National Endowment for Arts Announces Second Round of Grants for FY 2022

From the NEA:

For its second major grant announcement of fiscal year 2022, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is announcing more than $91 million in recommended grants to organizations in all 50 states and U.S. jurisdictions. Grants are in three NEA funding categories: Grants for Arts Projects, Our Town, and State and Regional Partnerships.

“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts and cultural organizations throughout the nation with these grants, providing opportunities for all of us to live artful lives,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “The arts contribute to our individual well-being, the well-being of our communities, and to our local economies. The arts are also crucial to helping us make sense of our circumstances from different perspectives as we emerge from the pandemic and plan for a shared new normal informed by our examined experience.”

• List of grant recipients organized by state/territory and city/town
• List of grant recipients organized by funding category and artistic discipline/field
• List of the panelists who reviewed these applications for funding
• All current grants and project details can be viewed through the recent grant search. 

Grants for Arts Projects

Grants for Arts Projects (GAP) is the principal grant category of the National Endowment for the Arts. Matching grants range from $10,000 to $100,000, and are recommended for organizations in all 50 states, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington, DC. In July 2021, the agency received 1,806 eligible GAP applications. Approved for funding are 1,125 projects totaling more than $26.6 million. 

Through this grant category, the NEA supports artistically excellent projects that celebrate our creativity and cultural heritage, invite mutual respect for differing beliefs and values, and enrich humanity. Grants range across 13 artistic disciplines and fields. Among the recommended grants are:

• Support for Robert W. Woodruff Arts Center, Inc. on behalf of Alliance Theatre (Atlanta, Georgia) for their Spelman Leadership Fellows program. In partnership with Spelman College, a historically Black college, the Alliance Theatre will expand its fellowship program to include professional development opportunities at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
• Support for Music For All Seasons (Scotch Plains, New Jersey) for a therapeutic music program for children and families living in shelters. Designed primarily for children living in shelters who are victims of domestic violence, monthly programs by instrumentalists are planned for various venues in California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. 
• Support for Alaska Arts Education Consortium (Juneau, Alaska) for a statewide collective impact initiative that will examine the status of K-12 arts education access and opportunities in Alaska, and identify programming strategies that will ensure equitable access for students across the state, including Alaska Native and rural communities.
• Support for the Arts Council of New Orleans (Louisiana) for SALON Studios, a training and residency program for media artists working with light, video, and immersive technology.
• Support for Edith Kanakaole Foundation (Hilo, Hawai‘i) for demonstrations of traditional hula music and dance by master artists that will also be an opportunity to share contextual information about natural elements, such as volcanic eruptions and geographic features like forests and reefs, contained within hula songs. 
• Support for New Mexico State University Main Campus, a Hispanic-Serving Institution on behalf of New Mexico State University Art Museum (Las Cruces, New Mexico) for Contemporary Ex-Votos: Devotion Beyond Medium, an exhibition of devotional altarpiece paintings that are historically significant to Latin American cultures. This exhibition will include work by the museum’s permanent collection with new works by contemporary Latinx artists.
• Support for ArtsBuild (Chattanooga, Tennessee) for the Community Cultural Connections grant program for arts projects by organizations in Hamilton County, Tennessee, with a focus on rural and underserved neighborhoods.
• Support for Jess Curtis/Gravity (San Francisco, California) for the creation and presentation of Into The Dark, that will focus on social and cultural experiences of darkness and light. Accessibility accommodations such as audio description, tactile floor markings, and touch-based navigation strategies will be utilized to allow performers, which will include blind, low-vision, and sighted performers, to safely navigate the space and negotiate proximity to audiences given the literal use of extreme darkness and light.

The next deadline for organizations interested in applying for Grants for Arts Projects is July 7, 2022; visit arts.gov for more information.

Our Town

Our Town is the NEA’s creative placemaking grants program. Through Our Town, the NEA supports projects that integrate arts, culture, and design activities into efforts that strengthen communities. Projects advance local economic, physical, and/or social outcomes in communities, ultimately laying the groundwork for systems change and centering equity. Matching grants in this category range from $25,000 to $150,000 and support projects that will take place in 29 states. The agency received 215 eligible applications and approved for funding are 51 recommended projects totaling $3,900,000.

Key to Our Town projects are partnerships between a nonprofit organization and a local government entity, with one of the partners being a cultural organization. Among the recommended grants are:

• Support for the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (Texas) for public art, exhibitions, and arts programming to celebrate Freedmen’s Town, a historically Black community in Houston recently designated a Heritage District. The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston will partner with City of Houston Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs and Houston Freedmen’s Town Conservancy on this project.
• Support for University of Kentucky Research Foundation (Lexington, Kentucky) to support design activities and arts programming to facilitate community dialogue on climate change in Hazard, Kentucky. In 2021, Hazard, a town of 5,263 residents in Appalachia, experienced severe flooding. The project will include a series of art exhibitions, oral histories, documentary videos, and community engagement activities. A partnership among the University of Kentucky’s College of Design, InVision Hazard, the City of Hazard, and the Appalachian Arts Alliance, the initiative will facilitate critical conversations around resiliency through artmaking.
• Support for the City of Seattle (Seattle, Washington) for cultural asset mapping and multidisciplinary artworks which will inform planning and development of a light rail transit project in Seattle. The artworks will be foundational to planning along the rail station extension and the process of co-creating artworks and hearing each other’s stories will instill trust and encourage collaboration among participants, establishing an approach to building community partnerships for infrastructure planning. The project will be a partnership among the City of Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods, the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, and the Delridge Neighborhood Development Association.

The next deadline for organizations interested in applying for Our Town is August 4, 2022; visit arts.gov for more information.

More information about all of the National Endowment for the Arts’ grant opportunities is available at arts.gov/grants. This section also includes resources for first-time and returning applicants as well as information on how to volunteer to be an NEA panelist.

State and Regional Partnerships

Each year, 40 percent of the agency’s grantmaking funds are designated for state arts agencies, regional arts organizations, and national service organizations that support the work of the states and regions. A total of $60.58 million is recommended for these partners in FY 2022, with $49 million of that total designated for SAAs. Each SAA and RAO matches its NEA funding on at least a 1:1 basis. 

The Partnership Agreements for the state arts agencies extend the NEA’s reach to even more communities. Using state funds in combination with NEA Partnership funding, state arts agencies support approximately 23,000 projects and organizations in over 5,500 communities. 

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