Are you a part of the growing creative placemaking movement?
ArtPlace America has now opened the application process for its 2014 Innovation Grants. In its fourth round of funding, ArtPlace America will continue to support creative placemaking in communities across America.
ArtPlace America is a collaboration of 13 leading national and regional foundations and six of the nation’s largest banks. ArtPlace America also seeks advice and counsel from close working relationships with various federal agencies, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Education, and Transportation, along with leadership from the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Domestic Policy Council.
To date, ArtPlace America has awarded 134 grants to 124 organizations in more than 79 communities across the U.S. for a total of $42.1 million. Past recipients of ArtPlace America grants have demonstrated creative placemaking as a means of investing in art and culture at the heart of a portfolio of integrated strategies to drive vibrancy and diversity so powerful that it transforms communities.
Grants will be awarded to projects that involve arts organizations, artists and designers working in partnership with local and national partners on place-based strategies that can transform communities.
Letters of inquiry must be submitted by December 13, 2013.
ArtPlace America funds in all 50 states and U.S. territories. Certain ArtPlace America funders have a deep commitment to their local communities and have provided funding for specific states or communities. Currently, these include: Akron, Charlotte, Detroit, Macon, Miami, New York City, Philadelphia, San Jose, and St. Paul, as well as communities in Alaska, Arizona, California, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin. Therefore, we particularly invite projects in these areas, although applications are welcome and grants are awarded to projects from all across the US. We continue to expand our funding with the goal of supporting the broadest possible geographic array of communities.
Complete guidelines for applying for an ArtPlace grant can be found at www.artplaceamerica.org/loi.
Participating foundations in ArtPlace America include Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Ford Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The William Penn Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Rasmuson Foundation, The Surdna Foundation and two anonymous donors. ArtPlace America is also supported by a $12 million loan fund capitalized by six major financial institutions and managed by the Nonprofit Finance Fund. Participating institutions are Bank of America, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Chase, MetLife and Morgan Stanley.
Recent ArtPlace America grant recipients include:
•The Anchorage Parks Foundation, which is partnering with The Light Brigage in planning, executing and documenting a series of site specific urban art interventions with a focus on the subject of light and dark (themes of special interest to Northern dwellers) to activate public spaces throughout the Anchorage, AK community.
•The City of Asylum Pittsburgh, which is employing permanent and temporary public artworks, community-based residencies for international artists, and free multi-lingual literary and jazz performances to create a joyful walkway through their community to draw residents and tourists to the community’s soon-to-be redeveloped Federal-North business district and celebrate creative expression.
•Capitol Hill Housing, which is transforming a 29,000 sq ft surface parking lot on Seattle’s Capitol Hill into the new 12th Avenue Arts building, a vibrant mixed-use development combining arts, housing, retail and public safety uses.
•Creative Time, which is partnering with Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn, NY to present a multi-faceted exhibition of installations and collaborations between artists and local organizations that engage Weeksville’s themes of sustainability, agency, and self-determination alongside public programming that supports longer-term neighborhood development and revitalization.
•Detroit Economic Growth Association’s REVOLVE Program, which is matching designers and artists with local university students, residents and entrepreneurs to activate vacant storefronts and public spaces with pop-up art installations, businesses and events to transform Detroit’s historic Livernois “Avenue of Fasion”.
•International Sonoran Desert Alliance, which is completing its Sonoran Desert Retreat Center, launching an artist residency program at the retreat center featuring traditional and contemporary Tohono O’odham and Mexican artists, and creating a tri-national border-themed community arts installation in Ajo, AZ.
•The Town of Prattsville, NY, which is turning a flood-damaged building into the Prattsville Art Center and Residency to engage artists-in-residence in town planning and design as well as public exhibitions and events to reimagine the future of the rural town as it recovers from a natural disaster.
A complete list of past ArtPlace America grant recipients can be found here: http://www.artplaceamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ArtPlaceAmerica_InnovationGrants_theme2013.pdf