translates into Ballet Explorations, Ballet Offers Leadership Development, and aims to make ballet accessible, affordable, and fun for children.”

“In designing the BE BOLD teaching and learning framework, Copeland brought together a group of diverse leaders from ballet, dance education, DEI, and child development as an advisory council to make sure that the program would holistically serve children – mind, body, and spirit.”

“The BE BOLD model has five linked program components: Introductory Ballet, Music for Ballet, Health & Wellness, Tutoring, and Mentoring. The twelve-week program, beginning this month, will initially launch at six sites of the Kips Bay and Madison Square Boys & Girls Clubs in New York City. The selected Clubs have the staff and facilities in place to provide a dance-based program and mentorship to its young Club members.”

“I’ve shared my story about how I discovered ballet at 13 years old on the basketball court of my local Boys & Girls Club in San Pedro, CA, and four years later, I moved to New York City to join American Ballet Theatre. It was because someone at that Club saw something in me that I had not seen in myself,” says Copeland. “In thinking about establishing The Misty Copeland Foundation and its BE BOLD program, it was important to me to provide to children the same type of opportunity and environment that helped build a path for me to succeed not just in this artform, but in my life overall.”

“At the heart of BE BOLD are the program’s teaching artists, who were personally vetted and selected by Copeland and her MCF team. The teaching artists are completing a week of training in partnership this week with the NDI Collaborative for Teaching and Learning in Harlem before beginning to work at the BE BOLD sites.”

“‘I’m thrilled that The Misty Copeland Foundation partnered with the NDI Collaborative for Teaching and Learning, the professional development center of the National Dance Institute (www.nationaldance.org), to train our BE BOLD teaching artists,’ says Copeland. ‘NDI, founded by the late Jacques d’Amboise, has a long and impressive history of engaging tens of thousands of children of diverse backgrounds and abilities through arts education. I couldn’t think of a better organization to help provide our teaching artists with the necessary tools to work with MCF’s young participants.'”

“The Misty Copeland Foundation has also engaged Dr. Gess LeBlanc, a Hunter College professor whose research focuses on culturally responsive teaching, to guide development of BE BOLD’s evaluation system to measure program impact.”

“The Ford Foundation and The Goldman Sachs Foundation’s One Million Black Women initiative are lead founding funders of the BE BOLD program. Other founding funders include the Arison Arts Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, John and Jody Arnhold, and the Wendy E. Scripps Foundation. The Misty Copeland Foundation is also grateful for the generous support provided by other individuals and families.”

Learn more about the foundation here.

“Today the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and the City of Oakland announced plans to return approximately five acres of land owned by the City to Indigenous stewardship.”

The Oakland City Council will hold hearings to consider conveying the site, known as Sequoia Point, to the non-profit, women-led, Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Nation, an East Bay Ohlone tribe, through the creation of a cultural conservation easement. The City would grant the cultural conservation easement in perpetuity to the Land Trust, allowing the Land Trust to immediately use the land for natural resource restoration, cultural practices, public education, and to plan for additional future uses.”

“What started out with a casual conversation between Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and tribal Chairperson Corrina Gould in 2017, has grown into a partnership between the City and the Land Trust to begin to address the historic harms of Oakland’s founding. Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people have inhabited Oakland and parts of the East Bay for thousands of years. They were forcibly removed from their land with the arrival of Europeans and descendants of Europeans beginning in the 18th Century.”

“‘I am committed to returning land to Indigenous stewardship, to offer some redress for past injustices to Native people,’ said Mayor Schaaf, ‘I hope the work we are doing in Oakland with the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust can serve as a model for other cities working to return Indigenous land to the Indigenous community we stole it from.'”

Learn how to participate and support here.

“Artists from across the state have come together in this small southwest Texas town to honor the 19 students and two teachers killed in late May at Robb Elementary School. They’ve painted giant portraits of each victim with the hope of helping the community heal.”

“It’s a huge endeavor at any time, but most especially during Texas in August.”

“It’s morning time but already sweltering just off Uvalde’s pecan tree-lined town square. The artist who goes by the name Uloang, has been up all night painting, to avoid the blistering midday sun.”

Read the full article here.

“VermontBiz Creative Futures Grants, with $9 million in funding from Vermont’s last legislative session, will be available beginning Thursday, Sept. 15, to help the creative sector recover from economic losses due to the pandemic.”

“Grants of up to $200,000 will be available to creative sector non-profits and for-profit entities, including sole proprietors, that have sustained substantial losses from the pandemic. Losses include decreased revenue or gross receipts; financial insecurity; increased costs; and challenges covering operating expenses.”

“Grant amounts, which will be based on pre-pandemic operating revenue from 2019, may be used to cover a wide range of regular operating expenses, including payroll and office expenses; rent, mortgage, and utilities; and costs associated with ongoing Covid-19 mitigation and prevention.”

The program will be open for three rounds. The first application deadline is Nov. 1, 2022, with subsequent deadlines in February and June of 2023. Read the full announcement here.

Artnet News author Folasade Ologundudu is conducting a four-part series, “featuring Black artists across generations who work with social practice.” The first interview in the series is with Linda Goode Bryant, “a mother of two, artist, activist, and filmmaker,” whose, “exhibition ‘Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces’ will debut at the Museum of Modern Art in New York almost half a century after Linda Goode Bryant first opened the doors of the gallery that inspired the show just a few blocks away, on West 57th Street.”

“[Bryant] is a tenacious self-starter, devoted mother, generous friend, and fierce advocate who has spent her life and career working to share the stories and positively impact the lives of those who have experienced racism, poverty, and displacement.”

“Over the past decade, several institutions have asked Bryant to stage an exhibition about JAM, but she always replied that she didn’t do ‘dead art shows.’ She resisted the notion of a historical show that placed living artists who’ve continued to create new work in conversation with a project that existed decades before. But the significance of doing a show at MoMA—which, although nearby, might as well have been miles away from JAM when it was operating—proved compelling.”

“Is the acclaim being bestowed upon Black artists today too little, too late? One would be remiss not to mention that recent museum solo shows for artists such as 79-year-old Pindell and 87-year-old Lorraine O’Grady, who showed at JAM decades ago, feel backhanded after all these years. Bryant knows full well that Black creativity and talent exist outside white institutions and have never needed their permission or validity.”

Read the full interview here.

From Tooshar Swain for AFTA’s ARTS blog, “National Arts in Education Week is upon us, and it is a wonderful time to reflect on where arts education has been and where it can go with impassioned arts advocacy. K-12 arts students and educators have endured a rocky road through the pandemic, and their perseverance must continue as we head into a new normal of education in the United States.”

“The path to a new normal began with the complete shutdown of in-person learning. Many schools stopped useful learning activities in March 2020 for the remainder of the school year. Schools were quickly forced to implement a virtual learning platform. This came with no experience on how to instruct children away from the classroom and little familiarity with employing the technology for virtual learning to occur. As administrators and parents rushed to identify how best to limit learning loss in subjects like math, reading, and English, students and educators felt the pinch in arts education as they considered how best to move forward past administrative and technological restrictions.”

“While schools throughout the country have resumed in-school learning and arts education programs are thriving in some communities, quality arts programs continue to be limited or not available at all in many schools. The renamed Arts ARE Education statement is a now full-fledged national arts education campaign recognizing that all pre-K through grade 12 students have the right to a high-quality school-based arts education in dance, media arts, music, theater, and visual arts. As a well-rounded subject area under federal education law—the Every Student Succeeds Act—music and the arts support the daily well-being of students, foster a welcoming and safe school environment, and encourage inclusivity through multiple pathways for every child’s creative voice.”

Read the full article here.

From the White House Briefing Room: “At the national level, NEA Chair Jackson will participate in the United We Stand Summit, alongside National Endowment for the Humanities Chair Lowe, and will be partnering on a messaging initiative in future months. We extend an invitation for you to join us for this important, first-of-its-kind event, with information on how to watch the summit forthcoming. The arts and culture have an important role to play in this issue. As we all know, the arts help us develop the skills needed to find connection, common purpose, and recognition of our shared humanity. They are an integral part of America’s civic infrastructure: the norms and agreements that we rely on to care for one another. In this time of division and polarization, strengthening this civic infrastructure through the arts is paramount.”

“The United We Stand Summit will bring together heroes from across America who are leading historic work in their communities to build bridges and address hate and division, including survivors of hate-fueled violence. The summit will include a bipartisan group of federal, state, and local officials, civil rights groups, faith and community leaders, technology and business leaders, law enforcement officials, former members of violent hate groups who now work to prevent violence, gun violence prevention leaders, media representatives, and cultural figures. It will feature a keynote speech from President Biden as well as inclusive, bipartisan panels and conversations on countering hate-fueled violence, preventing radicalization and mobilization to violence, and fostering unity.”

Read the full article here.