PROVIDENCE – Eight local arts organizations, a local college and one artist received a total of $275,000 in grants from the National Endowment for the Arts to support their various initiatives and local arts programming, the R.I. State Council on the Arts announced Thursday.
The grants were part of the first round of national awards distributed by NEA for the 2024 fiscal year, RISCA says. The amount Rhode Island received was part of more than $32.2 million distributed across the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
The grants, RISCA says, were given out within five categories – grants for arts projects, challenging America, research grants in the arts, research labs and literature fellowships. The grants ranged from $10,000 to $65,000.
The organizations that received the grants, their amounts and what they will be used for, are:
- Alliance of Artists Communities, Providence, $65,000 to offer a professional development program for the artist residency field focused on emergency preparedness and response
- AS220, Providence, $15,000, to provide arts education programming
- DownCity Design, Providence, $30,000 to implement a series of free design education programs for youth
- Elizabeth Rush, Providence, $25,000 to fund a creative writing fellowship
- Newport String Project, Newport, $10,000 to support a series of concerts and community engagement activities
- New Urban Arts, Providence, $25,000, to provide free multidisciplinary arts program for students
- Providence College, Providence, $30,000 to commission a mural for the basketball court at James Ahern Park by Houston-based artist Trenton Doyle Hancock, and related public art programming.
- Rhode Island Black Storytellers, Providence, $10,000 to support a festival celebrating Black storytelling and poetry
- Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, $50,000 to fund the exhibition and related programming for “Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch”
- Trinity Repertory Company, Providence, $15,000 to support the world premiere production of “La Broa (Broad Street)”
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter at @James_Bessette.
